Silver Enigma

by Rock Whitehouse

  Silver Enigma

  An ISCFleet Novel

  The first book

  in the

  Preeminent War

  Series

  Rock Whitehouse

  Copyright (c) 2018 by Rock Whitehouse

  Published by BOHICASquared, LLC

  www.iscfleet.com

  www.rock-whitehouse.com

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission.

  ISBN: 978-1-7327666-0-0 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-7327666-1-7 (e-book)

  Cover by Damonza (www.damonza.com)

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any similarity to actual persons living,

  or dead,

  or yet to be born,

  or any actual event,

  past, present, or future,

  is either pure coincidence

  or blind dumb luck.

  Take your pick.

  With gratitude

  for those who stand the watch

  in the real world,

  whether near or far,

  in the heat, the cold, the dark, the depths.

  And for those who await their return,

  constrained to love them from afar.

  Prologue

  War isn't usually a surprise. Governments argue, diplomats waffle, armies prepare. But you know it might happen. After all, war is really just politics with the gloves off, so, there's usually a lot of shouting and sweating and swearing before the shooting starts.

  Technology, on the other hand, does sometimes leap instantaneously from a flash of intuitive insight, pushing itself irresistibly upon society. Such was Randy Forstmann's accidental discovery of the faster-than-light (FTL) space drive in 2055. In his lifetime, as in the lifetime of men like the Wright Brothers or Henry Ford, he saw his inspiration move from small engineering experiments to full-blown realization. For Forstmann, his choice to never reveal how 'The Drive' worked but instead have Forstmann Propulsion Incorporated (FPI) build and operate each and every system would also mean progress from modest means to wealth beyond easy comprehension.

  The Drive created economically viable travel throughout the solar system and the nearby stars. Asteroid mining and in-space manufacturing became not just conceivable but highly profitable. The companies sponsoring the mining fleets, organized as the International Space Council (ISC), called on their governments to create a navy capable of protecting the new trade routes their valuable assets were now traveling. The ISC member countries established the Fleet by treaty in 2061.

  Exploration with the Forstmann Drive near the star 40 Eridani A brought us into contact with an alien race who call themselves the Inori, meaning, the people of their god, Ino. Their world Inor is a beautiful, warm, quiet, almost perfect planet. Inori culture reflects their home, and they are peaceful, friendly, and industrious, if very different from humans. There are three sexes of Inori, two of which contribute genetic material. The third, called the Chosen, provides the environment for the embryos to develop. They consider bisexual beings to be inferior, which was a significant obstacle to early relations with humans. The tangible presence of Ino pervades the lives of the Inori. For them, Ino is everywhere and part of everything they see, touch, or taste.

  But if we look past their alien physiology and culture, the Inori are a rational and thoughtful people. They are hospitable almost to a fault, often straining to provide small comforts to visitors. The Inori themselves prefer live, cold meals direct from their lakes and oceans. The concept of eating plants is entirely foreign to them.

  But, these are all small differences between friends, and the Inori have been as open and welcoming as anyone could possibly hope. The relationship has been profitable in many ways to both sides, and each species respects and values the other.

  This pretty place, ironically, is where the enemy came dispensing death and destruction.

  October 2076

  Space Fleet University

  US Campus

  Friday, October 2, 2076, 1740 EDT

  Senior Cadet Carol Hansen stood very still, crying, staring out the window. David's heart stung when he caught sight of her as he left the Navigation Lab on his way home. Rick again, he thought as he approached her. Saying nothing, he stopped and stood next to her in front of the full-height windows that helped light up the long brick halls of the University. She closed her eyes after a moment, then spoke without turning to David.

  "It's just so hard sometimes..." she said, not quite a whisper.

  "It doesn't have to be." He spoke the words evenly enough, but inside he was furious over Rick Court's lousy treatment of her. This was one of those times he wished he could tell her how much he cared for her himself.

  "I know," she said quietly, " But..." the words trailed off in a combination of pain, frustration, and resignation. But I care about him she meant to say. David silently nodded his understanding. He'd see this scene before, many times. He felt intensely connected to her, a feeling that went beyond desire, beyond any need to possess. As intense as that feeling was, in this moment, he held his silence. In this place and time, he decided the most loving thing he could do for her was to be her closest ally, her best friend, to literally stand with her. Not much later, he would regret letting this opportunity pass, but in truth what he did was just who he was, and he could not, at that moment, have done otherwise.

  Rick Court had his issues, for sure, not least of which was a shitty childhood with a single father for whom 'bastard' would be praise by faint damnation. David knew Carol thought she could help him, could be good for him. Whether Court could possibly be good for her was an entirely different question.

  David stood with her for what felt like a very long time. In reality, it was only a few minutes. Outside the tall and broad windows just in front of them, a robotic mower was moving silently left and right, trimming again the already-neat lawn. The fall colors were vivid in the trees in the distance, and behind them, the sky in the west was a heroic mixture of blue, purple, gold and pink. Dark clouds framed in gold leaf moved across the sky, morphing moment to moment as if something were alive in them. David and Carol were silent. She didn't sob, the tears just flowed down her cheeks. As she turned to say something to David a door slammed and Court came strutting down the hall.

