by Mark Zubro
They moved outside. Word flashed through the assemblage. Half an hour later, the last of the men had straggled in from the farthest fields and digs. They stood in a semi-circle under the hangar on the mesa.
Mike addressed them. “Pav and his battle cruiser will be here shortly. I doubt if this is a social call.” He swept his gaze over the crowd. “My suggestion for the visit is to do nothing.” He saw Joe smile. Mike continued, “I for one am about to have lunch, and then I have digging to do. We have a tough work schedule. The Admiral has his space to live in. We’re building ours. When he arrives, I suggest we keep working. This is our home, not his. We rule here. It’s time for us to let him and the rest of the universe know it. I’m not running out here in a sweat to effusively greet our oppressor’s grandson.”
The men cheered. Most of them. When the noise died, Cak shouted from the back, “You can’t treat the heir to trillions like that.”
“Why not?” Joe asked.
Cak got mad. “This is another example of how poorly this colony is run. No respect being shown to the heir to a fortune. No respect to the wealthiest family in the galaxy.”
Brux said, “You could have walked off with the others.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“What respect have they shown us?” one of the men called.
“That’s very well to say, but as Mike Carlson reminds us constantly, we’re building a world, and the correct way for the leaders of a planet to greet guests is with a proper greeting and due formality.”
“Just like they did when they shipped us here?” Joe asked.
The men grumbled agreement.
Cak’s objections during meetings had trailed off when the Leavers left. They did so again now, as no one supported him. He no longer had an echo chamber of support for his idiocy.
Mike raised his hand for their attention. “Anyone have any objections to acting as I have outlined?”
No one did. Mike was glad the Leavers were gone. “Good,” Mike said. “I’m going to lunch.” The men began drifting away to their work.
Brux leaned out the doorway of the communication room. His frame quivered with mirth. He walked over to Mike, “I listened on the intercom. You’re a son of a bitch.”
“Can be if I want to be,” Mike said.
Cak, Joe, Sry, and Rix joined them. Cak looked worried, but then he always did.
“What’s the matter, Cak?” Brux asked. “Afraid they’ll punish us if we misbehave?”
“That’s not funny,” Cak snapped.
Mike tried to soothe him. “I honestly think it’s for the best, Cak. We can’t let them think we’re crawling.”
“I’m talking common courtesy,” Cak said, “not cheap-shot politics.”
“If you’re worried about common courtesy,” Joe said, “then the onus is on them. They’re showing up uninvited and unannounced. Etiquette is on our side.”
“You’re hopeless.” Cak stomped away.
Mike turned to Rix. “When they land, I want you to go to the landing area. Don’t run or walk fast. Don’t hurry in any way.”
Rix gulped. “I’m going by myself?”
“Yes,” Mike said.
“Okay,” the boy said.
“They’ll probably send out a variety of guards, officials, and hangers on, then Pav at the end. It’s a fairly ritualized thing. You wait. When the procession stops, you walk up to the one carrying the staff of office.”
All people from Hrrrm recognized the symbol of power. Mike thought of it as Gandalf’s staff as shown in the movies but gone all sparkly instead of twisted wooden, grayish, with a glow on the end when needed.
Mike was continuing, “That’ll be the most important advisor. Tell him hello and welcome. Ask what we can do for them. They’ll be pissed and indignant about the lack of fuss. Tell them you’re the welcoming committee. Tell them you’re prime minister if you want.”
Rix smiled.
Mike went on. “No matter what they ask or demand say only that we’re busy. Say you’ll be happy to bring them to me. If they agree, although I can’t imagine them doing so, then bring them. If they refuse, invite them to dinner. You got all that?”
Rix recited. “I’m to say we’re busy, bring them to you, or invite them to dinner.”
“I know you can handle it,” Mike said. “You better go now and grab an energy ball. Because their ship is so big they’re going to have to land far out on the plain. It’s a long way so you’ll have to get started.”
The young man walked off in a daze.
“Are you sure he can handle it?” Joe asked.
“Can he handle it? He has to. None of us will be there. I’m going to lunch.”
“You don’t want to discuss what to do about the visit?” Sry asked.
Mike asked, “What’s to discuss? What’s to do? I’m hungry. Even energy balls sound good to me after five hours of digging. Brux, much as I trust Cak, would you keep alert after the landing? I don’t want any inadvertent contact.”
“Got it,” Brux said.
The speaker crackled in the communications room. “Greetings planet 6743-0A.”
Brux ducked back into the room to give the visitors final landing coordinates.
An hour later Mike was one hundred feet into a new tunnel when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked around. It was Rix by himself. The others working nearest Mike saw the boy’s arrival and stopped to listen. The boy looked petrified. Mike shut off his digger.
“Yes?” Mike asked.
The youth gulped. “They said to tell you to come, or you’d be taken away to the darkest prison in the galaxy.”
Mike laughed. He said, “Now, son, you go back and first, tell them I laughed, and then tell them I’m already there.”
“But Mike.” Rix’s voice rose a register and squeaked.
“Yes?” Mike asked again.
“It’s the Admiral himself. Pav. He told me. I saw him. He spoke to me.”
