Theogony 1: Janissaries

by Chris Kennedy

  “What you have shown me, I believe,” interrupted Rozhkov, “but I do not know if I believe what you have told me. This is all very, how you say, far-fetched? I am sure that you are trying to gain an edge over Russia, but I am not sure what it is or how you intend to do it. You have given away so much, it is hard to know what is still hidden.”

  “There isn’t much that we haven’t already told or shown you,” said Calvin. “The bottom line is that we were contacted by aliens. They warned us that there are creatures coming that want to eat us. The aliens are pretty sure that the only way we’ll be able to stop the creatures is by uniting against them and pooling our resources. We had a saying during our revolution that is pretty appropriate right now, ‘we need to hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately.’ Personally, I don’t want to get eaten, nor do I want any of my friends and family to get eaten, either. If that means playing nice and working with Russia, or even China for that matter, then I am all for it.”

  “Assuming that I believe you, which I still am not sure that I do, what are your plans, and what do you plan to do with me?” asked Rozhkov.

  “We have one spaceship with six fighters,” said Calvin. “That isn’t going to beat off an alien invasion. We’re going to take that ship and go look for help. If nothing else, we’d like to bring back some of the aliens’ technology, so we can start arming ourselves. As for you, I plan to take you with us so that you can see that we’re telling you the truth. That’s the only way that we will ever get your nation to believe it.”

  “How do I know that you won’t kill me or use me to feed my country false information?” asked Rozhkov.

  “You don’t, I guess,” answered Calvin. Before he could say anything else, Mr. Jones, who had been standing against the wall, cleared his throat and said, “You have my word.”

  There was obviously past history between them, Calvin thought, because that seemed to satisfy the Russian. She nodded her head once and said only, “OK.”

  “I don’t want too much to get out before we leave,” said Calvin, “so we’re going to keep you with us. Before we go, you’ll have an opportunity to leave a message with your superiors, so that they don’t get worried when you’re gone for a couple of months.”

  The Russian nodded her head again. “That will be...sufficient.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Armory, TSS Vella Gulf, Dark Side of the Moon, January 15, 2019

  “What the hell is that thing?” asked the medic, Sergeant ‘Hacksaw’ Liu, looking at the massive rifle that the unit’s sniper, Corporal ‘Tiny’ Johnson, was oiling lovingly.

  “That’s his new toy,” replied his spotter, Corporal ‘BTO’ Bachmann. Tiny didn’t speak much, but BTO more than made up for it. “Although he is still going to use his .50 caliber sniper rifle when we’re not wearing our combat suits, this is what he is going to carry when we are suited up.”

  “That’s the biggest freakin’ rifle I’ve ever seen,” said Hacksaw, picking up one of the rounds for the massive rifle. “These shells have to weigh half a pound and look like 20mm autocannon rounds. What the hell is it?”

  “It’s a SSK Industries .95 caliber rifle,” Tiny said with a sigh. “It’s my new baby.” He went back to pampering it.

  “It’s the largest rifle ever made,” added BTO. “They only made three of them. The unit bought one to try it out, and then Tiny asked them to make another couple of them for us. They’re too big to carry around, even for Tiny, which is why he’s only going to use them when we’re wearing our suits.”

  “No shit,” said Hacksaw. “That thing’s got to weigh 100 pounds.”

  “110 pounds, actually,” said BTO. “They’re so big that they were classified as destructive devices under the U.S. National Firearms Act, but the company that made them got an exemption to sell them. They cost about $8,000 a piece.”

  “What are you planning to shoot with that, exactly,” asked Hacksaw, “elephants?”

  Tiny looked back up again and smiled. “Whatever I need to.”

  Little Thai Restaurant, Seattle, WA, January 16, 2019

  Sara walked into the restaurant to find Calvin seated at a table waiting for her. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve got a project this semester that is taking up a lot of my time.”

  “No worries,” said Calvin. “For my part, I’m sorry I missed our date last week. Something important came up.”

  “Arges said you took some woman to the Gulf,” replied Sara. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Ha! Jealous of her, no. It’s a long story, but she’s lucky to still be alive.” Calvin changed the topic. “So what’s the project that’s taking up all of your time?”

  Sara looked around conspiratorially. “I’ve got something to share with you. I was told to keep it a secret, but I think it is all right to let you know.”

  The conversation paused as the waitress arrived and took their order. Calvin had been to Thailand on his first cruise and had developed a taste for spicy Thai food. Sara ordered something a little more on the tame side.

  “OK,” said Calvin once the waitress had left, “so what is the big secret?”

  “You know,” began Sara, “it might be easier to just show you.” A window opened in Calvin’s mind as Sara contacted him by implant communication. “Hiya,” she said.

  “When did you get implants?” Calvin commed back, shocked. “Wait, who knows that you got them? Does the president know you got them? Hell, did the Psiclopes authorize it?”

  “Slow down,” Sara said with a smile. “I’ll tell you all about it.” She switched back to the implant. “Yes, the Psiclopes authorized them. It would have been really difficult to get the implants put in if they hadn’t.”

