by Marc Neuffer
In the facility, Noah and I had left the Engagement area, jogged down the linking corridor to the Harvest section. I stood just inside the doorway while Noah recorded the scene. A much smaller room, but similar setup; clear-capped toadstool canisters containing infants.
Just the name ‘harvest’ was enough to raise a gorge in my throat. In our analog VR, the Uppers were harvesting organs and stem cells from the infants; in their existence, it was not body parts, it was new, powerful energy. Energy they needed to stay on top of the Zee heap.
The Recycle area was too much for me. I wanted my gun. I was going to kill every one of those mother-fuckers ... slowly.
This room was a horror show. Dead infants, used up, piled high. Automated scoops collected hundreds of the small corpses in one motion, dumping them into hoppers. Their desiccated remains were processed into a nutrient slurry, to feed the living babies. I puked my guts up.
Retracing our steps back to our entry point, we consulted the map. A spur hallway led to an administrative area. We did our reset, then ghosted that passage. I was resolved; if I met an Upper, they were going to die. To hell with any consequences. Noah knew me, he kept reminding me we were here to stop a universal war, not for individual vendettas. I proposed; we could do both.
Like all the other areas, this one was empty of Uppers. It took a while, but we found the documents Noah was sure would be there; an unabridged record of the facility and the wars the Uppers had started. To get it all, to make room, we had to remove some of the contents of our packs. Dad had taught us to leave no tech behind, so we dropped all our left-behinds into a shredder-compactor.
✽ ✽ ✽
As I walked into the commons area, I heard raised voices and felt hot emotions flowing. Adam was arguing that it was too soon to release the information, more ground level preparations were needed. Thomas was a firebrand, wanting immediate retribution. When Roger and Dodger sided with Thomas, Adam relented. The material, in whole, would be released tomorrow, in the early morning.
It was going to get nasty, very quickly. While individually, the Uppers had power well beyond the level of hundreds of Lowers, a combined uprising of millions would dwarf their resources. In our VR, and in their domain, this was to be the Upper’s last night as king of the hill.
✽ ✽ ✽
The fires started about noon; towering flames raged skyward. As night wrapped about us, the conflagration subsided into a glowing pile on the horizon, still lighting the hills. Finally, next morning, out of fuel, the Upper’s enclave was nothing but ash. Those few dozen, who escaped, were surrounded by a righteous citizenry. Cries for mercy, declarations of not having known, or not having been involved, further incensed the Lowers. Lies, and more lies.
From the hillside, I watched. All night, weeping for those lost children. Noah tried to comfort me. I wanted no comfort. Those babies had none. I wanted my flame to burn bright.
Over the next few weeks, those children, who could be recovered and rehabilitated were placed in the care of Lower Zees who could oversee their emergence from hell. The babies, from the Harvesting area could not be brought back. In our analog VR, they were all brain dead. They were interned in prepared, hallow ground. Grounds that had once been the Upper’s playground.
We could have gone back as soon as the Engagement center had been shut down, but Adam and I wanted to remain a while longer. To see the final end of this horror, this holocaust. There would never be any Uppers again. The First Created were gone, swept away by revolution. The Lowers would have the freedom, and the responsibility, to chart their own course, for the first time since creation, fourteen billion years ago.
✽ ✽ ✽
Our team sat in a VR restaurant in the downtown area. I was surprised at how fast a semblance of normality had been restored. People were still angry, still talking about what had happened two months ago, but they faced their new lives and each other with cooperation and a high level of expectancy.
As we pretended to eat, we observed the Zees moving past. “They don’t know what they want yet, but they don’t seem to be in a hurry to fill the vacuum left by the Uppers.”
Adam responded, “Noah, they may never fill it. Some want no government; some want a congress similar to the one being put together on our side. They are all in agreement; contact beyond their dimensions is not something they want, or need, to be involved in.
