by Garry Ocean
Immediately in front of him in the air there appeared ten holograms of the candidates randomly selected by the on-board computer. John pointed to the first one, and the hologram zoomed to the candidate’s life size. It was quite a good-looking woman with an upturned nose and a full head of red hair.
“Anne-Marie Pfeifer,” he read the caption. “Let’s see. Date of birth, so, a department mechanic,” John snapped his fingers, “Next!”
He quickly called out each hologram, looked at each one for a couple of seconds, then sent them back and called the next one.
“Ops,” his hand froze mid-air, “What do we have here?”
A young guy smiled at him broadly, showing all his white teeth. He was a spitting image of John’s childhood friend Romka Sobolev.
“This can’t be!” still not believing his eyes, John started to read: Nick Sobolev, a cadet of the Military Space Academy (MSA), interning at…, assigned to…”
John Rolls sat back in his chair. This young block, a son of Roman Sobolev, with whom they graduated together from the pilot academy, and later MSA, then were the first to have infiltrated the highest levels of the Military Headquarters of the rebellion army of Gray-Haired Cook on the planet of Aldebaran. After that, Sobolev was assigned to the Promised Land and they parted their ways. At first, they continued to exchange messages, but then it happened less and less often. And how could they keep in touch, when you spend years living undercover at a backward planet where the locals, instead of trying to improve their lives together and to invent something that could be useful for their society, are chasing each other with gunpowder weapons, and your zero-communication transmitter, the only channel connecting you with the Earth, is hidden in a camouflaged caches in a hard-to-reach cave of the Archipelago.
“Here he is, the ideal candidate!” John Rolls smiled at his own memories. “All right, chap, if you inherited at least half of your father’s recklessness and wits, then…” his face suddenly became cross, the smile disappeared.
John Rolls, known as Wild Boar, also known as the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Envoy of the Earth Control Committee Chair, realized that if something went wrong he would never be able to forgive himself and he would have to personally deliver the grave news to his old friend.
********
Not far from the lone black hole hiding in the Garpius constellation, in complete darkness, a hardly noticeable light flashed and immediately went out. The transmission probe existed only for several nanoseconds before the gravitational tentacles of the black hole pulled it into its event horizon. However, this short moment was enough for the packaged signal to go into the zero-space. The second phase of the Trojan Horse operation started.
Chapter 1
Nick bolted in his bed, frantically trying to understand where he was and where the annoying videophone buzz was coming from. Finally, on the third try, he managed to touch the sensor panel. The screen stayed dark, but a mechanical female voice pronounced, “Intern Nick Sobolev is to report to the command post at 7:15 am internal time for further instructions. Over.”
Nick glanced at the clock glowing in the cabin’s dark. It was 6:45 am. His sleepy mind tried to cling to the remnants of his pleasant dreams, but they were elusive and fading, collapsing into disconnected puzzle pieces.
“Damn it!” Nick rubbed his face, trying to shake off the sleep. “A whole three hours before I must report for duty! What’s the rush?”
He wanted to add something else, but then he remembered an ever suspicious and disapproving look of the Chief, as everyone called the base commander behind his back, and dragged himself out of the bed and into the ionic shower.
“Patience, my friend, you only have to last two more weeks until your leave,” Nick encouraged himself and his heart was jumping for joy. “I will have all my fun then!”
As an intern of the courier service, he was entitled to a whole 30 Earth days of an annual leave. Nick had already planned in advance every day of his long-awaited vacation almost by the hour. First and foremost, he of course will go to Earth, to visit with his parents and grandma. His grandmother was a prominent exobiologist, well known in the scientific circles. When she was younger, she managed to have worked in many different corners of the inhabited Space, studying and exploring various out-of-earth life forms, astonishing in their diversity. Now, however, she just celebrated ten years of heading the Altai National Forest and from time to time she was participating in various scientific conferences and symposia. By now, it has become a family tradition that her house, located on the Teletsk lake’s picturesque shore, has become the place for all family gatherings. The long-standing and enjoyable tradition dictated that all feasts took place on the large summer terrace with a beautiful view of the Korbu mountain chain.
Nick’s mother was an OBGYN and worked at the Eastern Asian Center for Human Reproduction. She did not like space flights. One could count on fingers the number of times when father talked her into taking a vacation anywhere beyond the Earth. Father’s work was all about frequent and often prolonged business trips to other inhabited planets. His service at the Galactic Emergency and Rescue Department took a lot of his time, and this why everyone valued those rare moments when the whole family could gather together.
“Don’t forget to visit the Teacher. Sergei Pavlovich will be happy,” Nick thought and felt how he was turning red with embarrassment. He was the only one in their entire class who forgot to congratulate the Teacher on his anniversary. And he had remembered about it beforehand, even wrote a short poem. Recorded it on a pneumo-crystal from the Ghost planet, which had been very difficult to obtain from his friends in the geo-intelligence unit. He put it next to the letters to be sent through the zero-mail and forgot, as if it were never there. Good thing his former classmates arranged for a zero-videocall next day and he managed to read the poem. There was a line there saying, “We love you, remember and never forget you,” to which Lenka Sinitsyna, naturally, could not resist the temptation to note, in her ever-sarcastic tone, that for someone working as a military courier, it would not be unusual to be late with the good wishes and congratulations by a whole month.
