by Trevor Wyatt
Well, we cleaned it up, alright. But what else did we ignore?
But the money to do all this does have to come from somewhere, and one of those places is Armada Intelligence. The feeling in the administration is that the Outers are a bunch of hamfisted goons who can barely make their starships work.
This view, I can tell you as a man whose job it is to patrol the stellar borders, is not reality-based. The Outers lack some resources, but they’re not fools.
It leaves people like me hung out to dry, to some extent. Oh, if we get in a jam we can yell for help and it’ll come, but for the most part we’re expected to solve our own problems. I’m generally good with that, because I’m not a big fan of relying on other people.
I know Flynn is thinking that at this point I may have to, but I’m not ready to concede yet. I know that he wants his officers to be as autonomous and self-reliant as possible. It’s why we have such carefully chosen and well-trained crews.
“This is what we get for electing a bean counter,” I say, and Flynn barks out a laugh.
“I know you want more information, son. I do, too—but I don’t want this to blow up in our faces.”
“I won’t take any unnecessary chances,” I reply.
“Very well. Proceed with caution, report regularly.”
“Sir.”
With the call to Flynn terminated, I put in a call to Dr. Lannigan.
“I want you to work with Docherty in Navigation,” I tell Taft. “Have him plot the Mariner’s course and follow it back.”
Lannigan raises an eyebrow.
“Somewhere along the line, they ran into something,” I explain. “Something that bit them. If we trace their course, maybe we can run into it too.”
Chapter 5
Ashley
One of my jobs as First Officer is to keep track of the ship’s full complement. That includes the three computer-based artificial intelligences as well as the fifty humans who are aboard. The AIs in engineering and navigation are sequestered to this ship. They were created to serve in the absence of crewmembers or in the event that crewmembers became incapacitated. They walk, talk, and operate in a way to mimic humans. This was consciously done to prevent them from awkward situations. Early generation AI were non-autonomous but Armada Security received complaints that they gave crews “the creeps." They haven’t got names, either, other than EngPrime and NavPrime, usually just Eng and Nav. Neither one has much in the way of personality, to my way of thinking.
(That was supposed to be a joke. I tried it on Jeryl once, but he just gave me a blank look.)
For some reason, the armory AI is different. It’s a later model than the others, for one thing, so its cognitive net is capable of more and faster connections. It wears clothes. Also, someone, somewhere, with a strange sense of humor programmed a personality into it, something based on an old-time gunnery sergeant. It calls itself Gunny. Gunny’s user interface is rough spoken, often obscene, and inclined to pomposity.
I find him amusing, myself, but I know Jeryl is annoyed by him and tends to avoid him as much as possible. Gunny, for his part, isn’t impressed by anyone’s rank or social standing.
I’ve served on several other Armada frigates, and they all had a greater complement of AIs that the Seeker. I know that having AIs aboard is strictly at the captain’s discretion. I also know that there are a few frigates that have no AIs, for one reason or another—usually down to, yes, the captain’s discretion. Human prejudice against AIs runs strong in certain quarters and among certain demographic groups. I've never spoken to Jeryl about the relative scarcity of AIs among the ship’s crew. Plainly put, it’s none of my business. If Captain Montgomery has a problem with AIs, I haven’t heard him mention it, and it isn’t my place to ask.
It could be that the Union’s new president, whose family has long been involved in cybernetic development and robotics, has recently rammed through legislation allowing AIs to serve in the armed forces. Now, it isn’t as though computers are anything new to the military; they’ve been using them since the 20th century. But the new laws are widely seen as no more than a payback to the powerful Cybernetic Science lobby that helped guide her into power.
There are a lot of very conservative people in the military, which is not a bad thing; I’m a pretty conservative person myself. My father and his father before him were military men, and I’m proud to carry on the tradition. In fact, if you go back far enough, you’ll find ancestors of mine fighting aboard destroyers in World War II. We’re a family of peacekeepers and law enforcement officers.
Many of my fellow officers, including several aboard the Seeker, don’t like AIs much, but they obey the letter of the law. Personally, I have nothing against the AIs, though I’ve known few as interesting and personable as Gunny. Most people think of AIs as appliances having opinions, and don’t regard them as being truly alive.
My feeling is that there are bigger issues to worry about in life. But I do know that ships with fewer AIs tend to have a happier crew. This leads me to think that Jeryl is trying to have it both ways: he’s obeying Armada custom of having several AIs on a given vessel, but he’s limited their numbers. It could it be a shrewd attempt on his part to boost morale by having fewer synthetics on the ship.
All these thoughts slip through my mind as I sit at my station in CNC, going over status reports. I can do those with half my attention—maybe less. This is why I’ve been daydreaming about the AIs.
But as I said, it isn’t my business. If Jeryl and I grow closer, perhaps I’ll ask him.
Of course, that’s a whole other question.
And here I am again, thinking about that night. I really don’t want to—it’s distracting. I have duties I must attend to. Supplies, nominal. Recyclers, fine... though number 45, outside the third-level lav, will only give out soap, no matter what’s asked of it. Nothing that can’t be dealt with once we dock.
