Exiles of Earth: Rebellion

by Richard Tongue

  “And perpetuate your own tyranny, on and on.”

  “You might not like me, Doctor. I don’t like me, sometimes. But you’ve got to admit that the alternative is a hell of a lot worse. You want the mob to rule? You want to experience the true tyranny, the tyranny of the majority over the minority? My parents made sure that I was very carefully educated in the alternatives we face. I probably know the history of Earth better than you do.”

  “If a somewhat biased version.”

  “Oh, all of us are biased, Doctor. As we discussed, you believe I murdered a hero of the people, and I believe a put down a piece of vermin who, if the roles were reversed, would have been only too happy to kill me instead. What price morality?” Reaching for the bottle, he said, “You’ve hardly touched your wine.”

  “I haven’t touched it at all. Nor do I intend do.”

  “I thought I made it an order.” He smiled, and said, “You really should consider accepting the political reality of this mission. If it fails, Ikande gets the blame. If it succeeds, I get the reward. Those who are sensible will share in that reward. Another expedition for you, Doctor, or a place in the Colonial Administration. We’re going to need experts to rule the new world, after all. Or should I say, to advice the local government in the proper order of things. I’m sure the politicians will come up with a better way to put it.”

  “If I had known what you would have done…”

  “Be careful, Doctor. You’re dancing with insubordination, rebellion. I’ve already been preparing a very detailed report on the political activities of certain members of the crew, and it will certainly find its way into a lot of hands when we get home. At the moment, you are barely referenced, but that can change very, very quickly. Either positively, or negatively. The choice is up to you. Now, how about that drink.”

  Looking him straight in the eyes, she picked up her wine glass, and deftly upended it, spilling the contents onto the deck. Replacing it on the table, she turned, walking out of the room, Fitzroy chuckling as she left.

  “The offer remains open, Doctor. At least for now.”

  The door slid shut, and she slumped against the wall, staring back at the sealed hatch with undisguised horror. Fitzroy genuinely considered himself in the right, on the side of the angels. There had even been moments when he might have convinced her. Saboteur or not, Fitzroy was the most dangerous man on the ship.

  And worst of all, he knew it.

  Chapter 27

  Mitchell looked at the viewscreen, waiting for Endurance to emerge from hyperspace. The whole crew were watching, the display piped through the ship to every terminal, the Captain wanting them all to share in the excitement of the moment. If they were right, this would be one of the great moments of human history, the first time a major lost colony had ever been discovered.

  He turned back to his console, adjusting his course. The unexpected delay at the rogue planet had reaped one unexpected dividend, providing them with additional sensor data about their target. The world they were approaching had a large moon, as large as Luna, giving a potential blind spot for their approach, a gap in any orbital sensor net. It might not last for long, but it would give Endurance a chance to properly survey the local area before their arrival. Just in case there was something waiting for them they couldn’t handle.

  “All decks report cleared for action, sir,” Fitzroy reported from Tactical, all business now. He looked at the weapon status reports with barely disguised relish, eager to test his skills on a new enemy. “Turrets charged, missile salvo in the tubes.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant,” Ikande, implacable as ever, replied. “There will be no shooting unless I give a direct order. If we can conclude our business peacefully, we will do so. We’re not going to start a fight today.” Turning to Fitzroy, he added, “But if necessary, we will finish one.”

  “Yes, sir,” the arrogant officer replied, Mitchell shaking his head as he returned to his station.

  “Helm, are you clear for egress?” Ikande asked.

  “Aye, Captain,” Petrov replied. “Thirty seconds and counting.”

  “Bianchi, I’m going to want full passive sensors as soon as we arrive. I want a first-guess report on the status of local space within one minute of our emergence. Comm traffic as well. Given their origins, they will presumably be speaking English, but have the translation programs ready, just in case.”

  Nodding, the technician replied, “I’ve prepared Spanish, French and Russian, sir.”