“I’m sure he did. Did you invite him to dinner?”
Rix shook his head. He looked miserable.
Mike patted his arm. “Not to worry. When you see him again, do it then. Tell him if he’s never had energy balls that they’re wonderful.”
Rix hesitated.
Mike looked him in the eye. “You’re a gay man with dignity and pride. You’re with us, fighting for your very survival. I know this is hard for you, but you can handle it. I know you can.” Mike saw the boy swell with pride at the compliments. By calling him a man at seventeen Mike conferred that dignity on him. The boy turned and strode purposefully back down the tunnel. Mike switched his digger back on and went back to opening up the mountain.
For the first time he felt some doubt. He’d seen the men looking at him with confidence. If his boldness failed, he personally would lose status as their leader, but more, their pride would take another beating. He shoved the doubts from his mind. If they were ever going to take pride in who they were, build a world from nothing, they had to begin believing in themselves. Part of that was not jumping every time some heterosexual from the government said jump. Of course that ship could simply blast them into infinity. Mike hadn’t been tested against that kind of power. He didn’t look forward to such a disaster. Then the thought hit him, what if they tried to take it out on Rix? Just took out a blaster and killed the kid? Mike’s confidence wavered. He drew several deep breaths. He turned on his digger and concentrated on his work.
He hummed to himself as he finished the corner markings for a side tunnel when he noticed the others had stopped digging.
“Mike.” It was Rix.
With infinite care, Mike turned round, switching off the digger in the process.
Rix was at the head of six men. Five of them were the most hideously dressed individuals the likes of which Mike had last seen outside a bar at six a.m. Those had been the losers from a drag contest at a gay bar in Chicago. These guys wore multihued robes that billowed and flowed even as they stood still. Mike thought, where
is Meganvilia? These guys could give him a run for his money. Mike also noted the main difference between the new arrivals and the miners standing around them. The off-worlders had weight on their bodies. Some not much, but all were better fed than the now generally thin and wiry colonists.
Next to Rix was a sixth person. He was young, Mike guessed him to be his early twenties. He was dressed in the garb of a Star Pilot, tight gray tunic and pants, unadorned save for a golden star burst at the shoulder, the emblem of his rank. He was good-looking, with blond hair combed back, dark blue eyes, no beard or mustache, and a lithe figure that, if his clothes didn’t lie, was of some musculature. The stomach was flat, the shoulders broad, but he was short maybe 5’6”. Mike towered a head above him.
“I see you dressed for the occasion,” Pav said.
Mike wore only his tight fitting brown work shorts. Mike thought that when the men gathered together in their work clothes, they most resembled a convention of delivery truck drivers on Earth.
Mike smiled, “Welcome to our home.” He watched the Admiral’s deep blue eyes linger on the front of his pants.
“Admiral,” the tallest, ugliest, and most gaudily dressed factotum stepped forward. Pav’s eyes began to rove over Mike’s shirtless torso. The factotum coughed. “Admiral, there’s no need to be in this filthy hole with this man’s insolence. Execute him and let’s be done.”
“Now, Orl,” Pav said. “We can’t kill them. Remember the Senate voted exile not death, and he’s the one with the magic implant.”
“Then kill one of the others.”
“Rules, Orl, rules. Our mission is to enforce rules around our part of the galaxy.”
“Pah,” the old man snorted and stepped back.
Pav’s blue eyes stared up at Mike who refused to break the silence.
Pav was the first to speak. “Show me your work.”
After an hour, Mike was bored. He had work to do and explaining himself to a closet case was not his style. He and Pav were standing on the lip of the hangar mesa. The battle cruiser was so large that it had to land two miles beyond the fields.
Pav said, “The government doesn’t trust you.”
Mike said, “Nor I them.”
Pav waved his hand back toward the colony entrance. “You strike me as smart and resourceful. That damn thing you’ve got gives you too much power. We haven’t figured out how to defeat it yet. As for the colony itself, they don’t have time to rebel or plot an attack.”
“Against whom and with what and how would we get to where ever this attack would take place? What are we going to do? Get on bicycles and pedal across the universe?”
“You could ally with one of the factions’ anathema to us.”
“I thought we were the ones anathema to everybody.”
“Not everybody.”
“How about yourself?”
Pav shook his head. “That’s all Hrrrm politics. I’m a warrior, a fighter.”
Mike said, “I still find your political system hard to figure out.”
“Not hard,” Pav said. “Cash is king. Whoever has the most when he dies wins. One of the reasons the pirates agreed to the compromise that got you stuck here, as I understand it, is because they figured the Religionist faction would bankrupt themselves.”
“Have they bankrupted themselves?”
“Compliance on some worlds is nonexistent. On the Religionists, things are quite brutal and unfortunately effective. And getting everyone being collected to a camp to here? It’s a nightmare! The logistics of housing people, unbelievable! The amount of violence is immense.”
Mike was more depressed than he’d been in weeks. He knew many of these details, but the work here and lack of direct reports had enabled him to think about it somewhat less. He said, “So the pirates get somebody to go bankrupt while millions or billions or trillions of our lives are destroyed.”