But I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, not to think about it for weeks now. I’m certain that we ended up at that resort together on New Sydney by sheer accident. I’d been delayed on the ship by some administrative tasks, so I missed the main shuttle that took the body of the crew down to the planet for some well-deserved shore leave. New Sydney is something of a vacation spot, so there are resorts scattered all across its face. With barely any axial tilt, the planet enjoys what is basically a yearlong early summer. It’s very popular as a destination.
But with so many resorts to choose from, it was a surprise when I walked in to register and saw Jeryl having a drink in the lounge off to one side, dressed in an open short, shorts, and sandals. He’s a good-looking guy, no one could deny that; and I had never seem him in such casual garb.
He didn’t see me, but after I signed in I went over to his table. He looked up at me, surprised, and gave me a huge grin.
“Ashley! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Well, here I am,” I said, taking a seat. “What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Oh, a really old liquor called tequila.”
“I’ll have one, too.”
Well, I had one two three, and the next thing you know...
I never expected it. He said he never expected it. But damn, for an unexpected liaison, it was amazing. I didn’t get to my room until the next morning. His was large, clean, airy... with perfumed breezes from the flower forest nearby drifting in. They smelled like cool and sweet, like gardenias, my favorite.
It was impossible; it was heaven. I’m not inclined to be particularly submissive, but he took command and four orgasms later he finally let me fall asleep. I didn’t even get to reciprocate until just past dawn, after I woke to use the bathroom and then went back to repay my debt. The next three days were largely a repeat of that, with time off for tours of the forest, incredible meals, and—okay, a lot of sex. Consenting adults and all that.
Since then it’s been all business between us, and I’m fine with that. Not so much as a caress or a kiss has passed between us since New
Sydney. Okay, okay—maybe a meaningful glance or two. But we know the truth of our positions: he’s my captain, I’m his first officer, and we have a job to do. What happened was a dalliance, a very pleasant dalliance. It isn’t going to go anywhere, and I’m perfectly okay with that. In fact, I prefer it. I have a career and I’m not about to settle down just yet. I don’t even know if I want children. Frankly, they don’t appeal to me. I may not be good mother material. I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that... it’s not high on my list of priorities. In fact, last time I looked it wasn’t on the list at all.
I’m not looking for that to change. These are things we haven’t talked about. We may never talk about them. And that's okay, too.
Though I wouldn’t rule out another fling like that one.
Suddenly a security alert buzzes from my station, making me jump. A quick look at the code tells me it’s nothing internal, but when I glance at the exterior monitors my jaw drops.
It’s a spaceship. But it’s not one of ours: nothing Earth ever built looks like this.
I slap the comm link and wait an endless three seconds until Jeryl responds.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” His voice is all business.
“Unknown craft sighted fifteen units away, northwest quadrant,” I say as crisply as I can, linking him into the feed. “On an intercept course.”
Fifteen units, I think as I speak. How the hell did they get that close without us spotting them sooner?
Jeryl, to his credit, says nothing. He’s reading the data, looking at the video feed. What we are looking at is a completely black triangular craft about half a kilometer long, side on to us, with a faint glow of ionization from its tail section—a drive plume? It has circular lights in a single row along its side. Portholes.
This is an alien vessel. Non-human. Who or what is looking out of those ports?
Chapter 6
Jeryl
I’m so stunned by what I’m seeing on the screen that I can’t say a damn thing. For one thing, I’m caught completely off guard. I’m in my quarters, relaxing with a novel on my tablet, on which Ashley’s ALERT window has popped open over the text. It takes me a good thirty seconds to fully absorb the fact that I'm looking at what can only be an alien vessel. My brain creaks into motion at last. We’re nowhere near a planetary system; therefore this is an interstellar craft.
Length estimated at a hair under a hundred meters. That’s big. That’s bigger than a seagoing battleship, way bigger than the Seeker. Assuming whatever life form is aboard is about human size, the crew of that beast could easily be ten times the size of ours.
Even as numbers cascade through my thoughts, a realization overrides them: this is the bastard that destroyed the Mariner.
This is not what I expected for First Contact with an alien species. I toss the tablet to one side and get my rear to CNC as fast as I can.
Back in my Academy days there was only one course that ever discussed First Contact, and that, oddly enough (or maybe not so oddly), was a class in Humanities. The instructor, Professor Guss, devoted exactly one day to it.
The whole discussion was purely hypothetical, of course, because by that time we’d been exploring the volume of space around Sol system, and although we’d found worlds where various forms of vegetation flourished, we’d never found any kind of animal that could be considered even marginally intelligent. In fact, our scientists had never discovered anything much bigger than a large cockroach.
It had begun to sink in that there was no intelligent life anywhere in the stars, at least, not in the nearby stars. Our ships could achieve a top speed of about one light-year per day, which seems impressive until you realize that the Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be a hundred thousand light-years in diameter. That’s over 273 years. Not days—years.
