...and they are us Homecoming

by Patrick McClafferty

  “Of the fifteen Spetsnaz members, five survived, however, one is in critical condition with several spider bites. The rest are injured to a greater or lesser degree. Fortunately Doctor Sutherland and her team is aboard the Boston, and she has an anti-venom. Of the Seals, nine survived and all are injured, but none critically. Senior Chief Petty Officer Emilio López was one of those survivors, and that makes him ranking man in the Strike Team. One of the cats, Feng I believe, was bitten by a spider but is expected to make a complete recovery.”

  Zed held his head in his hands. “Shit. I hope you received some relevant information from that ship, LOLA. I’d really hate for all those people to have died in vain.”

  LOLA turned to face him, and her face was strangely hard. “Those people died because they acted like fools, Zed. Children with guns. Chief López managed to hold most of the Seal Team back when the Lieutenant went charging after the Russians. Lieutenant Delray’s performance reports indicated that he had a tendency toward unstable behavior when taunted. He was involved in both of the Bow Wave fights. Prior to that he was personally involved in the PNG incident in Berlin.”

  “But he was a Seal!” Zed exclaimed loudly.

  “Before that he was a man.” LOLA said quietly. “Under normal circumstances he would never have been accepted as a Seal in the first place, but with recruiting down and the number of missions up…” LOLA’s voice faded out.

  “I understand, LOLA.”

  “It’s not your fault, Zed. Don’t blame yourself.”

  Zed let out a sardonic chuckle. “I’m the top of the military food chain here, LOLA. As a president once said, ‘the buck stops here.’ Well, the buck stops with me. I recruited them, and I thought up the mission.” He turned away from the view of space and the returning frigate. “I’m going to go back to my room, take a shower and change, LOLA. After that I’ll be in the observatory.”

  The observatory was an anachronism on a ship like the Rose of the Dawn. A low dome thirty meters in diameter by eight meters high; the nearly impregnable glassite dome was invisible to the naked eye and was intended originally for celestial navigation, should the computer fail. Zed usually sat there and drank.

  “LOLA, could I have a bottle of wine please?”

  “I would caution you against drinking alone, but then you just wouldn’t listen.” The air sparkled and a bottle materialized on the side table, along with a single glass and the bottle opener. A moment later a small plate appeared containing sliced cheddar cheese and crackers.

  Zed rose from the couch. “Thank you LOLA.”

  “You’re welcome, Zed.” A figure shimmered into existence beside him. LOLA’s hair was now short and blonde, and she wore it in an attractive pixie cut. Her eyes were the color of amethyst, and her ears were pointed. She looked totally elfin, especially when you took the short green dress she was wearing into consideration.

  Zed took a bite of cheese and a sip of his wine. “You look very nice, LOLA.”

  “Thank you Zed.” The small form did a graceful pirouette before him, and LOLA’s face shone. “I’ve been mining Terran mythology again. What an active imagination you humans have.” Zed finished his wine in a single swallow, and refilled the glass. “That’s not the way to drink wine, Zed.” Her voice was a dark mutter.

  “Hush.” He smiled despite himself. LOLA had the bad habit of mothering. The door at the far end of the room hissed open, and Katherine stepped in. Her eyes were haunted, and filled with pain.

  “Is this a private party, or should I find my own place to drink?” She sounded tired, and Zed had to remind himself again that she was still a young and vulnerable woman.

  He waved to the side table, where a second glass materialized beside the bottle. Kat filled her glass and took a long drink before she sat down. “All the surviving Strike Team members are expected to live.” She said in a voice that barely registered as a whisper. “The severely injured Russian man… boy really.” She corrected herself. “He’s only eighteen. Anyway, he lost his right leg just below the hip from the spider bites. He will be in the regeneration tank for three months. The rest of the Team were just chewed up, to a greater or lesser degree.” She set down her empty glass, and LOLA replaced the empty bottle with a full one. “The Seals lost three men rescuing the fallen Russians. The other three followed Lieutenant Delray and were killed.” A tear crept down her cheek… and then another. Suddenly he had a weeping Katherine in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder.