  "Carol! Let's GO!" he yelled at her.

  Carol looked at David, meeting his eye for less than a second, then smiled slightly, and turned to follow Rick out of the building, wiping her tears as she went. David didn't move at first. He remained at the window alone, trying to fix in his memory the fine details of her face; her shoulder-length dark hair, her brown eyes, the curve of her nose and chin, the few scattered freckles that punctuated her fair complexion. She was a beautiful woman now, not at all the girl of eighteen she was when he had met her the first day of freshman year. Three years plus of training had trimmed all of them down in some ways and built them up in others, but with Carol, there was just a hint of softness that reflected the woman beneath the strength. He imagined he could still smell her fragrance beside him, almost as if she had left an aura behind.

  Then, at last, the emotion drained away and the moment faded back to normal, the electric tension so palpable just minutes before now dissipated.

  He moved down the long dark hall, through the massive double-doors and out of the university. The air outside was crisp, with that flavor of autumn David loved. He took his time walking to the transport station, allowing himself time to decompress from the encounter by the window.

  By the time he was pressing the button for the elevator down to the subterranean tube system, he'd reconciled himself to his choices. It was the right thing to do, he knew. Meantime, Monday would start
a week of exams, and he had plenty of work ahead of him to get ready.

  January 2078

  ISC Fleet Destroyer Liberty

  In orbit above Inor (40 Eridani A (b))

  Saturday, January 15, 2078, 0700 UTC

  Ensign Carol Hansen flopped into her preferred spot in the last row in the shuttle headed down to Inoria. The gray faux leather seat was firm but comfortable. The five-point safety harness was a different story. She pulled it down from her shoulders and snapped it together at her waist as usual, and as usual when the harness's servo motors auto-adjusted to her it felt a little too much like an over-confident second date when she was younger. As she squirmed slightly in response to the harness, she pulled the Fleet Guide to Inoria out of the left thigh pocket of her slate-gray uniform and began to read.

  The windowless, narrow spacecraft began to fill with other crew members headed down to visit the planet's only large city. The shuttle's seats were four-across, with an aisle down the middle. The small talk among the passengers sounded strangely muted in the small space of padded seats and well-insulated bulkheads. Her Fleet University classmate Ensign Marty Baker squeezed through the crowd and sat down across the aisle from her. Carol looked up from the Guide.

  "Good morning…Marty." For more than three years that had been her friend David's spot. As the memory flashed to mind, it made her reflexively look to her right, seeing an empty seat where Rick would have been back in those same years. But Rick was, thankfully, elsewhere.

  Baker didn't miss the momentary delay in her voice. He held her eye for just a second before responding.

  "Morning, Carol."

  She looked up as a tall, thin, balding man with large glasses and an oversized nose came down the aisle. Senior Lieutenant Rich Evans, Liberty's Intelligence Officer, nodded to Carol as he sat down a row ahead of Marty. She had spoken to Evans several times recently as part of her duties leading ship visits for the Inori. She found him smart, witty in his own Kiwi way, and as respectful of subordinates as he was of superiors. She instinctively liked and respected him in return.

  "G’ morning Hansen! Finally getting downstairs?" he asked, pulling down on his own seat harness.

  "Yes, Lieutenant. Captain says no ship tours for the Inori on Saturday, so I'm taking the day off." The ship visits had been a pleasant experience for everyone and Carol seemed particularly adept at relating to the visitors.

  "So, you doing the tour?" Evans asked, seeing the Fleet Guide in her hand.

  "Yes," she answered, pointing to Baker. "Marty's tagging along for comic relief."

  "Excellent! You both deserve a bit of a break."

  "What about you, sir?"

  He smiled broadly, his blue eyes lighting up behind the large lenses.

  "Carter and I are headed up north into the countryside. Small tour - supposed to be very unique up there."

  In a few minutes the shuttle's large square split hatch swung closed with a distinct thump. Once the shuttle moved into the ShuttleLock for launch, they heard a couple clicks and felt one heavy push and they were heading down to the surface.

  An hour later the hatch swung open again and 40 Eridani A, which the Inori call "Rorina," flooded the passenger compartment with the warm light of dawn. The usual disembarking small talk quieted as they filed out and met the requisite Inori greeting detail. Nine two-meter tall Inori, with their smooth, hairless, sand-colored skin and their large, impenetrable black eyes, greeted each visitor in turn. They shook hands awkwardly, with both forelimbs, each human hand disappearing inside the Inoris' large, smooth palms, which have a long opposing digit and five webbed fingers. The Inori were similar to humans in overall design, bipedal with two arms, and minimal neck. The Inori were unclothed, with no visible sex organs or waste elimination structures.