That’s how our first class in First Contact began: with a discussion of how big space is. Being well-grounded in astronomy, us students knew that already, but our teacher, Professor Guss, reviewed it anyway. He was a tall man with ears that stuck out, and a big nose, but no one ever made fun of his appearance because he was smart as hell and a nice guy on top of it. We all liked him.
“So we’ve found nothing in our own solar system except for some microbes under the ice at Enceladus and Europa,” he said in the first lecture. “Nothing on Mars, not even fossils. Nothing on Venus, of course. Nothing on Titan.” He spread his hands. “Now, this is not to say that I believe that life on Earth is unique in the universe, or even the galaxy. We’ve just finished talking about how big space is. There could easily be a civilization elsewhere in the galaxy, but it could simply be too far away for us to ever discover it.”
“But the Drake Equation,” someone started to say.
Guss waved a hand and she subsided. “There are still too many variables in that for us to be able to make a reasonable guess,” he said. “Everyone knows what the Drake Equation is, I take it?”
I cast a glance around the lecture hall. If there was someone who didn’t know, he or she wasn’t admitting it.
Using a finger, he wrote the equation on the large screen floating beside him: N = R* x f(p) x n(e) x f(l) x f (i) x f(c) x L.
“Let’s take this apart,” he said. “N is equivalent to the number of civilizations in our galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.” He looked around at us. “Anyone?”
I raised my hand. “A given civilization might not be using electromagnetic means of communication,” I said.
Guss nodded. “Right, and that’s the first thing wrong with the equation.” He turned to the equation again. “R asterisk stands for the rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life. F modified by p is the fraction of those stars with planetary systems. Well, we know now that there are a huge number of planets out there. The lower case n with the e subscript stands for the number of planets per solar system with an environment suitable for life, and f l for the fraction of planets on which life actually appears. We have good numbers for all those parts of the equation, but from here on it really breaks down. The f (i) is the fraction of planets on which intelligent life emerges, and to date that number is exactly one: Earth. The next component is also equal to 1, because it stands for the fraction of civilizations that have developed a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. The last component describes how long such a civilization will continue to do so.” He shrugged. “The search for extraterrestrial life has been going on since before we became a spacefaring species. And yes, it was exciting to discover microbes, and later plants in other solar systems. That proved that life could and does arise on alien planets. But so far it seems as if we’re the only world on which intelligent life has developed.”
All of which led us to a rather enjoyable discussion of science fiction and possible life forms, but Guss cut it off before it went very far, because it was all purely speculative. What he wanted to talk about was how humanity would react if another intelligent species ever were discovered.
The consensus was that we’d wave hello, maybe put out some trinkets on a blanket if they were aboriginals, or go the Carl Sagan route with simple diagrams and so forth if they had developed a higher civilization.
And that was it.
Now, I knew that the Union had a number of contingency plans for contact with an advanced species, but most assumed that the aliens would be friendly. There were a few that assumed our new neighbors might be unfriendly, or very unfriendly. No one wanted to talk much about the latter two instances, in part because they weren’t considered to be realistic. An advanced spacefaring species, the reasoning went, would've gotten past the aggressive stage.
Yeah, right. All anyone had to do to explode that idea was to look at our own internecine disputes with the Outer Colonies. We hadn’t taken the lessons of our ruined planet very well to heart. The necessity of repairing its damaged environment after World War III led to the creation of the sort of benevolent “world state” envisioned b
y many. It had come about more or less out of necessity, but the Union wasn’t a government as much as it was a coordinated rescue operation.
Now that the restoration of Old Earth was almost complete, thanks to the resources sent home from the rest of the Union, the old plague of nationalism was making a resurgence. That was what the Union spent most of its time and resources combatting.
Because of that, they taught us in the Academy, was what led us to the pissing matches with the Outers that ballooned into the Schism. The Outers were the biggest threat to the Union’s stability, or at least that what the Union thought. Me, I wasn’t so sure, but they hand out the paychecks. I’m happy to be on their side. I love my job: it’s as simple as that.
But I never expected to be the guy on whose shoulders the burden of First Contact would rest.
* * *
As I hurry into CNC and drop into my command chair, I see a view of the alien on the main screen. There is a lot more detail visible. The craft isn’t smooth-skinned. It seems instead to be covered with a myriad small square plates or segments, almost like scales. There is a buzz of excited conversation around me as my officers converse among themselves.
“Okay,” I say, lifting a hand. “Belay the chatter, people. We have work to do. Stay on point.”
The talk dies away. I know what they think—it’s the same thing I think, that this ship destroyed the Mariner. But... we don’t know that, and until we do I am going to play this by the book.
“Dr. Lannigan,” I say.
He’s not in CNC, but I know he’s following the drama from the lab. “Sir,” he responds at once.
“Prepare sensor scan and telemetry reports and send them via emergency broadcast to Edoris Station. I want them on Admiral Flynn’s desk before I breathe ten more times.” I squint at the bogey on the main screen. It’s unmoving. It shows no sign it knows we’re here.