  “You have company Zed.” LOLA sighed in a soft voice. Zed looked up to see an embarrassed Emilio López standing just inside the doorway. Zed discretely passed Kat his handkerchief. She gave him a grateful look before she started dabbing at her eyes.

  “How are you doing, Chief, and how are the troops?”

  Emilio pulled at the sling holding his left arm. “As well as can be expected, Fleet Captain.” He idly rubbed an angry red burn that ran across the right side of his face starting at his chin and consuming a part of his right ear.

  Zed frowned. “You get that from the Creednax?”

  Emilio looked at the floor. “From friendly fire, sir.”

 

 

 

 

 

  Emilio looked at Zed’s bottle of wine with a wistful expression. “Would you like a glass of wine, Emilio?”

  The man blinked. “What? Oh, no sir. I’m more a beer drinker myself.”

  A frosty stein appeared on the table next to the wine. “I believe that you were drinking this brand the other night, Chief.” LOLA injected with a playful sparkle in her eye.

  Emilio blinked again, registering the form of LOLA for the first time. “Ahhh, you’re LOLA?”

  She did a curtsey, and her cheeks dimpled “In the flesh, kind-of.”

  “But…”

  “LOLA can appear at certain locations about the boat. This is one.” Zed laughed. “And please when we are in social settings, call me Zed.”

  “If you’ll call me Emilio… sir.” The big former Seal grinned.

  “Done.” Zed stopped what he was about to say, and a far-away look stole over his face. “LOLA, please provide us a bottle of strong vodka and a glass.” The bottle appeared on the table and Dimitri appeared in the door to the observatory at the same moment.

  “Kapitain. I tender my resignation.” He said stiffly, staring straight ahead, his face bleak. “It was my fault that…”

  Zed held out a glass with two fingers of clear liquid in the bottom. “Drink!” He commanded. “Resignation not accepted.”

  Dimitri took the glass without asking, and when he tossed the contents down his throat Zed winced. Dimitri’s face turned red and his dark eyes bulged from their sockets. Zed could almost have sworn steam was escaping from his ears. “What dis???” The big Russian glared at the empty glass in his hand.

  “Balkan 176. It’s a 178 proof vodka imported from the Bulgaria.” Zed replied without expression. “It really shouldn’t be consumed straight.” Dimitri poured two more fingers of the deadly liquor into his glass. He glanced over, and with a wink passed the bottle to Emilio, who took a long pull at the bottle and a sip of his beer. A look of bliss stole over his face.

  “That was good.” Emilio’s voice was slightly hoarse.

  Zed was trying very hard not to smile. “Why don’t you two gentlemen take this bottle around to all of our Strike Team members? They could probably use a little bracer right about now.”

  “Da, is good idea.” Dimitri, with bottle in one hand and glass in the other turned for the door. “Coming Chief?”

  Emilio drained his beer. “Yup.” He fell in behind Dimitri and both
men weaved their way out of the observatory.

  Katherine took his arm. “That was well done, Zed.” She slipped her arm around his waist, and he smiled at the unexpectedly warm feeling that stole through him.

  “Just for curiosity sake, LOLA. What was the male to female ratio of the Strike Teams before and after the engagement?”

  “Before the engagement there were four Russian women in the Teams, along with six American women. One of the Russian women died and none of the American women.”

  “And on the ship in general?”

  “63 percent of the crew are women.” LOLA replied immediately.

  “That could lead to some interesting situations if this is a long voyage.”

  “Plans are on the table for the next structural committee meeting to discuss a nursery and then…” LOLA paused. “I’ve just made a disturbing discovery in the data I’m analyzing from the Creednax ship. The bridge is still manned, so perhaps we can meet in an auxiliary astrogation room.” Zed frowned. “It’s a bridge subroutine used primarily for astrogation, and very much like the bridge program itself.”

  They could have been on the bridge, almost. The astrogation room was an eight meter platform floating in space. Padded rails ran around the circumference. A small blinking dot appeared in the firmament before them.