And then they will go to Excelsior as one tight group. This planet had been discovered a century ago and was still the most favored place for tourists from all over the inhabited space. On the ESI classification,1 is was of a rare subgroup M and was perfectly suitable for life. However, on the Gauss PHI scale2 it did not even get one point.
Despite the fact that Excelsior was not much younger than the Earth, and by the cosmic standards they were practically Irish twins, half a billion years ago the evolution of the planet’s biological life stopped at the simplest microorganisms. The single-celled formed gigantic colonies of algae and drifted in the vast ocean covering more than 90 per cent of the planet’s surface. The first explorers immediately named the ocean Sargasso, similar to the Earth’s Sargasso Sea.
Exobiologists were surprised by the fact that the simplest organisms’ colonies tried to stay away from the land and never approached the shore. Why did the life on the Excelsior never developed further and come out to the shore, like it happened on the Earth? This question had been puzzling the best of the Earth’s scientific minds for over a hundred years now.
Not to destroy the Excelsior’s unique ecosystem, but at the same time to “green up” its shores a little bit, people have planted along the coast a wide lane of pseudo trees and brush reminding of the tropical palm trees and mango orchards. When it was raining, the trees produced the pleasant aroma of the fresh green, blossomed two times a year and even bore fruit. At the same time, there was nothing organic about them.
The Excelsior’s mild and even climate, the purest ocean and complete absence of any form of life hostile to humans attracted droves of tourists preferring a relaxing and peaceful vacation. However, everything changed several years ago when the Excelsior was used for the first inter-planetary festival of holographic shows.
Last time Nick and his frie
nds did not manage to get there. The number of tickets was limited, and there were too many of those who wanted to attend from the entire Galaxy. Paul, his childhood friend, was in luck. He managed to peak at least at a part of the show, even though from the farthest possible orbit. He was interning at the Orion passenger cruise ship that was one of the many ships delivering tourists to Excelsior. As he told, it was indeed a fiery and amazing show and not even the most advanced holo-TV could render its atmosphere. “He who was not there did not live a life!” Paul would say dramatically to end his story about the show.
Honestly, it was interesting to listen to him, even though every time Paul told the story its events were enriched with new details and Nick could not tell anymore what was true and what was the result of his friend’s overactive imagination. In short, as they say, it is better to see something once with one’s own eyes than to hear about it a million times.
This year, the show promised to be even more interesting, and, as rumor had it, more extreme. The name of Renee Boitye, the show director and producer, alone said plenty. What he was going to show this time was kept in strict secret. And the rumors that seemingly accidentally got into the zero-network from time to time only stimulated the show craze.
Just as soon as Paul discovered in the depths of zero-network the next sensational detail of the upcoming show, he always immediately shared it with his friends, in his habitual humorous manner. For example, in his last message he wrote, “According to the reliable sources wishing to remain anonymous, a special effects team plans to arrange for a comet bombardment of the Excelsior with the subsequent fall of a large meteor. Obviously, with all accompanying consequences. They have also leaked the name of the upcoming show, ‘Planet in Flames’.”
Naturally, one could not miss a show like this. Especially because Sergei Pavlovich managed, through some miracle, to get 30 tickets, exactly by the number of his graduates. And not to some outer orbit, but to the very epicenter of the eagerly anticipated events.
Hotel Gorbovsky, where Sergei Pavlovich reserved for this students fifteen luxury rooms, was located on the Grand Mountain Chain, at its highest point of 5,200 meters. The Grand Mountain Chain was the only rock mass on the planet separating the planet’s ocean and desert.
As one could guess, Hotel Gorbovsky, located at over five kilometers above the sea line, was the best place to observe the special effects of the planetary scale. “If we were destined to ‘die’ at least we will not miss the most interesting part!” summarized Paul everyone’s opinion.
To get this number of tickets to one of the best hotels was short of miracle. Perhaps it helped that the chief of the security service on Excelsior was Konstantin Klimov, one of Sergei Pavlovich’s students. But every miracle must have a mystery behind it. This is why no one really asked any questions, and even if they did, the teacher was playing the humble at a loss.
To be completely honest, there was another reason making him long for this trip: Asya aka Nefertiti, an ace student, and, which is even more important, the most beautiful girl of their class. Nick noticed that she was quite receptive to his non-imposing signs of attention, but he could probably do better in a romantic setting.
An unexpected videophone buzz jolted him back to reality. “Coming,” he mumbled, straightening his uniform. After giving himself another critical look in the mirror, he briskly left the cabin.
This is the military stardust they talk about so much. Although, of course the courier service he was assigned to could hardly be called military. And the navy itself has become obsolete a long time ago.