  Calvin nodded ruefully, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” He considered briefly and then said, “I wonder if only the Psiclopes can authorize implants, or if my status allows me to do it now, too?” That is an interesting question, he thought. He decided to follow up with Solomon on it as soon as he was able.

  “And no,” Sara continued, “the president doesn’t know anything about me getting implants. He’d probably have a coronary if he knew that the Psiclopes had implanted civilians without giving them to him too.”

  That got Calvin’s attention. “Did you say civilians? With an ‘s’ at the end?”

  “Yes, my professor and a research scientist at the Institute of Science in India also have them,” said Sara. “The Psiclopes need us to develop new ways of finding black holes, because it is the way that they travel between stars. We are working on innovative ways to find them.”

  “Wait a sec,” said Calvin, “how did you get involved in this? Aren’t you still an undergraduate at the University of Washington? In art? This sounds like pretty high level rocket science stuff.”

  “Well, I would still have been an undergraduate if the Psiclopes hadn’t come,” replied Sara. “I’d be just starting my last semester as a senior. However, at the start of last semester, Arges showed up and said that they needed help. I said I would do what I could, and they gave me implants to make me more productive. I finished all of my undergraduate classes last semester; I also started working on my doctoral project, which has to do with finding black holes.”

  “You completed all of the classes you needed to graduate in one semester?” asked Calvin. “How many classes did you take?”

  Sara blushed. “Well I was a little behind, so I needed 12 classes to graduate. I was kind of on the 4.5 year plan to graduation.”

  “You took 12 classes in a single semester?” Calvin asked. “The most I ever took was six, and that nearly killed me!”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t have implants then, did you?” Sara smiled. “That’s not what I needed, though. I needed 12 classes to finish my art degree. On top of that, I needed another 22 to graduate with an applied physics degree. That is what truly sucked. The only thing that saved me was that I was able to finish most of my classes the first week.
I walked into all of my professors’ offices and asked to take their final exams with the condition that, if I passed them, I passed their classes. Almost all of my professors accepted the challenge, and I aced all of the exams.” Sara’s blush deepened. “It really wasn’t too hard with most of the knowledge of an advanced civilization in my head. The worst part, aside from having to do all of the labs, which I couldn’t get out of, was having to do physics applications. The general knowledge was there; figuring out how to apply it was hard.”

  “OK, I see how you were able to pass the exams, but how did you get the university to allow you to sign up for that many classes? How did your parents pay for it?”

  “I have Arges to thank for both of those,” replied Sara. “He met with the head of the Physics Department off campus somewhere and told him what he wanted for me. I think that Dr. Riccardi was initially hesitant to help, but then Arges got implants for him and got the National Science Foundation to award the university a giant grant. All of a sudden, Dr. Riccardi was my biggest fan, and he got the university to go along with it. As far as the university is concerned, I’m a late blooming child prodigy who is going to continue to bring them piles of research money and national acclaim.” She shrugged. “Arges also paid for all of the classes somehow. My parents don’t even know about this; they still think I’m an art major, not a physics prodigy. I’ve had to turn down three TV and newspaper stories to keep them from finding out anything about it.”

  The conversation paused again as their food and another round of drinks arrived.

  “I’m happy for you,” said Calvin, “but doesn’t it seem kind of unfair to pass all of those classes because you have implants? What is college going to look like once we start implanting everyone?”

  “I don’t know what college is going to look like,” said Sara, “but I’m sure it will be different.” She paused. “Yeah, I felt kind of bad acing all of those exams, almost like it was cheating, but then I thought about it. What is the purpose of final exams? To prove you have acquired the knowledge. Well, I have acquired all of the knowledge that the university tested me on...just not in the traditional way. It wasn’t cheating, though; I do have the knowledge. In fact, I could probably teach just about any class that UW has.”

  She paused a second and then commed, “One thing is interesting; although I have this wonderful data bank on astrophysical knowledge, my knowledge of astronomy seems limited. If I got all of the Psiclopes knowledge, shouldn’t I know the names of lots of planets and the races living on them? I don’t know any more of that stuff than I did before I got implants.”

  Calvin thought for a moment. “You know what? I don’t either. Interesting...I guess they must have blocked the transfer of that information. Makes you want to trust them, doesn’t it?” He smiled at her. “In any event, I’m really proud of you. Congratulations on your graduation!” praised Calvin. He got up to give her a hug. As he sat back down he asked, “So, why did the Psiclopes do all this? What do they have planned for you?”

  “You don’t know?” Sara asked. She sounded incredulous. “They haven’t told you?”

  “No one has told me anything about you,” replied Calvin. “What’s the secret?”

  “I’m going with you,” explained Sara. “Not on the first trip when you go out to test out the ship, but when you go out the second time for real. I’m going to be the Assistant Science Officer under Arges.”

  The waitress brought the check. Apparently the date didn’t go well, the waitress thought with a shrug. They barely spoke to each other the whole time.