  “Russian?” Mitchell asked. “These people launched from the United States. I might buy Spanish…”

  “One of the traditional spacefaring languages, sir.”

  “Hell, for all we know they’ll be chattering away in Sanskrit,” Fitzroy replied. “In which case I have eight missile tubes of ‘good morning’, ready and waiting.”

  “Not unless I give the order,” Ikande repeated.

  “Five seconds, sir. Systems ready.”

  The ship almost imperceptibly shuddered as it emerged from hyperspace, the stars instantly appearing on the screen, now in new positions, the constellations scrambled in space. Mitchell looked at the unfamiliar view, a faint smile on his face. He’d spent most of the last two decades this far from Sol, out beyond the usual shipping routes. Oddly, it almost felt as though he’d come home.

  “Contact, close astern!” Bianchi yelled. “Looks like a cargo shuttle, atmospheric design.”

  “I have a firing solution,” Fitzroy offered.

  “Anything else?” Ikande asked. “What’s the ship’s course?”

  “No sign of any installations on the surface of the moon, a couple of non-functional satellites, but that’s about all. The shuttle is hanging at the L2 point, about five thousand miles from our current location. She’s just sitting there, sir. I doubt she knows what to make of us.”

  “I guess we’re making First Contact a little earlier than we thought,” Ikande replied. “Full active sensor scan on that shuttle and send the data down to Chief Nguyen for analysis. I want to know his interpretation of the technological level of the society we’re facing. Certainly, that shuttle isn’t two centuries old. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “We’re being hailed, sir,” Bianchi replied. “Audio only, on a tightbeam transmission. I guess whoever is on that shuttle doesn’t want to be overheard.”

  “Interesting,” Ikande replied. “Let’s not keep them in suspense. Patch me in.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “This is Captain Solomon Ikande, of the Commonwealth Starship Endurance. To whom am I speaking, please?”

  With a deep yet feminine voice, the overhead speaker barked, “This is Captain Elizabeth Watson, Chief Executive Officer of Curtiss Incorporated, and commander of the Mining Scout Curtiss.”

  “Grand title,” Fitzroy said, a smirk on his face.

  “Captain Watson, do you formally represent your government?”

  “No,” she replied. “Do you?”

  With a smile, Ikande said, “My mission is to establish contact with your people. I’ll admit currently that we have very little information about your settlement, other than the very fact of your existence, and that our selection of this spot for our emergence from hyperspace was to give us a chance to gather information. I’d like to request that you come aboard our ship.”

  “Those missile tubes of yours seem to make it more than a request,” Watson replied.

  “We had to be careful. For all we knew, we were flying into the territory of the Fourth Reich.”

  With a faint chuckle, the speaker said, “Nothing as bad as that. I’ll come on board on the condition that I am involved with the negotiations. I don’t want the government taking full control. Corporate interests must have a say as well, and at the very least, that means me. Otherwise, I’ll hit my engines full throttle. I don’t know how fast those missiles of yours are, but I’m pretty sure that I can get into line of sight with Atlantis before you bring me down.”

  “Atlantis? That’s the na
me of your world?”

  “Don’t you even know that much?”

  “It’s a long story, Captain, and I’ll be more than happy to share it with you. I agree to your terms. Do you have a standard docking adapter?”

  “We haven’t changed the design since we left. Is yours compatible?”

  “I don’t think you’ll have any problems making contact. We’ll send out a homing beacon from one of our airlocks. You can link in there. Spaceman Bianchi will talk you in. Endurance out.” Turning to the communications technician, he said, “Make it Airlock Seven-Three, Spaceman. Somewhere nice and out of the way.” Turning to Mitchell, he added, “Go down and meet her. Keep non-committal, keep quiet, but find out as much as you can. I’ll send Doctor Thiou along as well. I suppose she’s earned the right to have a look at the first fruits of her discovery.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’d like Security to stay out of sight, at least for the moment. I don’t think we want to open with intimidation. I very much get the impression that we’ll be able to make a deal with Captain Watson.” Glancing at the viewscreen, he added, “She’s not unlike quite a few of my former employers.”

