“I ducked down behind the ridge and configured my omniphone for periscope mode, then looked again. I could make out more detail of the feathered crest, and the skin was rough, or scaled. It had no beak. At that point the creature looked directly at me and then back at the device in its hands, whereupon my omni screen went blank. My assumption is that it was being jammed, because it recovered full functionality a few minutes later.
“When I raised my head above the ridge to look again, the creature, the alien, was no longer in sight. As there were no obvious points of concealment, my conjecture is that it had some sort of advanced camouflage or stealth capability.
“Later, when Maclaren examined the camera I had retrieved, she found nothing wrong with it. Subsequently, we had other signs of possible disturbance of scientific instruments at remote locations, although they were neither damaged nor did they record any anomalies. Video surveillance of those sites experience data dropouts during the time the equipment was disturbed.
“In the three-plus Earth years between those occurrences and the arrival of the Endeavour, there were no further sightings. I did not discuss this sighting with the rest of the crew until we spotted the Endeavour and her sister ships in orbit. I discussed it then because the V-Class ships were unfamiliar to us, and with our communications inoperative, we didn’t know who or what they might be.”
The report went on about Sawyer being regarded as a reliable observer, no official action required, and so on. Not unlike the old Project Blue Book reports Carson and Brown had spent considerable time wading through. A close encounter of the third kind, as they used to call it. Except this one rung true. Carson himself had met aliens, or rather, a single alien, who seemed to match what Sawyer had seen. He let out a low whistle, then looked up at Ducayne again.
“That figure she saw. That might well be a Kesh.”
Ducayne nodded. “Yes, that’s what I thought, but I haven’t seen one. You have. Interesting.”
“That means the Kesh were keeping an eye on Camp Anderson, at least at first. I wonder if they did anything to help them survive.”
“And if so, why?” Ducayne shook his head. “I would really like to know what the Kesh are playing at. At least they don’t seem hostile, but I can’t take that for granted. That goes against my job.”
“To say nothing of your personality,” Carson said, and grinned. “You are a professional paranoid.”
Ducayne shrugged. “I’ve never denied it.”
“So, does that change your decision about keeping the Kesh secret?” So far that had been easy. The one Kesh who Carson—along with his timoan colleague Marten and human pilot Jackie Roberts—had met had been in the Zeta Reticuli system, forty-four light-years away, although their pyramid-like ships had been spotted at Chara and Epsilon Eridani. And if old space-hand rumors were to be believed, elsewhere too.
“Not in the least. This report is still classified, and while we’ve met low-tech aliens, as far as most of humanity knows humans are still the most advanced species in T-Space since the Terraformers themselves, who are long gone. The last thing we want to do is give the Velkaryan xenophobes any more ammunition. Did you hear about what’s happening in Venezuela?”
“I don’t follow Earth politics.”
“Maybe you should. Sure, most of the planet is self-centered, but Earth is still the most powerful planet in T-Space by orders of magnitude. Anyway, the Velkaryans have a political party running in the Venezuela elections. It’s doing alarmingly well.” He glanced up at an array of displays on his wall, each displaying a map of a different inhabited world, and below the map, the planet’s current standard calendar date and time.
The maps were each shaded to depict the current day-night cycle on that planet. Carson knew that each could be switched to show the time in the past or future representing the date a ship would have left there to reach here now, or would arrive there if leaving from here now. Physics might prevent Ducayne from running off-world operations in anything like real time, but he made sure that was the only thing preventing him. Of course, no information about where Ducayne’s agents might be was currently being displayed.
“In fact,” Ducayne continued, “I think the election is going on today.” He shrugged. “Not my department, anyway. We’ll hear soon enough.”
Carson handed back the data-pad. “Any other contact reports by the Anderson crew, or since then? Better yet, any pictures or sketches?”
“Not that I’m aware of. There are some other reports whose classification was recently dropped. You might be better off talking to Sawyer herself.”
“I doubt that will ever happen.”
