Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Cycle Book 2)

by Mark Wandrey

  “Spare time my ass,” Pip said over the radio. The reception popped and hissed from five stories above. The high-energy test facility was a long ceramic concrete room gouged from bedrock three floors below ground, the same bedrock that housed the commander center several kilometers farther down. When Minu had first visited the facility, Pip had happily showed her a couple of scorch marks in the ceramic concrete floor he was responsible for. The scorches were indelible. Marring ceramic concrete was an accomplishment. “Everyone else on this team is so slow, I have a couple of hours a day to work on this.”

  “Then why does it look like something from a Dr. Who episode?” Gregg yelled, obviously overhearing Pip, even from the other side of the shield. “Damn thing weighs a ton.”

  Minu could see the banded muscles bunching in his arms and chest, and she was not too busy to appreciate the sight. “Who the hell is Dr. Who?” she wondered aloud as she worked on a tablet.

  “Are you serious?” Pip asked. Gregg looked at her like she’d committed an egregious error.

  She shrugged. “Did he work on some special Chosen project?”

  “It’s a science fiction show from Earth, made in Britain around the turn of the century,” Pip explained.

  “Nineteenth or twentieth?”

  “Good lord,” Pip laughed, “don’t you know basic history? Television wasn’t invented until 1938.”

  “I thought it was the 1950s,” the formerly quiet tech intervened.

  “No, 1938. The Germans showed it off at their world’s fair.” Minu couldn’t care less and said so, wondering what difference it made. “There’s so much you can learn from that old stuff,” Pip continued.

  “How can learning from them possibly help us integrate into the Concordia? They’d never even seen an alien or left their solar system!”

  “Aside from insights into human nature, it’s interesting.”

  “Physics is interesting,” she admitted, “old television is boring.”

  “Your father watched hundreds of hours of old Earth TV,” Pip said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “The data access logs. I spent a week or so when first assigned to Science in the data library department. Most of the old computers are copied there, and the data is readily accessible to any Chosen.”

  “Can I get into it?”

  “Any Chosen can,” Pip confirmed, “although some of it’s classified. I never quite understood that. I mean, five-hundred-year-old data from the early days? I’ve wondered what it all says, but I figure it’s just stuff about wanting to kill the Rusks, or something like that.” He was quiet for a moment, then came back on. “Okay, I think I have it figured out. Have Gregg give it another try.”

  Several frustrating hours later, Minu was back in her tiny office completing her report. Every time she used equipment or personnel outside her lab, it required a report. She wondered how heads of large departments ever found time to do real work. A dozen more attempts with Pip’s reverse-engineered energy weapon had failed to produce a beam with enough lethality to burn toast. It wasn’t a complete failure, though. At least the power interface functioned properly.

  When she finished her report, she glanced at Pip’s schematics for the weapon. It was ten times the size of the weapon it was based on, a very compact gun called a Beamcaster, employed by many higher-order species in the Concordia. The trouble, as always, was adapting a device to human physical constraints and the available technology. None of the Concordian weapons-brokers wanted to sell humans any serious firepower. Not that they could really afford to waste valuable credits on state-of-the-art weaponry, anyway. Constructing some themselves was a long-term goal of the Chosen. To date, the best they’d managed was the energy dissipating grids incorporated into Chosen field uniforms, which were adaptations of obsolete Concordian shields used by radiation technicians, and a magnetic accelerator rifle used by Chosen scouts as a sniper weapon. Not much progress in a century.

  With nothing more to do that day, Minu decided to access the Chosen computer records and look at results of previous reverse-engineering projects. She found detailed records showing years of research on Bellatrix into how most aspects of Concordian technology worked and ways to put it to use. She was simultaneously surprised at the volume of research and the lack of actual progress.

  Minu crossed over to the Concordian database and performed a similar search. Of course, there was next to nothing on other species researching to adapt modern Concordian tech to older indigenous technologies. There were extensive files on compatibility and interfacing different species’ modern technologies. Those were less than useless in this case.

  She crossed back into their own files, intending to look at the oldest research, and stumbled onto the secured archives by mistake. Even though they’d granted her access when she became a four-star Chosen, she’d never actually looked at the vast treasure trove of preserved Earth knowledge. She poked around for a minute, skimming several files about state-of-the-art technology at the time of Earth’s destruction. Many of the files had more recent cross-references. She wasn’t the only one looking at the older files for insights, just as Pip suggested. One notation caught her attention, and she read it with interest.

  “While it’s obvious the photronics developed by the Concordia are far more advanced than the best electronics Earth could manufacture, what is profound is that these advances are not out of the realm of old Earth speculation. The use of photons to power electronic circuits was many years from realization back then; however, they had speculated about it and had researched it to some degree. Two questions remain. How far would we, as humans, have gotten if fate had not intervened so disastrously and destroyed our world? And why are the Concordia not far more advanced than they are? You would think, with thousands of species researching and developing their own technology for eons, that tech would have advanced to the point of being all but indistinguishable from magic by now! Instead, it’s only a century or two ahead of the best our home world had to offer, and even now our scientists begin to plumb the depths of that knowledge and speculate further.”

