Rain. Real rain. She longed to remain there, to drink in the natural water generated by the biosphere of a perfect planet rather than the reconstitution and purification processes of a starship. Alas, the government of Breeze-rustle-chitter would never sanction it. No alien being was allowed to “steal” any of the natural resources of the world. That meant no drinking the water, no eating the food…even the soil would be removed from her shoes before she left.
“It’s paradise,” she sighed.
Behind her, the Breeze-rustle-chitter ambassador hummed in agreement. “It is, isn’t it? You understand, then, why we are so careful about whom we allow on our planet.”
“Of course.” She relaxed, her fronds returning to their usual, hair-like style. She turned her back on the double suns and took the ambassador’s proffered arm. “I’m immensely honored you would both share this honor and allow me to speak on behalf of the Union of Spacefaring Planets.”
He patted her hand with the second of his four arms and led her down a garden trail back to the sealed biosphere that housed alien visitors. “Well, when Doctor Chit-chit-hack-cree heard your lecture, ‘101 Ways to Save a First Contact Gone FUBAR,’ he knew you of all creatures would understand our conundrum with the dominant Union species. Our world is paradise, and we wish no alien contamination to upset that balance. Some species, we believe we can trust to adhere to our rules – the Logics, and your kind. But humans! Humans are just so reckless and sloppy and…”
“I prefer to think of them as impulsive.”
“That’s the name of the ship you serve on, is it not? Why do you work with these creatures?”
“And it suits them. Oh, humans are indeed reckless and sloppy and very often seem to hear only what suits them. Yet they are creative and intuitive in ways no other species can match. If they don’t always consider the consequences, it’s often because they are so focused on the prize of their success. If it were not for the humans, I would still be slave to a mad naturopath. Then-Lieutenant Tiberius ignored the orders of the Union and stole me.”
“Stole?”
“I was property, cultivated and pruned to serve my master’s pharmaceutical experiments. Jeb’s impulsive act led to the recognition of my species as sentient.”
“Your world is part of the Union?”
“We’re not a spacefaring species. I am an exception, raised by mammals as I was. But you see my point? The curiosity of the human Jebediah Tiberius and his stubborn insistence that he was serving a greater good by disregarding his superiors led to my freedom and the independence of my world.”
The wind picked up suddenly, ripping dried leaves off a tree and pelting the duo with them. A thorny bush uprooted and tumbled into the path.
Loreli squealed and laughed. “Like a sudden storm. If you can deal with the chaos, you will reap the benefits of the rain.”
The ambassador did not seem so delighted. “The natural chaos provided by a world in balance, we can handle. It’s the chaos of alien elements we fear – and the humans, of all species, are the most alien of elements, and not just environmentally.”
“I understand. It is a risk. If not, we wouldn’t need–”
“A hundred ways to fix a first contact gone FUBAR?” The ambassador’s mouth mandibles clicked in its equivalent of a smile. He released her arm. “Please, let me clear the path. We should hurry. Even in our perfectly balanced world, storms can be dangerous.”
He skittered away on all six limbs to the bush, but when he got there he rose in surprise and defense. “What are you doing here? These are private lands.”
A voice Loreli did not recognized answered. “Which you contaminate with alien presence! It should not be here breathing our air!”
“Eradicate the contaminants!” another voice yelled.
“Loreli, run!” the ambassador yelled. He reached to his pocket, whether for a communications device or a weapon, she did not know, nor did she find out. Their attacker shot the Ambassador in the thorax. He gave a screech and collapsed.
Then a second shot took her full in the chest. She fell to the ground, unconscious.
As if responding to the violence, the wind rose to gale force. One attacker gave her the most cursory of examinations, and finding no pulse, ran after his brothers.
The rain began to pelt the two bodies.
***
Captain’s Log, Intergalactic Date 676795.10
We’re en route to pick up our xenologist and ship’s sexy, Loreli, who was redirected at the request of the Union Diplomatic Corps to attempt to re-open negotiations with the Breeze-rustle-chitter system, known in HuFleet as Keepout. Keepout is home to an insectoid species, whose name is…computer, insert proper pronunciation here for the “Grumpy Old Neighbor” species and heretofore insert it whenever I refer to them as GONs. Thank you.
It’s been over a decade since the Union has had any contact with the GONs, whose environmental xenophobia is legend among the galaxy. They believe their planet to be a perfectly balanced paradise and thus are violently opposed to any potential contamination. Even before the species had confirmed the existence of extra-terrestrial life, they were already preparing planetary defenses to protect from it, just in case. First Contact was apparently an exercise in frustration, particularly since our early translation devices mistook their warning buoys for attempts to reach out to other species.
Over the past decade, slight inroads have been made. We’ve exchanged ideas and information via remote contact, and some of the GONs have ventured offworld, which is how Loreli caught their attention. Her visit has broken new ground for Union-Keepout relations. One day, a human may set foot on that world thanks to her efforts.
“End entry,” Captain Jebediah Tiberius told the computer. Then, he shook his head. He was proud of Loreli. She’d come so far since that scared little sprout he’d rescued against orders. And yet, between her and Doall, the Impulsive could end up reassigned to diplomatic duty. He shuddered. Good thing he had officers like LaFuentes to round things out.