  “That’s one reason you’re going to meet her. We’ll hold position for the present, continue our observations, but I want to proceed to orbit Atlantis within an hour. Right now, every radio astronomer on the planet will be wondering what the hell is going on behind their largest moon, and I don’t want to give them too much time to prepare for our arrival. Make it quick, Lieutenant.”

  “Understood, sir. I’m on my way.” He logged out of his terminal and walked to the elevator, the doors closing as soon as he passed the threshold. He tugged out his tablet, quickly skimming over the information on the display, the sensor feeds from the approaching shuttle. It was a robust design, short winglets perfectly suitable for atmospheric flight, stout thrusters that would make it an efficient, if somewhat ugly workhorse. A tough little ship, designed with care.

  The elevator opened, short of the docking port, and Thiou raced in, clutching a pair of tablets, saying, “Have I missed…”

  “Relax, Doctor. They’re on final approach, and the bridge won’t open the airlock until we’re both there to meet them.” He paused, then asked, “Is there anything you think I need to know? I don’t want to get any last-minute surprises.”

  “Lieutenant, there are a million things we need to know, and we’re not going to know them until we get a chance to ask! I hardly know where to start.” She looked at her tablet, and asked, “What can’t I tell them?”

  “Tell them as little as possible until we get clearance from the Captain. Old history is fine, but stay vague about the Commonwealth, the Guard, this ship. I’m hoping we impress them enough that they’ll want to talk to us.” Frowning, he said, “Captain Watson looks to be a pretty sharp operator, though. Out for the main chance. I hope you didn’t have any ideas about how wonderful this colony was going to be, because so far, I’d say the odds of a utopia are pretty low.”

  The doors slid open, and they stepped out into the corridor, standing opposite the docking port. Mitchell glanced at Thiou, shook his head, and said, “Guess we should have worn dress uniform.”

  “They won’t know the difference, and we’re only meeting a shuttle crew.”

  “The way she talked, you’d think we were meeting the Empress of Earth.” He tapped a control to open the door, and a trio of figures looked out at them, a short, blonde woman wearing the smartest jumpsuit he’d ever seen, a gangly man behind her, his clothes smeared and dirty, an elaborate toolkit strapped around his waist, and a tall, grey-haired, aristocratic man, with a strong resemblance to the woman, wearing garish, discordant clothes, a riot of reds and blues.

  “Captain Watson, I presume? My name is Jack Mitchell, First Lieutenant of this ship.” He paused, then added, “Executive Officer, you might say. This is Doctor Catherine Thiou, Ship’s Historian.”

  Nodding, Watson said, “Elizabeth Watson. My engineer, Emilio Vizzoni, and this is Colonel William Neville,” she said, gesturing to the older man. At their expressions, she added, “Our first astronaut. And my grandfather, on my mother’s side.”

  “A pleasure,” Mitchell replied. “I’m sorry that our first meeting is out here in a corridor…”

  “But your Captain wanted to keep our access to your ship to a minimum until he was sure of our good intentions,” Watson said. “I’d have done the same in his place, though I’m looking forward to meeting him as soon as our mutual paranoia has been satisfied.”

  “How’s Earth?” Neville asked. “I’ve only seen pictures, but it must be a wonderful place.”

  Mitchell looked at Thiou, and said, “This ship flies under the flag of the Commonwealth of Mars, Colonel. I regret that I must tell you that civilization on Earth collapsed, less than a year after your colony ship broke orbit. Much of it is uninhabitable, the rest reverted to savagery. They say it will be thousands of years before the climate and ecology settle down again.”

  Neville’s face dropped, and Watson replied, “That’s not as big a surprise as you might think. Our ancestors knew what was happening back there. That’s why they left, after all. Still, I suppose we’d all hoped that somehow, Earth would have got past the problems that faced it.” She paused, then asked, “Mars, then. Is that the capital of the Solar System?”