✽ ✽ ✽
Adam was, as he put it, tying up loose ends. I think he was considering staying, to help guide the Zees forward. He had lots of visitors at the ranch. Some came to thank him, others simply needed to be able to say they’d shared space with him, if just for a short time. A few lobbied him to take the prime leadership position. I let that ride for a few days.
As we sat on the porch, watching the sunset, I leaned over to Adam, handing him something I’d conjured up. He took the thin paper, fingers tracing the edges, looking at it, studying. It was a photograph of his wife, children and three grandchildren.
We would be leaving for home tonight.
PART 3: PEACE
30 Intercultural
Intercultural: between people of different cultures including different religious groups or people of different national origins
✽✽✽
We gathered in the commons room, Adam in the middle, Noah and I on either side, Roger and Dodger at each end of our semicircle. We tried to remember if that had been our original configuration, everyone thought it had been, but no one was absolutely certain. It felt like we’d been gone much longer than the year plus we’d spent in VR.
Joining hands, Noah and I, linked by the rings, thought of home, or rather the alcove on the Mintic world.
While we got the arrangement right, we’d forgotten, at the start of our journey, we had been crouching, as we were now, facing Martin and the rest. It felt like I’d instantly shrunk when my point of view shifted down about two feet. I heard Mom finishing a question.
“... they leaving?”
Mom, Dad, Surrons, Bears, everybody, everything, all coming back to me, more than memories. We stood, then stepped down from the alcove platform. It was surreal to say the least.
I gave a small hand wave, “Hi, Mom, were back.”
Bears closed in, fussing, taking readings. I glanced at Dad. “The war’s over, at least at that end.” I noticed Dr. Fount was observing us closely, looking for residual psychological effects, I suspect. I was going to talk to her about the holocaust. She’s very good at listening. Mom hugged me, asking if I was alright.
“Everything’s fine now. Don’t worry.” I tried to smile, but failed. Yeah, a few sessions with Fount were needed. I’d have to pull Noah along for those, like I had done to get him to our first school dance.
Dad hugged Noah. Then they switched. One of the Bears collected our rings, placing them in an ornately carved box. I don’t know about the others, but I was glad to be rid of mine.
A small release, a beginning of closure, came when we boarded Snake, Mom’s ship. I’d grown up in, or around him, depending on what age I’d been. One of my first memories were of being pulled back from the edge of a ladder well by a ship’s bot, as I’d crawled to follow Mom.
Years later, she said I had been much too young to remember that, but the mind knows what it knows. I had remembered.
✽ ✽ ✽
The wars were still going on. Nothing in our reality could be cured in less than a second; momentum is still momentum. At least the Zees weren’t whispering, goading, or manipulating anymore.
I’d made up my mind, I was going to detach from my work with the Bear engineers and join Mom’s Marines or dads’ covert group. Noah said he was returning to the lab and the discoveries that awaited.
Before he left, to return to his family, I talked with Adam. We’d spent over a year together, with him as our team lead. I’d come to respect his balanced and measured pace in executing our plans in the VR.
He considered both paths I had seen as my way forward, suggest
ing I would soon tire of the Marines. He thought I needed a wider field to explore. Joining the covert group would provide that. But first, I should get further training in two areas; the political side and the spy side. Perhaps a fifty-fifty mix of both for six months, at a minimum.
Talking it over with Dad, I started work with his political assistant. My education as a spy was lessons with Martin on the situational part of the craft, and with Roger and Dodger on the more physical side; martial arts, weapons, sneaking about and team field dynamics.
✽ ✽ ✽
I hadn’t realized how big congress had grown in such a short time. Five hundred and thirty-eight races had joined. Not all had embassies on Congress World. Many conducted business by Q-conferences. Now that the Zee intrusions were over, we could drop the dark-tech and really open up communications with other species.
