Blue Guardian

by S. J. Madill

  She checked the datasheet in front of her. 7:57am, colony time. They used the incomprehensible human timekeeping system, usually coupled with additional displays showing their pretentious 'Galactic Standard Time' set on Earth. The colony's time skipped forward every night at 11:44pm, jumping to midnight to keep the clock in synch with the planet's rotation. If it weren't for their computers doing everything for them, there was no way the humans would even be able to keep track of time.

  The desk chirped, startling Zura. She'd forgotten about the harsh sound of the human-built consoles. On her desk's display, the words Front Door had appeared, and she tapped it with a gloved finger.

  Councillor Miller appeared at the open office door. She paused in the doorway, offering a brief bow of her head. "Good morning, General."

  "Come in," said Zura, pointing at one of the chairs across the desk from her. "Sit."

  Councillor Miller had a white-knuckled hold on her datapad as she entered the office. Her face was drawn tight into a forced smile that remained in place as she sat down. "I hope you slept well, General."

  Zura shrugged. "Well enough." That she slept at all was enough; she didn't understand the human idea of sleeping well. As if they occasionally failed at it.

  "Are you an early riser too, General?" That smile again. The councillor was trying too hard.

  "I'm always up early, Councillor. I don't require a lot of sleep."

  "Ah," said Miller. She seemed pleased to have elicited a reaction to her question. "So," she began, then paused as she fumbled with her datapad, "I wanted to provide you with a full report." Miller leaned forward, peering at the datasheet spread out on Zura's desktop. "Did you get it? I sent it to you just now."

  It was an act, Zura decided. It had to be. The councillor had an air of uncertainty and disorganisation, but there was no way someone with those qualities would be made the administrator of a colony. She dragged one finger down the datasheet's surface, stopping when she reached the recent message from Miller. With a swirl of her finger, the message opened.

  A sea of information splashed in front of her. Charts. Graphs. Explanatory text. Mountains of details. All laid out in a different style than Zura was used to, but it was intuitive and easy to understand.

  Zura's eyes flicked up to Councillor Miller. The human woman was still leaning forward, her eyes studying Zura's. Probably trying to read her reaction.

  Miller smiled. "I, um, hope you'll find everything you need, General. I want you to understand everything about the colony. Oh, do you drink tea?"

  Zura had just picked up her cup from the desk; it had a string hanging over the rim, a small tag on the end. "I do," she said. Perhaps the only human beverage she liked; a fellow officer had introduced it to her decades ago. Once, she'd had to wait until smugglers brought some to Palani space, but now it was available everywhere.

  "How nice," said Miller. She seemed distracted a moment, before returning her attention to the datapad she held. "So, may I begin?"

  "You may."

  On Zura's datasheet, one of the charts leapt to the front. "Here are our top challenges, General. It's a long way to get things delivered out here, so we sometimes have errors in our shipments."

  Nonsense, thought Zura. Shipping errors were not a function of distance.

  "When we first arrived — I was on the first ship — we were missing a few things. Some of the buildings had been delivered, but no power reactor. We chopped wood for fires. Later on, we figured out how to use our ships to power the colony until our current reactor was delivered. It's an old one, taken from storage back Earthward. We never found out what happened to the new one the colony was supposed to get."

  Zura didn't look up. An entire colonial powerplant module that wasn't delivered. If a ship had gone missing or been pirated, there'd have been a massive search operation. Corruption, she thought, is what happened to it.

  "Our other major problem is food supply." Councillor Miller kept looking up from her datapad, repeatedly checking Zura's face. She was probably accustomed to reading peoples' body language when meeting with them. The councillor motioned to Zura's datasheet. "General, may I—"

  "You may."

  Miller tapped something on her datapad, and a new chart moved to the top of the display on Zura's datasheet. "Now, this is a summary of the food situation—"

  A soft chime sounded from the datasheet; Councillor Miller jumped in surprise.

  "One moment, Councillor," said Zura. She slid a finger across the new window that appeared, and the white disc on her desktop began to glow. The air shimmered, and the holographic image of Captain Upara came into view.

  "Shin sa el-fedor," breathed Zura.

  Upara bowed, her eyes checking her surroundings. "Aasal, Mahasa—" She fell silent as Zura held up one finger.

  Zura's eyes went from Upara's holographic form to the councillor, who was rising from her seat. "Stay, Councillor. Captain Upara, use the trade language."

  Upara bowed again. "Of course, Mahasa." The image gave a brief nod to Miller, then turned back to Zura. "Mahasa, an intrusion has been detected in the Besann system."

  Zura looked down at her datasheet, and saw a new message appear along with a star chart. "I see it."

  "Mahasa, I propose to send Kahala Mihia to investigate."

  "I approve."

  "Yes, Mahasa."

  The holographic image collapsed in on itself and went dark as Upara ended the transmission.

  "Kahala Mihia?" asked the councillor.

  "Yes," said Zura. "One of our ships. We don't need all three stationed here all the time."

