Silver Enigma

by Rock Whitehouse

David nodded acknowledgment of what she said and turned to leave.

  "Wait, Lieutenant! I have something for you and Lieutenant Hansen from the boss."

  She passed over a small envelope. Carol took it and ripped it open. Her face brightened with surprise as she read it.

  "We're invited to a party at the Admiral's home, a cookout, today at six."

  Kelly was nodding enthusiastically. She already knew all about it.

  Powell wasn't enthusiastic at first. "I don't know, Carol, I mean, I just got here."

  But as he looked at Carol, she was clearly excited about the idea.

  "Really, both of you, you should come. There's nothing like a party at the Harris' house," Kelly was shamelessly pushing, and having fun with it. Harris had told her to encourage them as much as she could, but truthfully, she really wanted them to come.

  "Oh?" David asked.

  "Oh yes, Lieutenant. Meredith, that is, Mrs. Harris, is a fantastic hostess. All of Intel and Plans will be there."

  "Really"

  "Oh sure, Captain Collins and the Harris's are very close. Old friends, from what I understand. We have some kind of gathering about once a month."

  Carol was now giving him a look he had not seen for a couple years.

  "OK, so what should we bring?" he asked, surrendering. Carol waved the card.

  "Card says if you have a specific beverage you want, feel free to bring it. Otherwise, just come."

  David turned back to Kelly.

  "Ms. Peterson--" he started to ask.

  "Kelly"

  "Ok, Kelly, what does Mrs. Harris drink?"

  "Norton. It's a historic Virginia red. She absolutely loves the stuff."

  "Where can I get it?"

  "Exchange has it."

  "Expensive?"

  "Not bad, the more expensive ones really are better, but don't pay more than $75."

  "OK, then. Advise the good Admiral that we will be happy to accept his kind invitation." They turned to leave when David spun back around. "Wait - what's the dress code?"

  Carol held up the card.

  "Civilian picnic casual."

  "Say what?"

  "Polos and shorts. Or, whatever. Get with the program, Powell."

  They left the HQ and walked to the exchange. They could have called for a car, but both of them were happy to be out in the open air again and in no hurry to be anywhere but together. They bought the Norton for Meredith and David picked up some clothes for the picnic since all he had on hand were sweatshirts and jeans. They had a light lunch at the officers' club - in anticipation of the cookout later - and then got David checked in at the BOQ. Carol already had a room since she would be on the surface for several more weeks.

  They walked the post for a couple hours, glad now in the early afternoon for the occasional shade of real trees. They sat a few times on benches or steps of buildings, or whatever hunk of grass was handy, talking quietly about Liberty, Inor, and Sigma. And, of course, Beta Hydri. There were details they hadn't been able to share in a SLIP message. Their talk was natural, comfortable, intimate in a way it had not been at SFU. They were together now, and there were no longer any limits on what they said to each other. David felt like a man unshackled, able to express his true feelings freely for the first time. Carol talked about Marty Baker, the fun they had together and how narrowly, and horribly, he was lost and she survived. How close she came to the same nightmarish end haunted her more now than it had at the time. David talked about Leah and Travis, and Lisa, and their kindnesses to him. He would never forget the look on Lisa's face as she left Sigma's Bridge and went back to the magazine for the last time. Frightened, but trusting him, Sanders, and the Captain to do the right thing. He confessed a nagging doubt that he had somehow let her down, but Carol insisted there was nothing more he could have done. She made, and as usual, won the argument that after all, Davis was in command.

  As the afternoon started to wind down, they headed back to their rooms at the BOQ, showered, changed, and stepped off together for the half-mile walk to Admiral Harris' home. As they approached, they could hear the chatter of voices and followed that cheerful sound into the backyard. There was a couple dozen people there, with Ron and Meredith side by side somewhere in the middle.

  "Carol!" Rich Evans called, as he made his way to them through the crowd.