“Why not? She has a place in town, although she likes her privacy as much as the other original landers. I might be able to set it up.”
Carson peered at Ducayne. He was serious, of course. Sawyer must be what, in her late eighties or early nineties now? What would he say to get her to listen to him? He had an idea.
“Do you have an artist? Like a sketch artist for drawing things a witness has seen?”
“We’re not a police agency, but we’ve got software like that, yes.”
“Which I’m probably not familiar with. I can sketch artifacts and ruins, but I’ve never been good at drawing people. Do you have someone I could work with? I’d like to get a sketch of Ketzshanass and see if it looks familiar to Sawyer.”
“That’s a good idea. We should have had a sketch like that made for the files anyway.” Ducayne thought for a moment, then looked something up on his computer console. “Yes, perfect,” he said to himself, then looked at Carson. “Do you know a Doctor Bob Williams at the university?”
The name sounded familiar. “I think so. Paleontologist?”
“That’s right. Talented artist too, and discreet. I’ll set it up. Don’t tell him the circumstances, just describe your Kesh to him. He doesn’t need to know the rest.”
“You have a paleontologist on call? Why?”
“And you don’t need to know that,” Ducayne said. “But it’s for his artistic talent, too.”
The answer frustrated but didn’t surprise Carson. And he knew better than to try to ask Williams either. “Okay.”
“Anyway,” Ducayne said, “thanks for checking into the Kesh involvement. I’ll let you know when I get the meetings with Williams and with Sawyer set up, or if there’s anything else.”
Carson recognized the dismissal, and rose to leave. As he reached the door, Ducayne spoke again.
“Carson, I might have something else I want your opinion on. You’ll be around, won’t you?”
“I don’t have any travel plans, if that’s what you mean,” Carson said, wondering what Ducayne might be referring to. “Is this about the Belize find?”
“Probably not. Thank you, that’s all.”
As Carson closed the door behind him, the phrasing nagged at him. Probably not? What did that mean? He hoped he’d have a need to know.
CHAPTER 10: PLANET SKEAD
Roberts
A few hours ago: Skead Spaceport, Tau Ceti III-1
JACKIE ROBERTS BANKED the Sophie onto final approach at 200 meters, bleeding off airspeed and aiming for a point a third of the way down the long runway. She checked the panel: gear down, thrusters at idle. As she crossed the runway threshold, she pulled back gently into pre-flare and began powering up the vertical thrusters. Hold it off, hold it off . . . now!
Roberts eased the Sophie’s nose up, goosed the thrusters, and let forward motion bleed off, gracefully settling the Sophie down onto the runway surface, continuing her roll-out to turn off onto the adjacent paved apron, and stopped.
She touched a control to change her comm frequency, and said “Skead Ground, Sophie is clear the runway, requesting taxi clearance to pad three-seven.” They’d already have her ship’s details from her data squawk when she entered atmosphere.
“Sophie this is Ground. Nicely done, Jackie, and welcome home. Cleared at your discretion, report arrival.”
She grinned to herself. That had sounded like George in the tower.
“Copy cleared to three-seven. And thanks, it’s good to be back.”
It was good to be back, despite the higher gravity. She’d been away from Tau Ceti for nearly a year. Not that she had family here or even a place to live—she generally stayed aboard the Sophie to save costs—but it had been her base of operations for several years now. She had friends here, and a few worldly goods in storage that were impractical to keep aboard a small starship.
Halfway through her shutdown checklist, the Sophie’s data cargo computer system beeped and flashed a message saying that it had finished synchronizing its data load with the planetary network. A few moments later, it chimed again to let Jackie know there were personal messages waiting for her on the local net. Since the Sophie’s last sync was just over a week ago at Taprobane, and a week before that at Sawyers World, this was probably something recent, either local or directly from Sol or Alpha Centauri. She’d check it later; a few minutes wouldn’t make a difference.
