And All The Stars A Grave.

by Greg Curtis

  Helos of course had not forgotten his treatment at Li’s scaly hands, and later that very day had ordered a complete review of the research facility’s function. And as with the examination that had been done on the Sparrow, it was unbelievably thorough. He found of course, some minor faults, things that in the normal running of affairs would have been simply ignored, but not that day. Two terminals that were broken and had been awaiting repair for more than twenty four hours. There was a minor corruption in one of the databases, some misfiled records and so forth. Every one Helos immediately laid at Li’s reptilian feet, and ordered him to repair instantly, while informing him it would go on the official log as evidence of his incompetence. Since then the two had been taking non-stop pot shots at each other. There was no love lost between them.

  While they might have been the most constant offenders however, most of the other scientists had similarly limited tolerance of others. The head of the Myran scientists, Stellarian Trin had been given the job of maintaining the laboratory equipment in all ten labs, a position he clearly found unworthy of his skills. And as a consequence he spent his days finding numerous small ways to annoy those who had put him there. Running through previous research papers they had done and pointing out methodological flaws was one of his favourites. As was critiquing their technique every time they used any of his equipment. Daryl avoided him like the plague.

  Some of the others though were far more difficult to deal with again. Their chief linguist was a Velosian named Patre Dearth. At least that was how his translator pronounced it. But while he was undoubtedly extremely good at his work, he could well have done with a personality transplant. Urgently. His major problem was that he hated everybody. Not even disliked, he actively hated them all. Calling them names, accusing them of crimes, and generally telling everyone to go for a long run off a short pier. Even that could perhaps have been tolerated for a while by him, but his mouth was full of ivory daggers, and every time he said something Daryl had the horrible feeling he was preparing to bite him.

  To make things worse, Patre could swear fluently in every language he knew, which was apparently some two hundred and seventeen. And he took every opportunity to show them his skill. Scientists, crew, or just people on holo screens, there wasn’t a single one who hadn’t felt the piercing sting of his tongue. Daryl had had the strange feeling that he might be another abductee like himself, only one far less polite or accepting of it. But the only time he had tried to even say hello, it had been thrown back in his face with a vengeance as Patre began by insulting his family, appearance and even smell, and then moved on to his sexual ability and obvious congenital idiocy. And he did it in English so faultless, that it showed up Daryl’s own vocabulary. He hadn’t tried speaking with him again. The alien had a true antimatter personality as his mother would often say. Best to stay out of his gravitational field.

  The Xetan scientists were the only exceptions. Like the crew, they seemed to simply want to knuckle down and do their work. Perhaps it was the fact that they averaged at least two and a half metres in height, and with their outer arms and legs well armoured were clearly the most physically well-defended beings present. Maybe it was simply that they had apparently evolved from a herbivorous background and so were naturally peaceable. Maybe they were just incredibly sane. Whatever the reason, nothing seemed to bother them. Insults rolled off their backs like water. No matter the provocation they were always unfailingly polite, even to him, and when criticised they simply accepted anything that was even slightly accurate and ignored the rest as unimportant.

  It was a pity that they’d never decided to show their faces in Earth’s sector of the Community, because just maybe some of his people might have had a better example of what a great race should be like. Of course, just because they were polite and easy going, that didn’t mean they too didn’t regard humans as some sort of pond scum. And they too, he had to remember, were one of the great races that had successfully kept Earth a backwater for over a century.

  Regret and a sense of injustice were the other emotions that ruled his days on the ship. For along with every new wonder he found here, he kept remembering that these were things that were denied to his people, and for no reason. Not one that they knew of anyway.

  Had the Community played as fairly with humanity as they had with every other race, by now there would be at least a dozen human colonies, his people would be a junior member of the council by now, and all or most of these wonders would be available to them. Instead they still had their two colonies, neither of them allowed to grow, the people became ever more restricted in what they could do and where they could go as almost daily the Force imposed more limits on them. And while the inner planets of Sol system were converted into makeshift colonies, it was without the truly advanced terra-forming technology they needed to thrive.

  Of course for him, the restrictions were even more chaffing. Given his chosen field of study, xeno-archaeology, the handful of worlds he was allowed to visit was simply too limited for him to ever make the discoveries he dreamed of. The Community had the pick of the bunch and humanity was left with a few scraps as he saw it, and not even the resources, knowledge or technology to explore them properly. But the worst was that if by chance any of the handful of human xeno-archaeologists ever actually made a significant discovery, the Force would vet them, and might even destroy all their findings.

  Now, when he was finally getting to do some of the research he’d always dreamed of, he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to keep it. One way or another, the Force was going to make sure none of their technology, and none of the Calderonians' either made it back to Earth. He’d be lucky at the end of this if he even managed to publish a single paper, without the research notes of course.