Pav nodded, “And they make money and not just the Sky Pirates. That’s the heart of it. Discrimination is a non-issue. Anybody can discriminate against anybody they want. If they want to make money one way or another, no one cares.”
Mike felt as discouraged as ever. He couldn’t keep the hopelessness out of his voice as he asked, “Did you want to meet with your spies?”
“We already have their reports.”
Mike said, “We thought we had all communications blocked.”
“Most. Not all.”
“We’ll work on it.”
Pav smiled. “Do your best.” Pav cleared his throat. “I hear you had a little problem with the Sky Pirates a few months back.”
“Nothing we couldn’t handle.”
“So I heard.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“Spies and the guard ships above recorded the confrontation.”
“Why didn’t they intervene?”
“I think Bex thought the whole thing was funny. And by some miracle, they might kill you.”
“Not so far.”
“So I can see.”
A few minutes later Pav and his entourage crossed the plain to their ship which took off moments after they boarded.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Brux said, “He’s a closet case of the worst kind. He’s gay and when he finds that out, he’ll be overwhelmed. He has a long way to fall. He’ll hate himself when he finds out and hurt a lot of people in the process. I don’t want one of them to be somebody from here.”
“Who?” Mike asked.
“Didn’t you see how he was hanging all over Rix? He directed most of his questions and conversations to him.”
“Wouldn’t Pav know by now that he’s gay?”
“Not if he feared being collected and losing everything. He’s got a lot of everything to lose. And as you well know, some don’t figure it out. Think of the atmosphere he’s grown up in. He may not be a member of the Religionists, but he must have been influenced by it. He’s a commander of a battle cruiser. You only get that by incredible skill, even if your granddaddy is the richest man in the galaxy. It must have taken a lot of military training. He’s captured more pirates than any five admirals in the fleet who are twice his age. Once he even came close to capturing the Admiral of Death.”
Mike knew the reputation of the Admiral of Death, Def, the most feared pirate in the galaxy. He’d seen Def at their trial before the Senate. He’d learned more of his history along with books-worth of other things in the past year. Millions had died at Def’s whim. He was third in wealth to Mulk.
Mike’s trial had been the first Senate meeting Def had attended in years. According to the wiki-equivalent on Hrrrm that Mike read on his communicator, the only reason Def didn’t sit in power and might in the Senate is that he didn’t give a shit about them. Def thought that every second wasted on politics took away from him making money and inflicting death. Planets gladly paid his tribute to avoid the consequences. For ten years the central government’s navy had as its main goal hunting him down. An odd hunt, Mike thought, since the man had a fleet of his own and power almost equal to the central government’s fleet. His name still brought fear to the hearts of millions even if their presence was safely parsecs away. Pav had been a big part of reducing the Sky Pirates’ power.
“I don’t see how all this affects us,” Mike said. He patted Brux on the shoulder. “And he says the spies are still getting messages through.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s what he said.”
“He’s bluffing.” Brux slammed a fist down on the nearest flat surface. “I’ll triple-check and set up new systems. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. I’ll check.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Rivers roared on the plain. The mountain didn’t leak. For weeks they’d watched the storms in the mountains draw farther and farther up. Another rainy season in the valley was ending. In the mornings the sun gleamed off of the snowpack, which was getting higher and higher as the daily temperatures rose.
Mike’s gaze focused on the flooded plain. He th
ought that the rain had stopped on schedule. The waters had receded by almost half since the rain stopped.
The speaker behind him buzzed. “Mike and Joe to the communication center, Mike and Joe.”
“Now what?” he muttered.
Mike took the labyrinthine way down from the observation deck and strode into strained silence in the communications center. Brux, Rix, and eight other specialists sat at their computer consoles. Mike thought of them as such, but they were far more advanced than anything on Earth. Mike glanced at the view and radar screens. They showed the usual emptiness of space. Joe entered a few moments later.
Brux beckoned them over.
“What’s up?” Mike asked.
“We just got a distress call. Cem was on duty.” He pointed to a red-haired man in his forties.
Cem turned in his chair.
“What happened?” Mike asked.
“About thirty minutes ago the outside speakers started crackling. We thought it might be atmospheric interference again. We checked the full solar system range looking for space ships, but there weren’t any. We scanned the instruments again. Sent through a complete systems diagnostic check. Everything is fine. We aren’t scheduled for a delivery or a visit or even a surprise visit for several days. The machines are working great. As a last check we again scanned the surface of the planet for a thousand miles around the colony.” He paused. “This time we got a blip. There’s something out there.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “Leavers?”
Joe said, “Gotta be.”
Brux nodded. “No one else is on the planet but us and them. We didn’t send it so it’s gotta be them.”
Cem spoke up. “We focused on the signal, tried relaying messages, used all the receiving channels. Finally we got another faint something. I thought I heard a voice moaning for help. Arb and Nel heard it too.” He pointed at two of the other communication workers who nodded agreement.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“We tried to respond, to let them know we heard, but the transmission was so faint. I doubt if our message got through. Then nothing. Their transmission stopped.”
“Could you tell why?”