The Earth's Commonwealth had no enemies (Nick allowed himself to smile at the thought). The colonies spread out in all the inhabited parts of the Universe were ruled by the World Council, deriving power from the local self-governing bodies. As for the other civilizations encountered by humans, currently only four humanoid races were known. They were quite behind in their development from the Commonwealth. Only the Aldebaranians, named so by humans due to their proximity to the Aldebaran star system in the Tauras constellation, began to make the first steps to break through their own atmosphere.
It has been long enough that the Earth established official diplomatic relations with all discovered civilizations. Many of the Earth's specialists, including Nick's father, Roman Sobolev, were working on those planets. The non-humanoid civilizations continued to live in their own closed worlds. They expressed no intent to expand their influence beyond their home planets. As for the contact with them, there were many open questions here. As far as Nick knew, the way the non-humanoids perceived reality was very different from the perception of reality by an average Earth resident. On top of that, there were heated debates in the academic community about their sentience. This is why the so-called contact was in the domain of a very narrow circle of experts.
From time to time, the World Council raised the question of complete dissolution of the Military Space Fleet and the Military Space Academy. But the final decision has never been reached. Perhaps, the traditions were still strong, and, to be completely honest, the MSA produced the best space-navigating specialists. Not to mention that more than two-thirds of the Galactic Emergency Department (GED) staff was the MSA graduates.
About fifty years ago it was decided to transform the Military Space Fleet into a special division under the GED, where it has remained until now. GED is composed of all the major space bases including the one where Nick was interning now, and Rapid Deployment Units. If a sector in their zone of responsibility had an emergency or an unforeseen situation, the pilots were working side by side with the GED personnel.
The pneumo-elevator carefully embraced him and in a second gently pushed Nick into the spacious reception of the commander cabin. There were already two people there: Emil, a tall blond man wearing a uniform that was a little too short for him and a short man named Paulo. As always, they were arguing about something. Now, it seemed, each of them tried to prove that his courier shuttle was better than the other’s. This pair never parted their ways and always battled each other with words. In contrast to those who heard their verbal fights, they never seemed to be tired of them.
“Your Screw is an old-d-die, so l-last cent-t-tury,” slightly stuttering, the tall one was trying to impress onto his counterpart. “Fifty parsec3 in one zero-leap is n-n-nothing. Just like walking. My Arrow is a d-d-different beast: 100 parsec in one l-l-leap and no more than 24 hours to charge!”
“Well, really depending on the fluctuation there, you can get stuck for a whole week,” the belligerent shorty fired back. “While my Screw can suck the energy even in a dust nebula, like a good vac.”
“Oh yeah, t-t-tall tales, t-t-tell me it can charge from a b-b-black hole as well!”
Nick smiled, this pair reminded him of his favorite childhood cartoon characters.
“Is Chief in his office?” he finally decided to break through the conversation of the two inseparable friends. “I have a 7:15.”
“Yeah,” visibly unwilling to interrupt his argument, Emil answered. “But there’s some big shot there.”
“We’ve been waiting for him since 6 ourselves,” Paulo confirmed, and without any transition continued talking with the tall one, “Did you hear about the shuttle they brought to our reserve dock yesterday?”
“Yeah, which one?” Emil broke into laughter, tilting his head to the back in a funny way. “Some refurbished j-j-junk again? I am surprised at Ovsyannikov’s p-p-patience, every launch you have t-t-turns into a disaster!”
“A Valkyrie!” the shorty said solemnly.
“Wow,” Nick thought to himself. The Valkyrie was a cutting-edge light shuttle that could leap as far as the powerful Class A starships designed to explore the Deep Space. As far as he knew, the Valkyries were produced in a limited number, five or seven, and had a leap radius of 500 parsecs. This was about all Nick knew about the Valkyrie. “I wonder how Chief managed to get one?”
“No kid-d-ding!” wide-eyed Emil looked like a deepwate
r fish out of the sea. “You must have c-c-confused it for something!”
“You are c-c-confused yourself,” the seemingly offended shorty mocked his friend. “It’s you who cannot tell the wave emitter from the force one!”
“I wonder who will be the lucky one to take it for a ride?” Emil said dreamingly, ignoring his friend’s last remark.
“Definitely not you,” Paulo assured him and for some reason winked at Nick.
“And why is that? In contrast to others, I have almost f-f-five thousand solo flights…”
“You simply won’t fit it, old-d-die,” the shorty mocked Emil and laughed at his own joke.
Right at that moment, the door opened to the side with a quiet hiss and Nick heard the familiar Chief's baritone talking with another subdued voice.
“And where, my dear friend, will I find so many professionals for you here? Just as soon as an intern becomes more or less a good pilot, someone immediately snatches him from us, including your fine organization.”
“Well, Gleb, good professionals are in short supply at all times, and you seem to have the ability to churn them out: your yesterday’s intern becomes a first-class pilot today. And just how do you manage to prepare them so quickly?”
“All right Rudolf, I see you are still good in sweetening a bitter medicine,” Chief mumbled amicably. “As for your request, consider the issue settled. But I still can’t understand, why it was he who got selected? If it’s not a secret, of course…”
“And what if I tell you this wasn’t my decision?” the unfamiliar voice said after a pause.
“Is that so?” the Chief was obviously surprised. “Then I have no more questions.”