She finished safing the engines and generally securing the Sophie from space. The mail would keep a while longer; she liked to make it a point of making sure her ship was taken care of before anything else. She checked her manifest. There was nothing urgent in the physical cargo she was carrying, which was mostly just small packages. She put a call through to the port cargo office to have someone come and offload it. Now it was time for some dirty work. She headed back to the main hatch.
Connecting up the water and air purge lines to the ground fittings in her parking area went quickly. Next was the larger sludge hose. That was the dirty part. She flipped the cover plate off the drain fitting and attached one end of the hose to it. Dragging the hose with her, she crouched down under the Sophie’s hull and opened the hatch covering the connector to the life-support waste management system, and secured the hose. An indicator lit up green, the seal was good. She’d just started the pump when a flatbed dolly pulled up next to the ship.
“Roberts of the Sophie?” a young man in orange spaceport coveralls asked.
“That’s me,” she said, coming out from under the hull. “You the cargo office?” He looked like he was barely out of his teens. That didn’t necessarily mean much given the current state of biomedicine, but there was an eager, somewhat naive wide-eyed air about his expression. He was stockily built, which suggested he may have spent many of his earlier years here on Skead or, less likely, some other high gravity world.
“Affirm. David Tefera. Pleased to meet you.” He held out a hand.
Roberts peeled off her gloves to shake his hand. “Jackie Roberts. Have you been working here long? I think you’re new since I was last here.”
“Yes ma’am. Just a couple of months. Looking to get a chance on a ship sometime.”
Ah, to be so young and eager again. Of course, Jackie had been on and off starships as long as she could remember—she’d been born on one, although on-planet, not in space—so it wasn’t quite the adventure to her that it seemed to young David here. But . . . .
“Never been on a ship? Are you native?” The Tau Ceti colony was about thirty years old, it was possible.
He nodded. “Yes’m. My folks were part of the second wave. Coffee farmers. We have a plantation up on Mount Sharon.”
Ah, that would explain the farm-boy air, too. I should have let him hook up the sludge hose. No, that would be taking advantage.
“I’m looking forward to Tau Cetan coffee again. Anyway, let’s get my cargo unloaded.”
“Yes ma’am”.
“And lay off the ‘ma’am’. Call me Jackie, or if it’s official, Captain Roberts. Only crew calls me ‘ma’am’, and I don’t have crew at the moment.”
He looked up at that. Hopeful? “Er, yes ma—, er, Jackie. Just being polite.”
“Nothing wrong with that. But let’s get this done.” She touched a sequence on her wrist omni, and the Sophie opened the aft hatch nearest the cargo compartment.
∞ ∞ ∞
In an hour, they had a just under a ton of packages and containers piled up on the flatbed, all duly transferred from her manifest to David’s data-pad. She checked her list. “That’s it. Not much this time.”
“Yeah, we had a ship in from Alpha Centauri a few days ago, and I guess Epsilon Indi doesn’t ship much out.” The kid had been paying attention. “Hopefully you’ll have more cargo for your next destination. You going back to Alpha Cen or Taprobane? Or . . . ?” His voice trailed off and he looked at her expectantly.
Jackie grinned. “In my business it’s more like me going where the cargo wants to than vice versa. It depends what’s available.”
“Ah, sure. Well, I should get this load back to the warehouse.” He turned and put a foot up on the flatbed, hesitated, then turned back.
“Yes?”
“Uh, if you happen to need someone to help with cargo, or anything else on your next trip . . . , well, I’m available.”
She’d been right. This kid wanted off-planet. “Thanks, David. I’m generally not doing crew these days, my margins are too slim, but I’ll keep that in mind.” No way would she ship out with a space newbie. Carson’s timoan friend Marten was bad enough, with his innate aversion to free-fall, but she didn’t want that on top of some kid’s first time away from home. But there was no reason to tell him all that.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have to—” he started to say, then broke off. “Uh, sure, thanks. Oh, one other thing?”
“Yes?”