  Minu checked the notation and saw Bjorn Ganose had signed it more than 40 years ago. Minu smiled and looked further into Bjorn’s writings. As she’d suspected, he’d been a prodigious researcher his whole adult life. She found many other people’s notes. There was Pip, of course, his first entry only days after the Trials. She was surprised at how often his name appeared, considering he’d only been Chosen a little more than a year and a half. And there was Ted Hurt, his writings dating back to well before he joined the Chosen. Then she found a name that floored her: Chriso Alma.

  She spent most of the night after everyone else in the complex was off to their beds reading. Her father had made more than a thousand notations on human and Concordian technology, weaponry, and history. Few others had made more, and none of them surprised her as much as his. Clearly he could have been in Science, if he hadn’t ended up in Command. Did fate step in to steer his course within the Chosen? Was the same fate working with her, or against her?

  Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, she couldn’t stay awake any longer. She almost staggered downstairs to her room, and she didn’t bother with a shower. She stripped off her jumpsuit, tossed it in the cleaner, and slid between the sheets. The longer she thought about her father being into science, the more it made sense. From his encouraging her at every chance to pursue science, to his always seeming to have the answers to homework questions, to his last-minute attempt to get her to go to college instead of taking the Trials, the clues were there. Alone in her small bed, she drifted off thinking about her father, and how things often weren’t what they seemed.

  * * *

  Minu sat at a table in the cafeteria, a small pile of tablets and a half-eaten chicken-salad sandwich in front of her, as she went over a never-ending list of figures. The prototype beam-weapon showed just enough promise to excite Bjorn, or someone above him, and he’d shot her carefully-planned
research schedule to hell. She was helping chew through data by hand in the hopes of a breakthrough. One tablet held test data, another recorded profiles from one of the rare beamcasters the Chosen owned, and still another had schematics for both the beamcaster and their prototype. The number-sifting was the most boring aspect of the research, so she’d been going through the schematics when she noticed someone standing next to her.

  “Hi,” he said, when she looked up.

  “I know you, don’t I?”

  “Yeah, my name is Tetsuo.” Minu cocked her head; his face was familiar. “The technician helping you test the energy weapon last month?”

  “Oh, yeah! You need something?”

  “Kinda. Can I sit down?”

  Minu looked at the table, mostly covered by her tablets and unfinished lunch. “I’m rather busy right now.”

  “Okay, I’ll just say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Will you go out with me?”

  It took a long moment for her to realize he’d asked her out on a date. The young technician, who was close to her age, wore civilian common dress and a lab coat, with his ID badge hanging from one pocket. Judging by his Asian features and above-average height, he was either from the Peninsula Tribe, or his ancestors were. Dark brown hair hung low over his gray eyes, and he was not unattractive. She was so surprised she didn’t immediately respond. He started to look anxious, either excited or fearful. Only two boys had ever asked her out, both times at the Keeper’s Academy. They’d been older boys who’d taken notice of her developing figure, but her mother had prepared her. She’d sent them on their way, and no more followed.

  “I’m too busy these days to date,” she said, looking him in the eye. At the last second, she added a little smile. It proved exactly the right thing to do, softening the blow.

  “Okay,” he said, only slightly dejected, “maybe some other time?”

  “Maybe,” she said with a nod and another little smile.

  “Good. I might see you again, if you need a tech.”

  Minu watched him go and shook her head. Where the hell did that come from? More than a year in the Chosen, and the only attention she’d received from the opposite sex was Ted Hurt, who she found mostly amusing and a tad bit flattering.

  Later that evening she got out of the shower and stood naked in front of the narrow full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door. She didn’t think her body was anything special. She considered herself a fully-grown woman now, and she was hardly a beauty queen. As her mother had once said, her face was too long and her legs too short. Her breasts were small and her hips narrow. “It all adds up to average,” she said to the reflection.

  The next afternoon she had her twice weekly sparring session with Cherise. During their midpoint water break she asked her friend, “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Very much so,” Cherise said without hesitation.

  Minu looked at her brown-skinned friend in confusion. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Now you, you’re beautiful. You have long black hair and sleek long legs, and the boys can’t stop staring at your bustline.

  Cherise shook her head. “That isn’t always a good thing. I’m beginning to wonder if my tits are keeping me from getting four stars. It’s all most men notice.”

  “Maybe my lack of them helped me get four stars?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m bigger than I’d like; you’re perfect.” Minu snorted and Cherise cuffed her on the back of the head.

  “Hey!”

  “You asked for it. Minu, boys watch you everywhere you go.”

  “Yeah? Then how come I never got asked out until yesterday?”

  “Someone asked you out?”

  Crap, she thought. She hadn’t planned on letting that out. “Uhm, yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “Technician named Tetsuo.”

  “Kid from Peninsula Tribe? He asked me out a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh, so he’s desperate.”

  “Not really; I’ve asked around. He’s a little particular.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he was the first to approach me.”