  “Of one of the two major powers,” Thiou said. Mitchell nodded, and she added, “There are things we can’t tell you, but there’s no point concealing this, given that it is an important part of our mission. We’re fighting an unofficial war with a cyber-communist group, the Outer Planets Coalition. We recently discovered the destination of your ship, and we’ve been engaged in a race to get here first.”

  “To annex Atlantis?” Vizzoni asked.

  “Defend it,” Mitchell replied. “From the Coalition. Who under similar circumstances, have in the past committed genocide to seize new territories. You don’t need to take my word for it. We’ve got plenty of documentary evidence for your people to examine.” He paused, then said, “Tell me about Atlantis.”

  “We made planetfall almost exactly two hundred years ago,” Watson replied. “Our bicentennial is a little over a month from now, in fact. The colonial plan went almost as intended, our people slowly woken over the next ten years.” She paused, then said, “There isn’t really that much to tell. We were planetbound for longer than we’d hoped, but the first spaceship launched from First Landing fifty years ago.”

  “Right on the sesquicentennial, in fact,” Neville added. “A landing on the moon below us.”

  “And my grandfather was the pilot, and the man who took the first steps, though we haven’t made much of a follow up. One of the first things Challenger did when it arrived was launch a pair of asteroid catchers, and over a couple of decades, they brought a couple of mineral-rich asteroids into the LaGrange points, for later exploitation in space industries. They’ve been the hub of our activities ever since. Though our greatest goal is to terraform the surface. Our ancestors chose this world because it had the potential to be turned into another Earth.”

  “Has it worked?” Thiou asked. “We’ve seen some of the effects at a distance, but…”

  “The record for outside survival is eleven minutes, ten seconds,” Watson replied. “My company…”

  “Her last company,” Vizzoni said, earning her a sharp look from Watson.

  “We sponsored the record attempt. They say that in another century, we’ll be able to get rid of the respirators altogether, but it will be a thousand years and change before the planet is anything like the one we left.” Frowning, she added, “There are some of us who have called for an effort to recover the hyperdrive but given the lack of signals from home and our psychohistorical predictions, we didn’t think there was anywhere to go.”

  “Even if we hadn’t found your ship in the records,” Mitchell replied, “we’d have found you within the next few decades anyway. It’s pure mischance that this world wa
sn’t surveyed twenty years ago.”

  “Neville,” Thiou said, fumbling in her pockets. “Any relation to Colonel John Neville?”

  “Jumpjet John?” Neville said. “My great-grandfather. Lost on Colchis when Challenger laid over to restock the water tanks and repair the shielding. How did you know him? Records from Earth?”

  “No,” she replied, pulling out a battered piece of paper. “I think this was for you.” She passed it to him, watching as the old man scanned the note from his ancestor, his eyes watering. Watson turned to her grandfather, then looked sharply at Thiou.

  “That man is a hero, and…”

  “No, child,” Neville said. “She’s the hero.” Walking up to her, he placed his hands on her shoulders, and said, “Thank you. Thank you.” Turning to Watson, she said, “My grandfather, John’s son, talked to me on his deathbed. He said that he knew his father would come back, sooner or later, one way or another. Thanks to this young lady, he’s alive again, two hundred years later.” Turning to Mitchell, he said, “My family owes you a debt. How can we help you?”

  Glancing at Thiou, a smile on his face, Mitchell replied, “I think you’d better ask the Captain that question, sir. Welcome aboard.”

  Chapter 28

  The shuttle raced towards the planet, Mitchell sitting back in his couch, his eyes locked on the magnificent sight before him. Watson had shown him a few images of the planet as it had been upon arrival, a red-brown desert with huge ice caps, looking much like a larger version of Mars. This was different. Patches of green warred with the red, battling to survive in the hostile environment, and thick clouds swept across the landscape. The ice caps had retreated as the planet had warmed, the first lakes spreading out over the surface, precursors of the mighty oceans that lay in Atlantis’ future.