  “Doctor Daryl.” The voice startled him out of his reverie, and he looked up to see a crewman addressing him. A Myran, and if he’d worked out his ranks yet, a petty officer in charge of security. Three stars on his chest, being something similar to a lieutenant, and the red stripe on his right sleeve indicating he was military police. A policeman among policemen.

  “Yes?” He tried very hard not to use ranks, unless he actually knew them. The more he tried, the more he seemed to get them wrong, and if there was one thing he was learning, it was that the crew didn’t take being assigned the wrong rank very well.

  “The Captain requires your presence in his meeting room.” With no more than that the Myran took off, fortunately not too fast, and Daryl knew he had to follow him. Not least because he had no idea at all where the captain’s meeting room might be. In a whole week he still hadn’t worked out the layout of the ship. He could get from the docking bay where the Sparrow was still tied up, to the labs on the top stories, the research facility two floors down and the recreational area three floors below that. But that was about it.

  In his own defence though, when a ship was well over a klick long, and large parts of it were off limits to him, and in fact to the other scientists as well which had caught him by surprise, he decided he couldn’t be expected to do much better.

  The crewman took him directly from the research facility, down the corridor to the stair shaft, which was another miracle of Interstellar Community technology. Looking like any normal stairway, it was anything but. The engineers had built these sections of the ship with their own artificial low gravity fields, and as a consequence even the tiny Regularans could run up and down thirty stories in well under a minute. It beat the lifts that had been installed in the largest human vessels by so much he couldn’t say. For a start it was faster, and it also allowed people to travel quickly in both directions and get off at any level, without slowing down any others. It was also heaven to only weigh about a tenth of his normal weight. The first time he’d been shown them, he’d spent a long time experimenting with the almost giddy sense of power that came from being able to leap two metres into the air, until a crewman had told him off.

  One day he was determined to find the secret of how they co
uld generate individual low gravity fields within an all-encompassing artificial gravity field which in turn lay within an antigravity drive field, and not have the ship disintegrate as it took off. Though he knew that if he ever did discover the secret he’d never be allowed to take it home with him.

  Two flights down they took another corridor heading towards the ship’s bow and he knew from the number of crew that passed them by that they were heading towards the crew quarters and the control decks. All normally off limits. Towards the rear he understood, were engineering and weapons control, and under them the holds and docking bay. But other than where the Sparrow was parked, he’d never seen any of them either.

  Two more side corridors and suddenly he was at the captain’s meeting room. He knew it if only because the officer stopped and opened the door for him. Daryl alone was going in. He nodded to the crewman and walked in trying to appear calm. Yet he knew with a sinking feeling in his gut, he was in trouble. He even knew why. The sword had been hanging over his head for a couple of days.

  Inside, the room was just a meeting room like any other, with a variety of chairs circling something that looked suspiciously like an oak table. It was large enough though, to seat twenty people comfortably, and then there could still have been many more standing behind them. At one end of the table the captain stood, and though it was still extremely difficult for him to tell, Daryl thought the slight touch of orange in his face, meant that he might be angry. The reason for his anger was lying in pieces on the table in front of him. His maser pistol. Much as he’d unfortunately expected.

  “Would you care to explain Doctor Daryl.” It was an order, and as Daryl looked at the charge unit, with its contents spewed wide open he knew why. They’d found his message. It had only taken two days, assuming they’d cracked the cipher, which was still slower than he’d expected. But the real question was what else they’d found.

  “I have a duty to my family, to let them know what’s happening to me, and why. I have a duty to my people to tell them of Helos’ charges. And I have a duty to my peers to give them whatever information I uncover. After all, they support my research.” He stared the captain directly in the eye, knowing it was a useless gesture. He wouldn’t understand his defiance anyway. But at least his words reflected the data that he’d carefully hidden in the charge pack. Which was only a small portion of the data he’d actually tried to smuggle out when they’d docked with the Diligence. But had they found the rest?

  What lay in front of the captain was only a decoy. Full of interesting data about the expedition, the way he’d been seconded to it, and some research on the Calderonians. He’d tried to pass it to a crewman as he was being supplied for at least a two year mission, pretending that the charge unit was faulty. It was, mainly because part of it had been removed and replaced with a data chip with several quads of information.

  Naturally the ever-watchful crew had immediately seized the weapon out of the supply ship crewman’s hands, advising Daryl that they would supply him with a weapon as and when he needed one. Pointedly they hadn’t returned the weapon to him, and he knew even then that they’d be studying it intently, looking for anything secret he might have been trying to smuggle out. But had they noticed that even as he was reaching for the crewman’s weapon and giving him his own he’d palmed a second chip into his hand? Daryl didn’t know for sure, but he certainly hadn’t noticed the crewman being frisked closely afterwards. They were satisfied, he hoped, that they’d got what he’d tried to pass on.