  “This is where we are now.” The display and the dot shifted to the left, while another brighter dot slid from the right to stop in front of them. “This is the Dramul construction planet Callidus. Callidus specialized in Manufacturing, R&D, Weapons Development and Starship Design.” Lola raised her arms, and brought her hands together slowly. The display before them collapsed to a point where the dot that was the Rose appeared only a short distance from Callidus. To the upper right and at the very edge of the room another red dot appeared, with a red arrow heading straight to Callidus. “This is the location of the Creednax Task Force that launched the two scouts that arrived at Earth, and the corvette we destroyed. Creednax records indicate that the Task Force knows of Callidus, and intends to turn it to Creednax use. If that should happen we might as well plan on evacuating the galaxy to the Creednax. They will be unstoppable. As it is, while we managed to destroy the Creednax scout and corvette, the Task Force will be sending out other ships to look for their lost three, if only to verify they have been destroyed or not. We gained Earth some time. In a month or two the Creednax will launch other ships. These will not be as lightly armed as the scouts, and Earth will not survive the meeting.”

  Zed and Katherine stared at the vast depths of space and the small floating dots. “So…” Zed muttered thoughtfully. “We know exactly where Callidus is?”

  “Yes Zed we do, thanks to the Creednax data.”

  “And according to the map we’re closer than the Creednax, correct?”

  “Correct. If we left today we would arrive three weeks before the Creednax. Their Task Force is relatively slow.” Katherine was staring at him.

  “Soooo.” Zed mused. “Would it be possible to remove the data from the Callidus computers, and wipe them? With no computers to run the factory, the Creednax will be forced to abandon the world.”

  “That’s somewhat simplistic, Zed. The Creednax would simply reprogram the computer.” LOLA sounded smug.

  “And if we took out all the information we had time to remove,” Katherine suggested. “and then destroyed the central processor and power plant with nuclear scuttling charges, like the ones they tried to use on Thal’ark Station?” Kat was smiling, and both Zed and LOLA looked thoughtful.

  “The Creednax are consumers, and not creators.” LOLA said in a low voice. “They would strip the world of what they could and abandon or destroy it.” Zed nodded to Katherine.

  “Set course for Callidus, LOLA; fastest possible speed.” Kat was smiling. “Send another message pod to Cybele and inform her what’s going on. Should we be unsuccessful in retrieving the data or should the Creednax catch and destroy us, she will have to take steps.” Katherine turned to give Zed a level look. “I believe you once called it PLAN D for Dunkerque.” Her face was sad, and Zed wanted desperately to hold her again. “They say that the Large Magellanic Cloud is nice at this time of year.”

  Zed closed his eyes. “Tell Cybele that she has free reign to do what is necessary.”

  “Done.” LOLA whispered. “The pod has been launched.”

  Chapter Four

  CALLIDUS:

  It wasn’t until much later that Zed realized he’d just given an AI with almost unlimited power, total control. It was, however, the least of his worries. The newly reorganized thirteen man Strike Team, the fourteenth was still in the regeneration tanks, struggled with their bruised muscles and egos as they trained. The animosity the American and Russian teams had felt for each other had evaporated in the bloody firefight, and the men and women were now working well with each other, what was left of them. It had certainly been a costly lesson. Zed remembered a quote he’d heard as a young man. “Experience is the hardest teacher, because she gives the test first, and the lesson afterward.”

  Zed sat in his living room staring out at the expanse of space. The crew and bridge staff were busy preparing for their arrival at Callidus, but Zed was a Fleet Captain without a fleet.

  “What can you tell me about Callidus, LOLA?”

  He felt the couch stir as she sat beside him. LOLA’s hair was a bright robin’s egg blue and matched her eyes. Her short navy skirt rose well up over her knees. Zed blinked and looked away. “You’d better not let Kat catch you in here dressed like that. She’ll peel your electronic hide.”