“We’re explorers, dammit, not diplomats,” he muttered as he left the ready room to the bridge.
“Captain on the bridge,” Ensign Ellie Doall called out from her Ops console. No one, however, heard her. They were too busy listening to his First Officer, Commander Phineas Smythe, relate his experience when he was a navigations second on the Tally Ho! as it tried to make first contact with Keepout.
“When the first buoy translated to ‘Private property of the Breeze-rustle-chitter,’ we thought it was just a territorial thing, so we broadcast our intentions and continued on. Same thing when we got to ‘Keep Out,’ which is where we got the idea for the Union name for the system. We put up shields when we got to ‘Trespassers will be shot.’”
“But you kept going?” someone from the bullpen asked.
“First Contact was our mission, Ensign.”
“Then what?”
“Then they shot at us.”
“Bueno!”
Lieutenant Enigo LaFuentes blushed slightly when everyone turned toward him. “I just meant, it’s refreshing to find a species that means what it says.”
“The engineering and medical departments of the Tally Ho! would not have agreed that day,” Smythe remarked dryly.
Jeb took his seat in the Captain’s chair. “Well, let’s hope there will be less shooting this time. Ensign Doall, are the buoys still active?”
“Yes, sir, but all are projecting, ‘No Soliciting.’”
“Well, we’re not selling anything, so I’ll take that as a good sign. LaFuentes, prep shields just in case the inner signs get terser. Cruz, take us in nice and slow.”
The ship jerked to a stop with such force, people were shoved against their consoles or tossed from chairs. Several of the second-string bridge officers in the bullpen sprung up alert, then flopped back into their seats as each primary crewperson stood up, unimpaired, and returned to their stations.
“That wasn’t me, Captain!” Cruz protested before Je
b could ask.
“Hey, y’all.” The computer spoke shipwide to get everyone’s attention. “Sorry about that, but Union has ordered an All Stop. No alert status – just a ‘hold yer horses.’ Hang on for further instructions from the Captain. Thank you.”
“Incoming message from Yiwu Wylson, Senior Administrator of the Diplomatic Corps.” Doall said.
Tiberius exchanged a glance with his First Officer, who shook his head. He apparently did not feel comfortable when it came to handling anything to do with Keepout. Normally, Smythe took diplomatic calls…but then again, this did affect the entire ship… Tiberius placed his fist on his open palm. Smythe did the same. Smacking their fists three times, they did a quick game of paper-scissors-rock-redshirt-alien. Smythe chose redshirt while Jeb took paper. The captain scowled; redshirt files paperwork. He’d have to take the call.
“On screen, Ensign,” Smythe said.
The harried, round-faced diplomat appeared on the screen. Since this is science fiction and we are dealing with aliens, let me be clear – Wylson’s head was round. Volleyball round. Like all Pelotanns, his bald, round head was connected to his squat body by a long neck. He had six eyes equidistant from each other on his face, set inward but able to bug out when appropriate. His three mouths, each capable of independent speech, were little more than slits, yet agile enough to imitate the language patterns of nearly every known species in the galaxy, including the gaseous extractions of the Huagg. They had no noses to disrupt the smoothness of their heads, but breathed through a hole in the top of their head. (Needless to say, hats are considered lethal weapons on Pelota V.)
With eyes able to take in everything around them, and mouths that could carry on conversations with three different species at the same time, the Pelotanns were uniquely suited as negotiators. They filled over 70 percent of the jobs in the Union diplomatic corps despite some species demanding greater representation. For a while, Jeb remembered, there had been an effort by the Huagg to get a greater share of jobs. No one wanted this, of course. Even putting aside the fact that they did not have a qualified candidates, no one wanted to negotiate with a species that spoke in farts. Even with the universal translator, it was not a comfortable process.
After much back and forth and attempts to clear the air, the Union finally insisted they meet with a Pelotann representative to discuss it. The Huagg left agreeing to stay out of the diplomatic corps completely and were happy about it.
This diplomat, however, looked anything but happy. One face frowned at the screen while a second was ensconced in a privacy box on some other business. The third seemed to be working off stress; its tentacles were weaving some kind of intricate doily.
The captain matched his frown to the one on Wylson’s face. “You can’t have them.”
“Impulsive, you are ordered to…what?”
“Doall and Loreli. They’re my best officers and you can’t have them.”
“Aw, thank you, sir,” Doall muttered.
“Who said anything about your officers?”
“You instituted a computer-override All Stop on my ship, didn’t you? Why else would you hold my ship hostage unless you wanted my people for your diplomatic corps?”
“Very droll, Captain, but I’ve read your records. No, Captain, I am not interested in your people. I am trying to forestall an interplanetary incident.”
“We have permission – and orders – to approach Keepout. They’ve even changed the warnings – downright welcoming compared to the past. Lieutenant Loreli – whom you can’t have – has been working to open visitation rights, something even your kind hasn’t been able to accomplish.”
“Well, I regret to inform you that her mission has backfired in a horrific way. Terrorists have attacked her.”