  “So we see. But mixed in with it are details of Calderonian technology. Technology that your people haven’t uncovered, and aren’t ready for. Had your people got that, it could have begun another industrial revolution on your world, and perhaps started a new war, or divided your people even more than they are now. Surely you understand that.”

  “And surely Captain, you understand that none of that is true. My people have been united as one for over a hundred and fifty years, have both individually and as a whole agreed to abide by your laws. We destroyed all our weapons of mass destruction more than a century ago, obeyed to the letter every edict handed down by the Council, and generally we have been model citizens. And yet still we have been treated as second-class citizens for over a century, and severely restricted in terms of what we can do, what we are allowed to learn and where we can even go. We have resources many others would welcome, but we can’t trade them for anything but food, which is the one thing we don’t need. We can’t build new colonies, though our people cry out for room, and we can’t even get the advanced terra-forming knowledge we need to transform the two colonies you have allowed us to keep or our own system worlds.” And the Earth these days was over crowded. Even with strict birth control, the most advanced pollution control technology they could build, an absolute building boom as skyscrapers grew ever taller instead of allowing cities to expand out, and the use of endless space stations and orbitals, there were too many people. They needed to be able to terra-form their two colonies, and the rest of their system, desperately.

  “You’ve even stopped us from protesting our treatment. Removing our rights to be heard. We have no representative to champion our cause, let alone an actual senator of our own. You’ve effectively left us without a voice on the council after one hundred and twenty odd years. Which by the way, is a record. No other race has ever been treated as such. Not even those with active wars on their home worlds. And we haven’t had a war in far longer.”

  Which was all true and they both knew it. The one thing the humans didn’t know was why they were being singled out for such unfair treatment. As far as they knew they were model citizens. But the one thing they had learned was how to smuggle information. Every off world scientist, explorer or even trader was taught in great detail about smuggling data. And every ship was fitted with covert information stores. Back ups, in case the Force decided to delete the primary data drives. It had happened a few times.

  “I am not here to discuss politics human, only law. I am the captain of this ship and as such I demand to know one thing of all my guests above all else. Can you be trusted? And lying in front of me is evidence that you cannot.”

  “Then let me go. I did not choose to come, I can contribute little to this expedition in terms of knowledge, and I am daily treated like shit by the people I’m supposed to work with. Even if I could help they would only ignore me.” He was sure the captain would understand the crude reference. The Force had extensive reference material on all the races they dealt with. It was why their translators were so good.

  “Don’t tempt me human. If I do let you go it will be directly to a penal colony where you will remain until you die. Alone. And I would prefer that. But for whatever reason, the scientists on board this vessel have decided you can contribute, and therefore you will stay until the end. One way or the other. The only question is whether you will continue to stay in your own quarters or in the disciplinary chambers.”

  “This whole ship is a disciplinary chamber for me.” It was defiant and probably unwise to say it, but it was true. Besides, he’d expected to get caught and at the least to spend some time in the brig from the outset. And at least he wasn’t going to cow down again.

  “So be it. You’ve made your choice, and now I will make mine. From this day forward you are confined to the disciplinary cells. You will be allowed out only to continue your studies, and when it’s time to explore the world. Food will be brought to you, and you will be escorted everywhere. No strategic information will be given you without my direct permission. When you’re ready to accept your mistakes and become part of this expedition again, you can return. But you will have to prove yourself first.”

  “Be warned human, no further errors of this sort will be tolerated.” Not that there was much chance of that happening Daryl knew. Not for at least another year or two.

  Without warning hands landed on his shoulders and he jumped. Strong hands. He turned to see two enormous Xetans, both armed, holding him
firmly. Without any further warning he was quickly frog marched out of the room and down the corridor. A long straight corridor that ran nearly the full length of the ship. He didn’t remember it being that long on his way here.

  At double time - the Xetans’ long legs, four a piece, meant that he practically had to jog to keep up - he was marched to the very end, where another pair of guards waited for him. They in turn opened another sliding steel door which led to a chamber surrounded by a row of cells, each a three by three metre steel pen with a clear panel in the front for the guards to see in to the prisoners. He had just time to notice that two other faces stared back at him from their own cells, when he was rudely grabbed once more and stripped.

  Four pairs of hands quickly ripped his jumpsuit and under clothes off him, leaving him suddenly naked and vulnerable in the cold metal chamber, and more than a little frightened. There was something about being so exposed before them that simply shocked him on a level he didn’t know existed. His wrist comp and translator ear piece quickly followed his clothes. All were thrown into a metal bin, he suspected for further searching, and then the door to his new home was opened. Before he could even regain his breath he was thrown inside the cell so hard he barely missed breaking his face on the far wall. As it was his arms took a hammering.