  “Minu, you really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  Cherise wiped sweat from her hair and tossed aside the towel, taking a second to be sure no one else in the gym was within ear shot. “You’re the Daughter of the First, well the previous First.”

  “I have been my whole life.”

  “Yeah, and now you’re living and working with Chosen! Think about it.”

  “They’re scared of me?”

  “More like intimidated.”

  “What’s the story with Tetsuo?”

  “He’s new, and not from Plateau…”

  “He doesn’t know who my father was.” Cherise slapped the floor and nodded. “Oh.” Cherise took a drink of water and stood up, ready to continue, but Minu continued with her questions. “Still, there are a lot of red-blooded males around here, and the only one who’s made it obvious he was interested was Ted Hurt—”

  “That pervert would screw anything with two legs and at least one breast.”

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “Dear, have you ever let it be known you’re interested?”

  “I would never go around…I mean I wouldn’t…” Cherise lifted one eyebrow, and Minu spat a curse, climbing to her feet.

  “If you don’t put out some bait, you won’t attract any prey.”

  Minu picked up a pair of plastic practice knives and tossed one to her friend. They sparred with the fake knives for a few minutes before switching to unarmed martial arts. After a particularly effective flip, Minu reached down to offer Cherise a hand up, and the other girl asked a question. “Are you interested in dating, Minu?”

  “No,” she said as she pulled Cherise up, and then she rethought her answer. “Maybe. I guess. I don’t know.”

  “I’ve wondered for a long time if you were ready. You have no idea how many men have asked me and your other friends about you.”

  “You guys have been running interference for me?”

  “Not at all,” Cherise said evenly. “We told them you weren’t dating, and they left it at that. What happened to you in the Trials to change your mind? You seemed to be interested in Aaron, at least partially, after Gregg and I had our fling.”

  “The Trials change you,” Minu said flatly. “What about you and Gregg?”

  “We’ve gone out a couple of times, nothing serious. I know he still wants me, but I’m trying to sort everything out.” She giggled. “We kiss and stuff, but I don’t let it go any further. He probably has a boner all night.” Minu snorted before self-consciously covering her mouth. One of the nearby physical trainers threw them an annoyed look, then went back to his class.

  “If sex feels that good, why aren’t you doing it again?”

  Cherise looked at her strangely, then shrugged. “I’m not ready yet.”

  Minu nodded, and they went through a few grapples. “Maybe I’m thinking about it,” she said between bouts. “What should I do now?”

  “How did you respond to Tetsuo?” Minu gave her a blow-by-blow. “Well done. You don’t have to do anything.”

  “You said I have to put out bait.”

  “You already did.”

  “I told him no! How will that help attract another boy? He’ll tell them I blew him off.”

  “No, he’ll say you said maybe. Minu, it’s ‘game on’ now.”

  “Why do I think I just made a mistake?” Cherise smiled. Minu thought about the last time she’d seen Aaron and how much more bulked up his chest and arms were. A second later, Cherise took advantage of Minu’s lack of concentration and rewarded her with a black eye.

  * * *

  The shiner kept the boys at bay until it went away. Even with the contusion, Minu could tell she was now a target of extreme interest. The very next day she saw boys watching her walk by, many of them trying to catch her eye and smiling when the
y did. One day in line for dinner, she turned and caught a three-star Chosen from Training giving her ass the once-over. She cleared her throat, and when he looked up, she skewered him with her flashing green eyes. He turned redder than her hair and excused himself, all thoughts of food or other things abandoned.

  She was afraid that crushing him like that would hurt her prospects, but she was completely wrong. Two days later, her black eye healed, a three-star from Logistics asked her to a movie in the lunch line. She politely said she was too busy and added a genuine smile, a bat of her eyelashes, and a shrug. He grinned like an idiot and suggested some other time. She laughed and said that might be nice. He left even happier than Tetsuo. How the hell do I know how to do this? she wondered. As she carried her food to a table, several boys competed for her attention. She suddenly knew what a lone tuck felt like as it ran past a herd of Kloth.

  Minu gave Cherise an update during their next sparring match, being careful this time to keep her attention on the fighting rather than the story. Cherise laughed, especially when Minu wondered about her flirting skills.

  “I was flirting?” Minu asked. “I was just saying ‘no.’”

  “You were saying maybe and pouring it on hard. You’ll hear from him again, bet on it.”

  “Wow.”

  “And as for where that ability comes from, we’re born with it, girl.”

  “All girls?”

  “Only the hot ones,” Cherise said and struck a seductive pose, hip cocked, hand on hip, chest pushed out. A boy swinging on a set of rings slipped and crashed to the floor. Both girls laughed and went back to their workout. Afterward, in the tiny girls’ shower, Minu stole a look or two at her friend’s body. It was certainly more curvaceous than hers, and her legs were improbably long. Were they really so different? Maybe beauty was something that transcended basic individual details. Her body was nice, too.

  As they were getting dressed, Cherise turned to her. “You need to decide what you’re going to do.”

  “What do you mean?”