My job as assistant political advisor, covert ops, was mostly that of holding a tablet for Baker, a Surron; Dad’s real advisor. Even so, it gave me exposure to the inner workings of congress and how policy was formed. I quickly learned that the Bears were the glue that kept it all together. They had become the ad hoc mediators in differences of opinion, big or small. Doctor Shale, the Bears head congressional political guru, called their process the ‘fifth way’; something to do with conflict-utilization. It was ingrained in their DNA.
✽ ✽ ✽
I’m sure I looked as strange to them as they did to me. I’d met about a half-dozen species representatives on Shangri La, but here, on Congress World, was a wide spread of beings; all shapes and sizes. The first time I met a Centaur, I almost laughed. I had to learn, and learn quickly, how to maintain a pleasant poker face. I did that by imagining myself at a huge costume party.
Before any first meeting or interaction with another species, everyone had to take a protocol exam covering the social niceties for that race. Even the most casual motion or word could result in a huge insult or horrified response.
Rule number one: never ask what they ate or how they reproduced.
Rule number two, at least for humans, and a very few others: never show your teeth when you smiled.
Rule number three: allow yourself to be sniffed. That was a tough one for me, until I learned to sniff right back.
There were over seven hundred basic rules, in fifty-three categories. I thought quantum engineering had been tough in college. This was harder, especially when more than one other race was at a meeting or working on policy development. At least, I could take a quick peek at my tablet before meetings as a protocol refresher. I noticed a lot of folks did that.
Baker and I worked on gaining approval for specific covert ops. Actions which would proceed intervention, then mediation contact with warring races. The congressional review panel wasn’t interested so much in the how, but more in the who and where. Somebody, deep in the bowels of the congressional building, was pushing pins in maps of the universe.
Most of our covert missions weren’t very covert. We were given wide latitude once in the neighborhood. As long as we didn’t ring the opposing race’s home worlds with battleships, we had a relatively free hand. Chalk that up to Dad’s previous work and reputation.
✽ ✽ ✽
Martin, as head of operations, built a spy school on a nice little planet, a few systems over from the Congressional World. He didn’t call it a spy school, but that’s what it was. I attended classes there for half a day, every day, no days off. Dad said there were no days off on missions, no days off in space. Roger and Dodger were instructors there; I think they’re closet-sadists. Though, their grueling, physical course was a painful pleasure after attending xeno-phycology and physiology classes. I enjoyed the strategy and tactics course the most, especially when we got to use the simulators and VR hard-light trainers.
Every week we were divided into new teams of five for classes, study, and exercises. Martin wanted a complete mixing of his operatives, no culture clashes. There were about twenty other humans in the class of three hundred, many had come from special forces. One was my age, very cute. He asked me on a date, then revoked the invitation with a lame excuse, when he found out who my dad was. After that, I was tagged as DOH; Daughter of Hornblower.
I did make a few non-human friends. One was a Teriqu, a member of a diminutive race of asexual beings. Small does not translate to weak or meek. Sweq easily threw me across the training mat a few times until I relented and used my fast-twitch capabilities. I try to keep that in check, but nobody is going to toss me more than two out of five.
Martin said I could graduate early by testing out of the flight school section. I’d flown Snake and Surron fighters with my Mom since I was ten. The special ops ships were the same design, just slightly larger than Snake, with a few additional operational capabilities. For me, navigation was as easy as making a ham sandwich; an old joke of uncle Mica’s. Not wanting the appearance of special favors, I stayed with my class.
31 Intervention
Intervention: a combination of elements or strategies designed to produce behavior changes or improve conditions among individuals or an entire population.
✽✽✽
My first field op was being led by Dad’s old partner, Sargent Reeves. We didn’t have rank in the covert group, but everyone on the team, knew I was the newbie; the pot scraper.
The other three members were two Surrons and one Bear. Turns out, not all bears are as gun shy as the race in general. They did have a home space force for search and rescue as well as big rock interdiction. As a side job, they had been in constant upgrade preparations for what they had predicted as inevitable contact with other spacefaring species. A very pragmatic and Bear like attitude. Mom and Dad had been their first contact.