“What?” LaFuentes shouted from his place at Security.
Jeb held up a hand to quiet him. “Is she all right?”
“The Breeze-rustle-chitter ambassador is dead.”
“What about Loreli?”
“She is alive, despite being hit with what for mammals is a lethal dose of radiation and being left for dead in the annual rise-set storms. Unfortunately, the nature of her survival has become the cause of what could be the worst interplanetary crisis between the Union and Keepout since the Tally Ho!”
Everyone within sight of the viewscreen did their best to look ignorant. No one looked at Smythe, who kept a poker face worthy of his ancestry. From behind, however, LaFuentes cut in.
“So what are you saying? Is she in danger?”
One of Wylson’s eyes bugged out just enough to look in LaFuentes’s direction. “Lieutenant Loreli has broken the greatest taboo of their planet and in a way that’s amazingly intricate.”
“Is she in danger?”
Wylson waved a tentacle at the screen. “This is why your ship is at All Stop, Captain. I will not have you barging in until we’ve assessed the situation and determined the dangers, not only to your officer, but to the Union.”
“LaFuentes, stand down,” Jeb said. “You’ll have to forgive my officer. ‘The Ship Is Family,’ is the motto of our Security Section. He takes the welfare of everyone on this crew seriously.”
“Commendable, of course. Let me reassure him and all of you that we are doing everything in our considerable power to rectify this situation. In the meantime, I think…yes… we’ve arranged for you to talk to your officer and have visual communication. In this case, an image is indeed worth a thousand words.”
***
The briefing room of the Impulsive held a barbell-shaped table, each end equipped with a 3D holographic display in the center of the “bell.” The shape was really an attempt to make the Modern Arts class at the Academy relevant, but it did serve its purposes. Sometimes, two teams could work on a problem, one at each end of the table, then meet in the long middle to discuss their ideas.
This, however, was not one of those times.
The senior staff sat on one side of the table. Of course, it should be noted that “senior” is used loosely, since several other officers on the ship outranked Ensign Doall and Lieutenant LaFuentes, including three of the Engineering staff, and none of the people in attendance were over the age of 45. Smythe, the eldest, was older than Jeb by five years…unless they were picking up women, in which case, Jeb claimed to be somewhere between 27 and 34, depending on what he thought sounded hotter. Since he’d found Keptar, he’d come to realize that age was not as important as keeping one’s gluteus maximus strong and supple…but then again, that had always been a priority for him, anyway.
Right now, however, he hoped to Keptar that he could dig his xenologist out of the fix she was in, literally as well as figuratively.
Loreli looked at them all through the camera a very irate GON had placed for her so she could communicate. To everyone’s relief, she was alive, though not well. Her normally green skin was tinged yellow, and her fronds drooped. Her arms hung limply, though her fingers were splayed to take in the light of the single sun.
Her legs were embedded in the ground, where her feet had transformed into roots that stretched through the planet’s rich soil.
The GONs had surrounded her in a force field bubble that allowed only the passage of air. The field seemed to pass through the ground as well.
“I’m so embarrassed about this, Captain,” Loreli said. Around her, scientists of the world were taking measurements and soil samples and scowling. In the background, they could hear angry chants. The words were too faint to be intelligible, but Jeb didn’t like the tone. By the way LaFuentes clenched his fists, he didn’t either.
“What happened?” Doall asked. Despite her years of friendship with the Botanical, she had never seen Loreli revert to her plantlike state.
One of the scientists within earshot of Loreli’s screen dropped the soil sample he was taking, an obviously deliberate act, since two of his four legs were empty at the time. He marched to the camera, somehow causing his delicate legs to make angry, distinct stomps in t
he moist soil, and stuck his face in front of the lens. His words sounded like chitters and hisses.
The universal translator said, “What happened? You know damn well what happened, you fleshy (species-specific expletive here, having to do with the state of your egg before it hatched). We trusted you and you sent a vegetable to invade our planet.”
“Your people attacked me,” Loreli responded. “They ambushed me, killed one of your own and left me for dead. When I woke up, I found myself this way. I didn’t intend it. It was an autonomic response of my body to keep me alive. It is because your people did not trust us that we are in this predicament.”
Two other GONs pulled the angry scientist away. The translator said they were simultaneously scolding and commiserating with their comrade, though it declined to give a direct translation of what was said.
Every ship in the Union had a filter on the Universal Translator that removed the most potentially volatile conversations when they – in the translator’s humble decision matrix – did not pertain to the immediate problem. In some cases, it could replace the more hateful words with less inflammatory equivalents; in other cases, it simply omitted the parts that might set blood boiling and phasers firing. It also condensed longwinded communications, particularly when dealing with impatient species. It was one of the best-kept secrets in Engineering and Diplomacy circles; however one of Chief Engineer Deary’s protégés in the AI section had nonetheless heard about it while drinking one of the programmers under the table. He’d come back to the ship, staggering and hung over, but refused the doctor’s offer of imposazine until he’d reprogrammed the translator. He couldn’t tell it to directly translate everything, but he could introduce a new subroutine to give a loose summary.
Hold My Beer Page 7