  Deep Underground Command Center, Washington, DC, February 14, 2019

  Sir Henry Flowers, the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the UK, Mission to the UN, took the podium. An experienced diplomat with years of practice negotiating treaties, he had been selected to accompany the Vella Gulf as the Terran Government’s ambassador to whatever new civilizations might be found in the course of its mission. “I would like to thank everyone who’s come to participate in and bear witness to this discussion today. Your presence adds weight to what will be decided.”

  “Going forward,” continued Ambassador Flowers, “I will do all I can to support our common goal of reaching negotiated agreements with the societies we meet on our mission. This crisis requires bold, responsible leadership and active engagement with all like-minded civilizations, in order to meet and repulse the cultures that would do us harm. While many of the challenges in implementing this agenda lie beyond the topic of today’s debate, the central issue that must be decided today is what nations to contact.” He paused.

  “There are many instances of first contact with an alien civilization in the popular literary and motion picture establishments,” he continued. “Many of these discuss something along the lines of a ‘Prime Directive,’ which forbids interfering with the internal development of an alien civilization. A similar proviso has been used upon us by the Psiclopes as they have, in many instances, refused to transfer technology which they feel would alter the natural development of our society.”

  “During the course of the mission it is quite possible that we will come into contact with races that have not developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight. We must decide whether we want to hold tightly to a convention of this sort, or whether the nature of our circumstances is so dire as to require the aid of every civilization, regardless of their technology level.”

  “The question for debate is this, ‘Should we engage every civilization that we come upon or only those above a certain technology level?’”

  ‘Dark Side’ of the Moon, February 19, 2019

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Bullseye commed, stepping back from the side of Viper 01, which had been parked several hundred yards from the Vella Gulf, “I give you Viper 01, the squadron bird of Terran Space Fighter Squadron 1.” He pulled the cord, and the canvas cover that had been draped over the nose of the space fighter fell to the ground. The officers and enlisted of the squadron got their first look at the squadron insignia of SF-1, the Spacehawks, painted on the nose of the Viper. A large grey hawk was in the foreground, with a spaceship in each of its talons. The background was the blackness of space. Under the logo read the motto, ‘Primus et Primoris’ in gold lettering. Under the pilot’s cockpit was painted the name of the squadron commander, LCDR Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs.

  “For those of you that don’t speak Latin,” Calvin commed, “Primus et Primoris means ‘First and Foremost.’ Although right now we are the first and only space fighter squadron, there will be more. I mean for this squadron to always be the best!”

  “Gluck ab!” someone commed. The cry was quickly picked up by several others, and within seconds, all 106 men and women standing next to Viper 01 were shouting it.

  Damn, that is a good looking space fighter, thought Calvin, his eyes misting slightly.

  TSS Vella Gulf, ‘Dark Side’ of the Moon, February 20, 2019

  “We’re within a month of our March 13th departure date,” said Captain Deutch. “Let’s go around the table and get a status check.” The commanding officer of the Vella Gulf had called the meeting in the officers’ mess so that all of the ship’s officers and chiefs could be in attendance; he wanted to be sure that nothing got missed or left behind. They had grouped several tables in the center of the dining room around which the senior officers sat; the junior officers and chiefs sat at surrounding tables in an impromptu version of ‘stadium seating.’

  The ship’s administrative officer spoke first. In addition to being in charge of the ship’s paperwork process, he was also responsible for manpower, personnel and services. “We have almost our full complement of sailors onboard. We are down one petty officer who was severely injured in a car wreck in Virginia Beach yesterday, but the Bureau of Personnel already has a replacement for him. He will arrive next week, in time to get his implants and be ready to go as scheduled.”

  “The sailor didn’t end up at Virginia Beach General, did he?” asked
Captain Deutch, worried about what the civilian doctors would make of his implants.

  “No,” replied the admin officer. “They took him to Portsmouth Naval Hospital and the doctors have been given stern warnings to forget anything out of the ordinary that they might have seen.”

  “Good,” said Captain Deutch. “Next?”

  “I don’t have a lot to report, since the Psiclopes haven’t shared much with us,” said the ship’s intelligence officer. “We have all of the star charts that we can get our hands on, as well as all of the data that our scientists have been able to generate on possible exoplanets.” By this point, the entire crew had implants. No one had to ask what an exoplanet was; simply thinking the question furnished the information that it was a planet that orbited a star other than the Sun. “We’re as ready as we’re going to get.” He looked over to the operations officer, who was next.

  “I’ll be honest, skipper,” said the operations officer. “I’ve never felt this unprepared for deployment before. That being said, we have full loads of fuel, weapons and everything else I think will be needed, as well as everything that you or the Psiclopes have asked for. We’re as operationally ready as we can be.” He looked at the logistics officer.

  “We’ve got all the stores and spare parts that we can carry,” said the logistics officer. “We’ve also got plenty of blanks for the replicator to make into things we might need along the way. Being able to make our own spare parts will give us a readiness capability beyond any ship I’ve ever been on, which is helpful since there won’t be any ports to pull into to pick up anything we need later. We already have a full load of canned and dried foods, and we will be stocking up on fresh fruits and vegetables during the week prior to deployment.” He looked around as if he was expecting or daring anyone to disagree with him. “We’re as ready as we can be.”