  “She will have to catch me first.” LOLA gave him an impish smile. “Callidus is a good size planet, smaller than your Earth, roughly the same size as Mars. With a radius of about 3,390 kilometers or so, it was a planet rich in heavy metals. The Dramul Empire began mining the world back in the third age of the Xirant Dynasty, some 28,000 Terran years ago. Huge extracting machines began to strip the core of the planet of the heaviest and richest deposits. This continued for millennia. Finally the Grand Duke Kodure IV decided to make what remained of Callidus into the manufacturing center of the empire. What you have now is a world inside out. A huge concealed portal allows ships to enter the center of the world and dock either at the military shipyard or the commercial port. The remaining portion of the world is so thick and dense it creates its own microgravity, about a half of one Earth gravity, or about 4.897 m/s?.”

  “After this amount of time, won’t the magnetic seal on the entry have failed?”

  LOLA laughed. “Not THAT seal. It has a separate quantum power source that will last a half million years and a small fleet of self-repair robots just for the front door.” Her face sobered. “The other power plants will probably have been deactivated, and will require reinitiating.”

  “That means the AI will probably have to be reinitiated also, like you and like Cybele on Thal’ark Station.”

  “Probably.” LOLA’s voice was flat. “Do you have a suggestion?”

  “Let’s name her Athena, for obvious reasons.”

  LOLA nodded slowly. “The Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic warfare, mathematics, strength and strategy. She’s a war goddess. It’s a good choice, Zed. We’ll need those qualities if we’re going to survive this one. I’ll begin putting the personality matrix together today.” She gave him a level look. “Since I’ll be using my own persona as a base, is there anything you wish me to… leave out?”

  Zed returned the long look. “No LOLA. Let’s stick with your unmodified matrix. The independence will give each of your ‘sisters’ a unique personality of her own.”

  LOLA blinked in surprise. “I didn’t expect that. Thank you Zed.” The corners of her mouth rose and her eyes began to sparkle. “Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, want to mess around?” Zed turned scarlet, and LOLA let out a slightly wicked laugh. “Oh boy!! I sure got you that time.” She stood from the couch, stretching he
r arms over her head and her skirt rose to astronomical heights. She looked over her shoulder at the blushing human and grinned.

  “You, my dear, have a very attractive derriere.” Zed managed to get out without tripping over his own tongue. It was LOLA’s turn to blush, and in a sparkle she was gone.

  ~~~

  Katherine looked cool and composed as she gripped the bridge railing. Only her white knuckles gave her tension away, and that was only to Zed. “Launch the flight of stealth scouts and the Frigate Boston.” Below them six small green arrows appeared in a vee formation, moving rapidly away from the ship, followed a little more slowly by the frigate. Soon even the arrows had disappeared. “How soon until Callidus is within sensor range?”

  “An hour, Captain, at this speed.”

  Kat nodded sharply. “I hate waiting.” She turned to the bridge crew. “If you need to take a break do it now. We might be too busy later.” Lucy Hollingberry gave her a little smile before she vanished. Lucy’s svelt blond-haired image was the total opposite of her corporeal, very pregnant self.

  “Did you hear that Randy Smythe finally proposed to Lucy?” Zed commented with a dry chuckle.

  “It’s about time.” Kat quipped back. “I thought that Lucy was going to have to do the proposing herself.” Her head turned. “And speaking of proposing… We were interrupted the other night.”

  “I, ahhh…” Zed began, fumbling.

  “I hate to interrupt you Captain, but initial reports are coming in from the scout ships you sent out.”

  Katherine glared at the image that stood on Zed’s other side. “You’re always there to protect Zed, aren’t you?” There was an edge to Kat’s low voice.

  “It is one of my primary functions.” LOLA replied mater-of-factly.

  “That’s a nice sentiment but…”

  “Excuse me, Captain, but I think you misunderstand. Upon my reactivation eighteen months ago Zed, as the Captain of the 7651 Rose of the Dawn, became my prime and only operator. Dramul engineers were terrified of an AI acting without any human guidance, so they designed an algorithm to prevent that. Zed is my human control. Since it is a base algorithm, that control has also been replicated in Cybele, and will be replicated in the upcoming AI named Athena.” Zed and Katherine stared at the figure of LOLA, who grinned and gave Zed a wink. “So you see Zed and Katherine, it really doesn’t matter that you gave Cybele the authority to do whatever it takes to save your race. In the end all you have to do is say ‘no.’”