  Once clear of the line, as Carol retrieved the guide map from her pocket, she saw Evans and Carter jump into a waiting vehicle — an open-sided beat-up thing that looked vaguely Jeep-ish — and pull away from the landing area. Looking around as she unfolded the map, she could see that the shuttle pad sat on a small hill at the eastern edge of the city. To her left she saw only a few structures in the mostly open, rural countryside. The city rose quickly to her right. Ahead of her she saw the large bay beside which Inoria stood, the tall enclosing mountains split by the narrow mouth just visible in the hazy distance. The map in the Fleet Guide reflected Inori street design: all oblique angles and complex intersections. No right angles, ever. The pattern reminded her of the folded-paper snowflakes she had made as a child. Marty caught up with her, looking over her shoulder at the map.

  "Remember paper snowflakes?"

  "Yeah, doesn't look much like Omaha," he observed, one eyebrow up. Marty had known Carol only slightly at the University. but they had become better acquainted as shipmates. While he liked and respected her, his role was very much that of a sidekick. He knew it, he enjoyed it, and he wanted nothing more from her. His heart would find its home elsewhere someday, he knew.

  Carol had planned to walk the city alone, but at dinner last night Marty had invited himself along, and now that he was here she was glad for the company. They started roughly southwest, towards the first site on the tour. It was good to be walking real ground and breathing real air, even if it wasn't home. The crushed stone Inori pavement crunched pleasantly under their Fleet-issue nonskid shoes, and they liked the solid, natural feel of it.

  "So, Carol, if this is your first time here, what's been keeping you upstairs?" As he spoke Marty's eye followed an attractive Warrant Officer as she passed by in a group going in the opposite direction. Carol pulled him back around by the arm.

  "Roskov asked me to be available for the Inori visits, and anyway I wanted time to study for the L-T exam."

  Now re-focused on Carol, Marty replied "You're too dedicated, Hansen. You're a bad example for the rest of us."

  "Thanks! And stop ogling Long."

  "I wasn't ogling her," he said defensively, "I was noticing her."

  Carol gave him a smile and a small shove and they continued on to the first site, the Inori Foundations Museum.

  The star was full up by now, fueling a warm, cloudless day, and the taller buildings glowed with reflected light and the subtle colors of the masonry. The Inori built with a material that resembled stucco but was harder and smoother. The iridescent flecks in it reflected a variety of colors, depending on the angle of the star's light from the observer. As Carol and Marty moved along, buildings changed smoothly from red to blue to purple, each one emphasizing a different shade at any given moment. The Inori weren't much for other colors on the outside of buildings, but the windows, six-sided of course, looked much like human stained glass with bright, vibrant hues and lit from within. Carol was gradually aware that she was squinting, her eyes naturally resisting daylight unlike what they were designed to handle.

  "Got your shades?" she asked Marty as she pulled hers from the zipper pocket on her right sleeve.

  "Yup!" he replied as he dramatically produced his own Inor-specific sunglasses and put them on.

  "Much better!" he said with relief.

  "Yeah, it's weird how this light gets to your eyes, it doesn't feel that bright at first."

  As they walked the tour they found themselves enthralled with the city, and began to understand at a visceral level what others had tried to describe. It was an ethereal, ephemeral experience; the colors constantly changing around them, reflecting both the complexity of the city's layout and the shapes of the buildings themselves. As they went along one moment of beauty would smoothly morph into another; the same, but different. The Inori Council building was Carol's favorite, just three stories tall but quite wide, and nine-sided. Nine was a recurring theme in the city, perhaps even more than three or six.

  They walked the first half of the published tour in an hour and a half. It conveniently ended at a small tourist café. The Inori had adopted tea but could not tolerate coffee. There was a small selection of baked goods for their frequent hum
an customers. Marty found two surprisingly comfortable Inori wicker-something chairs near the back wall of the café. They rested their feet and drank properly brewed tea with fresh English biscuits as they talked quietly about the city.

  Then their NetLinks went off. Marty looked in surprise at his wrist and then at Carol.

  "Combat Recall?"

  A heavy rhythmic vibration came through the floor, some distance away, but clearly getting closer. Carol beat Marty out the door by just a step as the deafening sound caught up with the muffled rumbling in the ground. They looked towards the noise and saw debris rising into the air in the distance.

  "Oh, shit!" Marty said, fear sneaking into his voice.

  Carol quickly turned back northeast and they started running toward the shuttle landing area. They made a few dozen strides, Carol a couple meters ahead, when they heard a new sound very close behind them, a shower of something moving very fast and smacking the stone pavement. As the sound came closer, running ahead of the heavier vibration, she felt more than saw something strike very close to her, throwing up stones, and she heard a wet crunch just behind her followed by Marty's cry of pain.

  She stopped and turned around as he was falling to the pavement, blood flowing in a red flood from a gash that stretched from his collarbone to his thigh. She ran back to kneel at his side only to see the color draining from his face, the life fading from his eyes as he looked up at her. Carol held his gaze as he slipped away until there was nothing more to hold. Fighting back rising tears, Carol looked to her right and saw a line of holes leading up to and past Marty's mangled remains.

  "Lazy Dogs?" she asked herself aloud, looking again at the trail in the street and recalling the mid-twentieth century anti-personnel darts. The weapon had laid Marty wide open, nearly cleaving off his right leg mid-thigh. Further along to her left, she could see the line led to two Inori, bent over another flailing in pain. The flails faded quickly as the helpless victim's life drained away.