We were twinned with another ops group. Dual ship missions had become the norm since I’d helped develop the torus-pusher tech. Drones didn’t have enough power to act as one arm of the triangle.
We were in an unvisited galaxy, gathering intel on two warring species; culture, tech level, physiology, psychology and, of course the cause of the war. We were scooping up everything for our AIs to analyze. Strangely, for such advanced races, neither had full quantum-based AIs, they were still in the Q-holographic stage of computing. Our Ranger-AI clone, Johnathan, sucked their computer brains dry in two minutes flat. Ricardo, on the other ship, did the same.
It’s very rare for a galaxy to have two interstellar capable species, rarer still that they be so evenly matched. We’d only encountered that once before. The Centaur and Raptors had been at each other’s throats. Mom and Dad had to intervene during a small clash between them. It had been their last mission together; recovering the remaining Surron Library. That was decades before the congress initiative.
Each of our ships were surveying what looked like an old fashion power play between fleets. Thirty on one side, twenty-seven on the other. Each had a huge, well defended command ship laying back behind the lines. This melee was only one of several in this galaxy. Others involved ground forces playing a bloody and vicious game of capture the flag.
In this space battle, one side had their ships configured in a cube, while the other adopted a cone shape, open end facing the enemy. Except for the upcoming and unnecessary deaths, this was going to be interesting to watch. We were looking ahead to their execution of the tactical plans we’d stolen and had already evaluated. The cube folks were going to get torn up. Knowing how a species, at war, would react was important data to have before intervention and peacekeeping.
As the fleets narrowed the gap from 500K klicks apart, both launched fighter squadrons, kinetic hyper-shot and drones. They were holding back their energy weapons, expecting a softening up by their fighters and now advancing frigate formations.
Both fleets had started out with the cube advancing and the cone retreating, maintaining a constant separation. An hour earlier, the cone had stopped moving back; the cube was in their trap. Frigates and fighters on both sides engaged, attempting to diminish the other’s picket forc
es and breakthrough to their enemy’s main battle line. Beam weapons soon joined the fray.
With both sides fully engaged, a cone force, previously lying dark, attacked the five, naked sides of the cube. The sixth side was facing the main cone force. Forty cruiser class ships were on a full-bore vector to pierce the cube on each of those unsuspecting sides.
As the cruisers sped through the cube, they released drones close in, exploding high energy nukes to blind the opposing force’s scanners. Mayhem reigned as the cube dissolved into fragments unable to support each other. It was a massacre as the cone advanced, then opened, to engulf and chew up any remaining effectives on the other side. Few cube ships escaped the engulfment. The cone forces lost three frigates with four others damaged.
✽ ✽ ✽
We held an after action hot-wash. Discussing the pros and cons of the tactics used on both sides. Sargent Reeves aimed a question at me.
“Sarah, why did each side adopt their respective deployment geometry?”
I started to fudge, trying to remember anything from my tactics class that might apply.
“Don’t sweat it, I cheated and looked at their respective evolutionary development in their historical files. The cone forces evolved from aquatic mammals who were filter feeders. Pressures from predators pushed them to the surface of shallow sea areas, from there, they evolved to land only creatures, who netted fish for food. You get the connection? The cone was their net.
“The other side evolved from land animals similar to turtles, carrying their hardened box homes with them, for defense. Now, look at humans. We evolved as hunter gatherers. We still use the same hunting strategies and techniques and apply them to military situations, with the same instinctive 2D spatial awareness.
“We have to train that limitation out of every recruit, whether ground, air or space. We train them to think 3D; X, Y and Z axis. Nothing causes butt-clenching more than when an unprepared soldier is attacked from below ground, or from what a poorly trained pilot thinks of as underneath, from around the curve of a planet.”