  "Hello, Rich. This is-"

  "David Powell!" Rich interrupted her, extending his hand. "Commander Rich Evans, Lieutenant Powell. Pleased to meet you."

  "And you, sir."

  "Come on, then," Evans said, taking David's arm, "Time to meet the boss, oh, and the Admiral, too."

  They laughed as he pulled them to the center of the crowd. Evans made the introductions for Powell, Carol having already met both Harris's a couple weeks before. Carol handed over the Norton, which Meredith happily accepted.

  "Thanks very much, Carol, so thoughtful of you."

  "Well, truth be told, Mrs. Harris-"

  "Oh, please, that's my mother-in-law. Call me Meredith."

  "Yes, ma'am, as I was saying, it was David's idea."

  David found himself pulled back into Meredith's circle to accept her thanks.

  "Thank you, ma'am, for the invitation. This is really very nice."

  Meredith nodded. "Yes, we try to have a normal moment every once in a while. We all need to have a little touch of home, you know? Something like we knew before?"

  "Well, ma'am-"

  "Jesus what will it take to get you people to drop all the formalities?"

  David grinned, understanding.

  "Sorry, Meredith. We're all indoctrinated to treat the spouse with the same respect as the officer. It gets to be a little Pavlovian."

  "Ugh, boring. But the name rings a bell..."

  They laughed together at her joke. David took his leave of her and found his way to the beer coolers. The variety was impressive, and he found a decent IPA he had heard of to try. As he was opening it, Rich Evans was again at his side.

  "So, Powell, tell me about the tracking."

  David looked around. "Here?"

  "Sure. Everyone here is cleared, Powell. Don't sweat it at all."

  "OK, well, it was pretty weird..." David went on to describe the enemy ships' behaviors, and his conversations with John Sanders, and the last, short call from Leah Farley. As he talked to Evans, he could see Carol moving through the crowd, many of whom she had already met. She was in close conversation with an attractive woman in her 30's, and as they talked together, Carol looked across at him, their eyes met, she smiled slightly, then went back to her companion. He suddenly realized he was smiling a little too, between the descriptions Evans was extracting from him. After a while Evans cut him loose, apparently having heard what he needed to hear. David tossed his empty bottle in the recycle bin, got a fresh one, and then meandered back around to Carol.

  "David! This is Lieutenant Ann Cooper. Inventor of the Sentinel."

  "Oh, yes. Great idea."

  "Thanks, but I had a lot of help!"

  Their conversation quickly moved to less military matters, Ann talking about her young child, and introducing her husband, Stan.

  Before long, the scent of Meredith's special blend burgers and barbequed chicken filled the air. It was a long, generous buffet line. It was a prototypical American picnic, but the warmth and welcome that came with it erased any feeling of cliche or pretense. This was no act, no choreographed political affair. This was the real thing: generosity offered for the sheer joy of doing it.

  They loaded their plates and wandered back outside, still talking to Ann and Stan. They found a table near the back of the yard. As the conversation continued through dinner, a pretty, slight, somewhat older, fair complexioned redhead came over to join them.

  "Hello, Captain Collins," Carol said.

  "Good Afternoon, Hansen. Lovely party, don't you think?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Captain this is David Powell."

  "The Sigma David Powell?" she asked, the surprise clea
r in her voice.

  "Yes, ma'am, guilty as charged."

  Fiona sat down next to David, setting down her overloaded plate. She shook his hand, then reached around him for a brief hug.

  "Amazing work, Mister Powell, truly an incredible job bringing her back."

  David, embarrassed, looked away, then back.

  "Just did what needed to be done, Captain Collins, no more than the next guy would have done."

  Fiona leaned in close to David and spoke quietly in his ear.

  "The next guy would have shit his pants, and you'd all be dead."

  Carol heard about half of that and looked at Powell with a question in her eyes. He gave her a quick shrug before responding.

  "Yes, ma'am, maybe so. Point is we made it, and it took all 43 of us to do it."

