She ducked her head, looking at the ground and not at him. She was tired of seeing the disappointment on his face, but his anger would be worse. She busied herself tidying their supplies. They would be ready when it was time to begin the long walk out of Sanctuary East and back to the world. She retrieved her harness and slipped it on. Its weight felt odd after so long wearing nothing but her pelt.
“You are my first cub,” Tahar said softly from close behind her. “I love you no less than Chailen.”
She forced herself not to turn. “Chailen is special. You should love her more.”
Tahar sighed. “Look at me. Please look at me. I can’t keep talking to your tail.”
Her jaw dropped open in amusement and her ears quivered of their own accord. He used to say that when she was very small.
“Stop trying to make me laugh.”
“Laughter is good.”
Tahar led her to the fallen tree they had been using as a table. Visitors to Sanctuary East were encouraged to take only the minimum of supplies into the preserve. Harming the animals was against the purpose of the preserve, and bringing technology other than an emergency beacon was discouraged. It was a matter of pride among those who came here to bring only what their ancestors had used.
Tahar sat upon the fallen tree beside her. “I’m proud of you, Shima, so very proud. So what if you cannot hunt like the great Jasha? I cannot either, nor could anyone if you believe the stories. We are no longer hunters, Shima. We are beyond such things now. Hunting is not important any longer.” He mimed grasping something and throwing it away. “It’s a hobby, nothing more. You and Chailen are the future; I’m the past as much as hunting is.”
“Don’t say that! You are great, everyone knows it.”
He snorted. “A great fool for not teaching you better. You have surpassed me in all that matters, Shima. You make me proud to be your father, but you don’t see it, do you?”
“I see disappointment when you look at me.”
Tahar’s eyes widened and his ears flattened. “I have never felt that. I have been angry on occasion, amused quite often, but never disappointed. Never disappointed, Shima.” In a hushed voice he said, “What you see is my guilt, not disappointment.”
“I don’t understand. You’re not disappointed that I lied—that I cannot hunt?”
“That you felt you needed to lie is my failure not yours. You can hunt well enough. You don’t need eyes for that, but as I said before, it doesn’t matter.”
She could hunt after a fashion. The Harmonies were strong in her, and her nose and ears were very keen. Not much of a compensation for her poor sight, but it was better than nothing.
“Your mother wanted cubs very much.”
“I know—”
“Hush. You don’t know this. She could never tell you, and I… well, I’m telling you now. When your mother and I were first mated, we worked together.”
“I know this,” Shima protested again. “You and she were system controllers up at the new station.”
“Hool Station, yes. I know that’s what you were told. We did not work there, Shima.”
“But everyone knows.”
Tahar flicked his ears in agreement. “Everyone knows because that’s what we told them.”
“You lied to everyone?”
“Not everyone. My father knew, and so did Elder Harman. It was Harman who asked my father to bring Nidra and me to him.”
“I don’t understand. What has this to do with Chailen and me?”
“It was a time when our people believed that we would re-build the Great Harmony among the stars. We had succeeded at so much in such a short time. So why not? Our scientists were discovering new things almost at every turn. It was a wonderful time. After the war, Child of Harmony became more than ever a special place to us. It proved we could leave our homeworld and survive.”
Tahar looked around at the trees. “Harmony is old, Shima. All planets are of course, but it feels old. Do you understand?”
Shima flicked her ears affirmatively. “Everything is known, every place has been found—”
“And explored, yes. Child of Harmony feels different. The gravity is wrong, the air a little too thick. The sun looks too big… do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Everything feels new?”
“That’s it exactly. Everything is new. It makes you feel that anything is possible. You will see that for yourself when we land at Zuleika.”
Shima flicked her ears in agreement. She was looking forward to it. She would miss Harmony, but her studies were complete and it was time to use them on Child of Harmony. This was their last cycle before the ship took them to their new home.
“Your mother and I worked on a project that we hoped might give our people the stars. Oh, we didn’t design it, but we helped build and test it.”
“Test what?”
“A new kind of drive,” Tahar said staring into the distance at only he knew what. “We were all very excited. Your mother and I were tasked with designing a process and implementing it for the construction of the prototype. It was a massive coil assembly.”
She leaned forward eagerly. “How did it work?”
“It didn’t work. Oh, we built it to specifications all right, and within deadline too, but the drive fused solid the first time it was tested. The second was the same and the third. Your mother thought it might be the phase-lock.”
“Phase-lock?” Shima recognised the term, anyone would. “You mean you worked on the FTL project?”
“Yes.”
She stared at her father hardly able to believe what she was hearing. The faster than light project had been the culmination of Shan space development, and a complete failure. FTL had been proven an impossibility and the project was shut down.
“Your mother published her theory and was asked to join the design team. She accepted of course, it was a very great honour. The fifth prototype was built. I was so proud of her, Shima. Nidra’s ideas seemed to work. Computer projections were almost exactly as predicted, but she was concerned by the slight difference in her calculations. She stayed aboard the ship to supervise the initiation of the drive. I found out later she had feared a core failure. The drive was activated and the core failed as Nidra predicted.”