“If you’re looking for some on-spec cargo, my family has some of the best coffee on the planet, and we’ll do small lots.”
“Really? That’s good to know.” Roberts preferred just to do the shipping and let someone else worry about the buying and selling, but as portable, high-value and easy-to-sell cargoes went, Tau Cetan coffee ranked pretty highly. Just so long as her next port was away from the established markets; she couldn’t compete with the high-volume dealers. “Send the details to my ship. If it makes sense for my next haul, I give them a call.”
“Sure thing,” he beamed. “Okay then. See you around the port?”
“I’ll be around.” She held out her hand. “Good to meet you, David.”
“And you.” He shook her hand, remounted the flatbed, and drove off toward the warehouse end of the port building.
She watched him go. His family name, Tefera, did sound familiar when it came to the local coffee trade, although it wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to the specifics of. She wondered why David was hanging around the spaceport if he was part of that. She shrugged, then turned back to the Sophie. The sludge system was done, so she gloved up again; this was potentially the messiest part. After disconnecting and stowing the hose she headed back inside to check the level on the water tanks.
The blinking message light caught her attention. Right, she’d had mail. She touched a control to display the list. It wasn’t a question of who knew she was here, the message would have bounced around the various planetary networks until it eventually caught up with the Sophie, but she generally didn’t get much. A job, maybe? She looked at the message, and the sender name.
“Quiche Desjardins? Who or what is Quiche Desjardins? Am I getting spam?” Unlikely. Her filters were excellent, and the penalties for sending junk messages, especially interstellar junk messages, were draconian. She considered just deleting it unread, then the initials clicked. Quiche Desjardins. QD. Quentin Ducayne.
Oh sludge. It probably was a job. And it was probably one she wasn’t going to like.
CHAPTER 11: STIRRING THE POT
Vaughan
A week ago: Tanith
KLAUS VAUGHAN AND the rest of the Carcharodon crew had been on-planet for nearly four weeks now. Vaughan himself was staying in a guest room at the local Church of Divine Stellar Providence. It was hardly luxurious, even in comparison with his cabin on the Carcharodon, but he saw enough of that while in space. He sat at the small table drinking coffe
e and scanning the news feed on his data pad. There wasn’t much there to hold his attention. At least he was making some progress with recruiting.
It turned out that although Tanith had no native aliens, there were several farmsteads settled by timoans. The politics of that disgusted Vaughan, something about encouraging cross-cultural fertilization and good relations with the more influential clan matriarchs on Taprobane. The theory was that the timoans, being not too far from the iron age heritage and developing on a terraformed planet, might be well-suited to helping tame a new planet which had limited resources. Vaughan felt it was nonsense: if humans built more ships they could just import the necessary technology. Some of the settled planets were already close to being able to build ships of their own. Probably more than Homeworld Security and the Union de Terre realize, thought Vaughan, although Verdigris wasn’t completely autonomous yet.
There was little interaction in Harp City with timoans, they were mostly clustered several hundred kilometers southwest, but the locals knew of them. A little rumor mongering and muckraking about how the timoans would eventually cut into living space for humans helped. Hell, it might even be true.
The human colonies on Tanith, of which Harp City was by far the biggest, were still too small and too loosely organized for serious organized crime. There were a few gangs, but small and more inclined to petty crimes and hooliganism than anything that took much organization. With few regulations against most human vices, there weren’t the niches that organized crime tended to flourish in. It was a frontier world; it was easy enough to pack up and move away from trouble.
But there was still a level of bureaucracy and law enforcement that some folks would pay to avoid, either in money or favors. Vaughan was quite used to working that angle. His team had already hooked into the trading system to get an edge when unconsigned cargo came in. He’d also gained influence with the local spaceport board, and had been encouraging them to raise fees to pay for improvements. The local port could stand some upgrades but that wasn’t the point. It would ultimately raise the cost of imports, and that, and the resentment it would cause, Vaughan could leverage in several ways.
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