  Fiona touched his arm. "Congratulations, Powell, welcome home."

  After dinner, they were back up and moving around the party, talking to a variety of Intel and Plans people and spouses. The late afternoon began to stretch into evening, a clear summer day leaning into a gathering dusk. Dessert was three different kinds of pie, all home-made by Meredith. For David, it was an event unlike anything he had ever seen since he joined the Fleet.

  Many of the guests left early, especially those with children to get to bed, but Carol and David felt no inclination to go anywhere, and their hosts were in no hurry to see them leave. It was a pleasant picture, tiki-torches, and picnic tables, with dim lights strung overhead. It had a mystical, romantic quality to it that suited their mood.

  After most of the guests had left, Carol and David stood at the railing on the edge of the deck, looking west at the sun as it sank lower in the sky. Ron and Meredith and Fiona, now all that remained, looked at the two young officers close together at the railing, two young heroes of different fights, and quietly moved inside, leaving them alone.

  They had a clear view of the sun, and as it touched the horizon, Carol looked at her NetLink, confirming the time. David looked at her, wondering what was on her mind. She was now looking back at the orange, pink and purple sky, the sun sinking slowly away.

  "Well, well, I finally made it," she said, with relief in her voice.

  "Made it?" David asked, not understanding.

  She turned to him.

  "I promised next time I would stay for the sunset," she said quietly, looking again at the sun and then back at him, her eyes now locked on his.

  "Here I am, still standing here."

  They leaned towards each other and kissed. As she leaned back, sliding her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder, she could see her future, no, their future, as something as clear and bright and beautiful as the evening gathering around them. It was as if they had already lived it, and she was remembering the contentment of years together, the equanimity of a life lived as it was intended. Whatever the ultimate outcome might be for them, and in war one could never really know, in their hearts they would always be just like this: together, silent, side by side at the end of the day.

  Acknowledgements

  This is my first attempt at a novel-length piece and believe me, that has been an education in itself. I have tried to dream up plausible future technologies and situations, combine them with some hopefully interesting people, stir gently, then and set them loose in the real world of the stars around us.

  The core of the story, David and Carol and the Inori and the surprise attack at Inor, were started in the middle 1990's and fussed with from time to time on nights when I couldn't sleep. I worked out the main technologies like the Forstmann Drive, SLIP, the 'sub-car' subterranean transportation system, the NetLink and NetComps at that time as well. The concept of the NetLink communication device on the wrist owes far more to the Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio than it does the iWatch. The inspiration for the NetComp tablets came from early tablet computers like the Grid and not the iPad or similar devices, although obviously current tablets like the iPad and the various Androids are the logical equivalents of the NetComp.

  I gave a lot of thought to whether in 2078 we would still have devices something like smart phones and tablets and I have concluded that we will. Private communication requires something you can place between your ear and mouth, such that only you can hear, and you can speak softly enough to that only your conversational partner can hear. We've all heard that salesman in the airport on his Bluetooth headset who has no clue he's pitching to about a thousand people who really don't give a crap about his wonder widget whatevers. Could we do privacy with implants? Maybe. But, I think we would be far wiser to keep ourselves analog and therefore completely unhackable. The question of tablet computers also mostly goes to privacy. We will always want to find and display information in a manner that is private. For both technologies I see a lower limit on size, as our fingers can only hit buttons of a given size and our eyes can likewise only read a screen down to a pretty hard lower limit. You may feel differently, but I think remaining un-chipped is probably a good thing for us, both individually and as a society. But, of course, some new tech idea (VR contacts?) may make all this moot. Time will tell.