“And mother?”
“She was injured, but she healed.” Tahar sighed unhappily. “We didn’t know, Shima. We couldn’t have known.”
“The project was abandoned wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Prototype Seven blew up on activation and destroyed the ship. The entire crew was killed—all two hundred. Your mother cried for days. They were our friends, Shima. It was her design that failed and she felt responsible. The project was terminated and we returned to Harmony. We wanted to start again. We thought that having cubs would help us forget the past, but we didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
Tahar’s voice was very low. “Nidra gave birth to six cubs the first time, Shima. You had five sibs, but all except you were born… wrong. They died. The kin mothers said it happened sometimes and that we should try again. So we did.”
Shima stared at her father in pained disbelief.
She’d asked her mother a long time ago why she’d given birth to a single cub. It had happened not once but twice. Two litters with only one cub each was very rare. Five cubs were average. She had feared another genetic fault might have been bestowed upon her like her weak eyes. When her time came to have cubs, would she also be cursed with small litters? She had nagged her mother to send her for tests. The results were both good and bad. Bad for her sight, but good for her future cubs—it was very unlikely that she would pass on her deformity to them. As far as anyone could tell, her litters would be normal in every way.
She shouldn’t grieve for her five lost sibs—she had Chailen, and Chailen had her, but she did. Why hadn’t they told her?
“Nidra wanted to try again straight away, Shima, but I said wait. That’s why you are three orbits older than
Chailen. Nidra had four cubs the second time—it was horrible.” Tahar swallowed and went on in a voice choked with grief, “Nidra nearly died and Chailen as well. The other three were… malformed. They couldn’t have survived.”
She clutched her father’s paw. “Was it the accident?”
Tahar’s ears struggled erect. “Yes. The FTL drive is unlike others. I cannot explain it so that you can understand, but when it’s activated it uses space itself to create a gateway to another place. When the core failed, Nidra was exposed to that other place for a tiny moment, but that is all it took. When everyone realised what that meant, it was already too late for your mother. Orbits later she died still believing a way could be found to survive in that place, but all the elders disagreed. The project was terminated. The other place is just too dangerous, Shima. No shielding known would be adequate to protect us from it, and without it FTL is impossible.”
“You should have told us, father. Why didn’t you tell us?”
Tahar looked down. “Guilt. Chailen is lucky to be alive. All the tests say she is perfectly healthy—a miracle the healers said.”
“And me?” Shima said softly.
She knew what he was going to say. She’d known for a long time that she would be blind long before her middle years. It was a genetic disorder. Little was known about such things, though research was ongoing. What she did know was terrible enough. She had a degenerative disease of the inner eye—the part healers called the retina.
Tahar squeezed her paw. “Your mother died from the effects of the accident, and your sight is poor because of it. I hope you can forgive us for not telling you the truth,” he finished in a whisper.
Shima hugged him while inside she shrieked in anger. It wasn’t him she blamed. It was fate. Even now she wouldn’t say that the FTL project should have been abandoned. She was its victim, yet she believed the elders were wrong to cancel the project. What did the future hold for her people if not the stars? Where would everyone live? Would there be feuding among clans like before the Great Pact? Her hackles rose and a shudder ran through her.
“You’re cold, Shima. Let us go now.”
She did not want to stay here any longer. Child of Harmony awaited her. “Let us go.”
5 ~ Survey
Aboard ASN Canada, inner asteroid belt, Shan system
Captain Colgan stepped out of the elevator onto Canada’s bridge and paused just inside watching his crew with pride. Months spent hiding in an asteroid field belonging to an alien species, and they were still as excited and as dedicated to the task as they had been on day one. He could feel their excitement and shared it. It was a heady feeling, knowing he was doing something important, and yes, momentous. The anticipation they had all felt upon emergence from foldspace had not gone away or even lessened. They were learning new things at every turn.
Colgan was eager to be on with his day, but the dimmed lighting warned him that he had a few minutes yet before the watch changed and Canada’s day cycle began. He was early, something he normally avoided so as not to appear like a mother hen. If there was anything spacers liked less than a captain who didn’t trust them to do their jobs without supervision, he didn’t know what it was.
A minute or so later, the lights brightened slowly to full. Behind him the elevator doors opened and day watch personnel filtered onto the bridge. Colgan smiled and nodded greetings as they murmured their good mornings. He had never been one to insist on formalities like saluting, certainly not on his own bridge, but some did have their place and good reasons behind them...
“Captain on the bridge!” Lieutenant Ivanova announced precisely on time, informing everyone that she’d passed command authority to him.
Like that one, he thought wryly.
“Carry on,” he said heading for the just vacated command station. Anya removed her helmet from the rack and Colgan replaced it with his. “Anything to report, Anya?” he asked as he took his seat.
Ivanova grinned and rolled her eyes at the chuckles from the others as they handed over their stations to their opposite numbers of the day watch. “Well yes, Skipper, now that you mention it, there are a few small things.” She leaned over Colgan’s shoulder and with a few deft keystrokes displayed a summary on his number one monitor. “It’s all there, sir; no reports of malfunctions or incidents shipside, but plenty about the Shan as usual.”