  I have used that interwebby thing (Thanks, Al G, for inventing it for us so many years after it already existed) throughout the process and if there is a site dedicated to nearby stars, habitable star systems, or concepts of alien life, I have probably been there and I thank you for your help. I visited so many in the early phases of research I could not begin to name them all. There were several sites which I used extensively I want to acknowledge. If you are interested in any of the ideas or environment behind this story, these are a good place to start.

  www.solstation.com

  www.sci-fi-az.com

  www.atlasoftheuniverse.com

  www.projectrho.com

  www.wikipedia.com

  https://www.space.com/51-asteroids-formation-discovery-and-exploration.html

  http://www.astro.gsu.edu/~thenry/PLANETS/paper.anderson.pdf

  http://www.permanent.com/asteroid-mining.html

  https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/

  http://www.thesaurus.com

  http://www.kencroswell.com/thebrightestreddwarf.html

  I generated many of the character names from one of two sites, character.namegeneratorfun.com and random-name-generator.info. Other names I created myself, usually from US Census data listings on first and last names summarized on behindthename.com and infoplease.com. The rest, I just made up.

  Whitehouse, as you might guess, is a pretty low-concentration name. According to the 2010 census, it is the 5555th most common name in the US. There are only about 6200 people with that last name in the United States. So, no Whitehouse in the story. Sorry, Dad.

  Just for the record, again, David Powell is not me, and his parents are nothing like mine. Carol Hansen is not a stand-in for any real person, nor are any of the other characters. So, as usual, any similarity to any real person, living or dead, is coincidental. Or lucky - depends on whether you like them or not.

  I have been a sci-fi and military fiction reader all my life and I realize that obviously shows through in this story. So, writers like Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Carl Sagan and to a lesser degree Isaac Asimov certainly have formed my thinking, along with later writers like Tom Clancy. I am a great lover of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (though not all of her philosophy - I am not an objectivist) and, of course, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

  My study with Lorain County Community College English professor Kim Karshner was, and continues to be, of great help to me. Her eye for grammar mistakes and awkward scene transitions made the work much better than it would have been otherwise.

  I hired Jane Friedman (www.janefriedman.com) to review the query and synopsis and her input was well worth the price. If you're a new author trying to get yourself noticed, I recommend her Greatest Courses course and her individual services as well.

  A further edit by Rochelle Deans (rochelledeans.com) was enormously helpful.
And, somewhat painful. But, I am grateful to have had the advantage of her expertise.

  I started the story using Microsoft Word but that became unworkable about 60,000 words into it. I converted to yWriter (spacejock.com/ywriter) and that has been a great help. There are still features I would like to see (right-click->Generate Character Name) and modifications I would make, but, after all, it is not my product. It's probably 95% of what I need and that is better than anything else I tried. If you're considering working on fiction of any significant scope, you should at least give it a try. There is something hokey about Word double quotes and yWriter double quotes. Luckily for me it exports to Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF), something I have immersed myself in since the late 1980s. I eventually wrote a Perl post-RTF-export re-processor to clean up the text and add some features I wanted, like putting all the ship names in italics or showing SLIP messages in Courier New. Geek out! Yeah, I know.

  As a new author, you can't do much better than the tools and forums at querytracker.net. Lots of smart but nice folks there.

  I have to thank my 'alpha' and 'beta' version readers. Starting with my good friend and former co-worker, and author, Dan, for his early encouragement and constructive comments about the technology and story. Also, thanks to another former colleague and sci-fi enthusiast (I think having a working Cylon in your family room qualifies you) Kevin for his feedback and encouragement. The ISC name is Kevin's contribution, getting me past the 'Terran Space Navy' which was, actually, pretty dreadful. Thanks also to beta readers Ray, Chris, Dina, and Mike for their encouragement and suggestions.

  But I really have to call out our longtime friends Kert (engineer, ex-Navy nuke sub guy) and Jan (retired DOD contract administrator) for having the courage to read the first full draft. The two hours we spent over excellent food and drinks (see www.thejailhousetaverne.com) was a transformational moment for me. To hear others talking about my characters as if they (the characters, that is) were real people was just astounding. It made me think this whole thing might be for real. Without them I don't think this work would exist.