Colgan smiled. There was always a raft of new intelligence about the Shan every morning. In fact, so much data was flooding in that his crew couldn’t keep up. Over ninety-five percent had to be archived for later study, but what else could they do? They needed an entire university of researchers to keep up with things. Instead, they had a couple of hundred eager sailors to help Canada’s small but perfectly formed science department. Most of the crew had little to do with the actual day to day survey work that was Canada’s mission, most were concerned with running and maintaining the ship’s systems.
“Thanks, Anya, have a good rest.”
“Thanks Skipper, but we thought we would head over to the rec-room for a few hours and watch the feed.”
Colgan nodded. Shan watching had become something of a communal pastime amongst the crew. The big screens rarely showed anything else these days. The crew could access data about the aliens and their planets from any terminal on the ship of course, and the ones in the rec room were always busy with people doing that, but for generating a buzz there was nothing better than watching a live feed from the remotes. Colgan did it himself on occasion, but for entertainment, he preferred to study the Shan alone in his cabin. He would have to announce another lecture soon. He had more than enough new stuff already, and his last lecture was two weeks ago.
“Have fun then,” Colgan said.
“Thanks, Skipper,” Ivanova and her merry band said, as they left the bridge together.
Colgan watched them go with a smile, then touched a control to turn his command station to face front again.
The main viewer had a tactical overlay of the entire system displayed; the many coloured icons monitored and updated by Canada’s computer represented Shan ships and stations. The system was a rich one, something that pleased Colgan on behalf of the Shan. It meant they could trade and compete with member worlds of the Alliance when they joined, but more importantly, they could maintain their independence if that’s what they chose to do.
It wasn’t his job to protect the Shan from his own people, he was here to learn about them and encourage them to join the Alliance, but he felt a responsibility to do it anyway. He honestly believed they would benefit greatly from membership, but he also knew there were downsides. There were sharks in the Alliance—member worlds with economies based upon exploiting others—who could do huge harm here. He was determined to arm the Shan with knowledge of these dangers, and others... like the Merkiaari.
Compared to many Alliance systems, this one had very little space traffic in the outer system. That was because Shan ships preferred to work closer in. With two habitable planets, something that still amazed and excited him, much of the space traffic clustered in that region would be freighter traffic. There was plenty of it. More than an Alliance system would use in similar circumstances, but that was understandable—Shan ships were slower. They made up for the lack with numbers.
Further out, and the system became the almost exclusive preserve of the Shan navy, and it was to these ships that Colgan’s attention was drawn. They were beautiful and deadly. White hulled and sleek, they looked built for speed, but again that was deceiving. Colgan knew they were much slower than Canada and his ship wasn’t by any means fast. The Exeter class cruiser was an old design and most had been decommissioned or converted into survey ships just like Canada years ago.
Slow or not, the Shan ships were still a threat to the mission and had to be watched. Normally that would be his XO’s job at Tactical, but Colgan had decided after a couple of months in system without being detected to allow Canada’s computer to handle it while the officer of the watch,
himself on this occasion, monitored the situation ready to intervene if necessary. That was why the tactical overlay was prominently displayed on the main viewer. Francis, meanwhile, was having fun learning about the Shan by overseeing the current survey operations of the Shan colony world. Colgan had a deal with her to trade places in a few hours so that they could both keep current with the ship’s operations and the Shan.
Thinking about keeping current brought Anya’s list to mind, and he turned his attention to his station’s number one monitor. While his crew worked quietly and efficiently around him, Colgan used his control wand to highlight items of interest on the display, and open the associated data packets on his number two monitor. Splitting his attention between the two displays and the main viewer, he worked undisturbed for almost two hours, when Baz Riley interrupted him with coffee.
Colgan took a sip and sighed. “God that’s good. Thanks, Baz.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” Baz said and moved to supply the others with their mid-morning coffee.
Colgan finished his drink and then turned his attention back to the main viewer. Another Shan exercise was underway, and he was struck once again by how familiar it was all becoming. Their ships were always training or running fleet exercises in the outer system. They sometimes used asteroids in the outer belt for target practice, just as Alliance Captains would. It was all very normal, and Colgan shook his head at the thought. It made him wonder about things. Fundamental things, like what it all meant that a Human ship could travel all this distance to find alien beings doing the same things as people back home. He was no philosopher, but he thought it boded well that he could see similarities between the two races on the ground and in space.
There were many differences of course.
Shan, like Humans, were mammalian but unlike them, they had evolved from felinoid quadrupeds into a race comfortable walking on two or four legs. On four legs, they were faster than a cheetah, but unlike a cheetah’s max range of about two hundred metres, Shan could chase prey for kilometres before tiring. They had reasons for evolving such a turn of speed. Their prey was even quicker in some cases, and some had serious defences in the form of horns and fangs. Seeing a Shan chasing something so fast was amazing.
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