  "Oh," she said quietly, seeming to think for a moment. "Thank you, General."

  "For what?"

  "For, you know, letting me listen in."

  Zura just shrugged. Humans considered such things — speaking in a language not everyone knew — to be rude. Which was surprising, considering the bewildering array of languages in human culture. Speaking in the trade language for the councillor's benefit was a small price to pay — a token — if it gained some trust from the humans.

  She shifted in her chair. "You were going to tell me about your food problems, Councillor."

  "Oh, yes," said Miller, as if remembering what she was doing. She looked back at the datapad in her hands, taking a moment to read what she saw. "Okay," she said. "So, we've got a hundred and twenty-one hungry mouths to feed…"

  * * *

  At nine o'clock precisely, Councillor Miller was out the door.

  Zura was still looking at the data she'd provided. Miller had started on time and finished on time, and now Zura had a clear picture of the state of the colony. There seemed to have been more setbacks than triumphs so far, but Miller didn't lack enthusiasm. The councillor was skilled at data reporting, but administering a colony required more skills than that.

  Hands on the edge of her desk, Zura pushed her chair back and stood up. With a swipe of a finger, the datasheets open on her desk silently rolled themselves into tight scrolls, gathering at the edge of the desk.

  The morning light was bright in the window, and Zura felt an urge to be outside. Every problem had a solution and, for her, most solutions started with seeing the problem in person. Long streams of messages were no substitute for getting out of the chair and going to inspect things first-hand. Besides, people needed to know that she wasn't about to let them hide behind a messaging window.

  Stepping out from behind the desk, she headed out the office door and through the waiting area. She was about to press the button on the door console, but hesitated. Outside Temperature: 21C. The human temperature measurement was similar to the Palani system, but Zura still found herself doing conversions in her head.

  Too hot. "N'sal 'neth," she muttered, and headed upstairs.

  Nearing the top, her pace slowed as she favoured her right knee. The constant jabbing of pain was becoming an annoyance.

  She crossed the floor of her apartment, taking off her gloves. She unfastened her uniform co
at and chain and draped them over the back of the sitting room couch. Boots came off, standing empty on the floor beside her bed. Her breeches were hung neatly over the back of the bedroom chair.

  Sighing loudly, Zura approached her footlocker. Kicking it with the side of a bare foot, the lid opened. Inside, her nemesis awaited: her shining white coldsuit.

  It was comfortable enough, but undignified. The absurdly tight material had to be worn directly against the skin for the suit to function properly. She never felt more clumsy and vulnerable than when she was trying to pull the suit up, the material creaking ominously until she could at last get her shoulders in it and stand up straight. Whoever had designed the thing was a sadist.

  At last she was in, the suit trying to crush her rib cage as the seams pulled themselves together. Zura changed her mind: whoever designed the Palani coldsuit had to have been a human sadist.

  Only once she was back in uniform did she pause to look in the mirror. There was a blue flush to her cheeks from the grim exertion of putting on the suit, but otherwise all was in order: uniform, chain, and decorations, all straight and correct. Reaching down to her belt, she touched at the coldsuit controls.

  Under her uniform the suit relaxed, and a wave of refreshing coolness washed over her. All that, just so she could go outside without overheating. The planet had a winter period, and she was eagerly looking forward to it. Leaving the apartment, she headed back down the stairs to the front door.

  When the door slid open, the wall of heat was waiting for her. She was grateful to have the coldsuit, but that didn't mean she liked it.

  At the bottom of the steps stood one of her soldiers — Antur — in his white-and-blue combat armour. He stood straight and still like a statue, legs apart, hands clasped together behind his back.

  A few steps away, in the middle of the pathway, stood Councillor Lang. The older human was facing her, hands in his pockets. He looked like he'd been waiting there a while.

  Zura nodded at him as she descended the steps, ignoring the complaints from her knee.

  Lang returned the gesture. "Figured you were here." He tilted his head toward the soldier. "Your thug is here."

  "True." She was watching the older man's deeply-lined face. His mouth was constantly moving as if he was chewing something, but there was still a curl to the lip behind it; a barely-disguised sneer.

  Zura started walking down the path and, as she expected, Lang started walking with her. After they'd walked a few paces, she caught a glimpse of Antur following.

  There were several other people outside, coming and going from their residences. A woman walking toward them looked up, saw Zura and the councillor, and veered to the side of the path.

  "See that?" said Lang. He had a slow, quiet voice; his drawl made him more difficult to understand. "They don't like you, General. You got to understand that." He turned his head to look at her. "To be honest, I don't like you, either."

  "I don't care, Councillor."

  He either didn't hear her, or pretended not to. "Miller's too soft. She shouldn't be telling you our business. I bet she even bowed to you, like you were royalty or something." He turned his head away from her, and spat on the ground. "But I won't. Younger people don't know anything any more. Sure, maybe we're friends now because of the war, but people forget about the times before that. They forget what your people did to us. What you did to us. But I know. I know what you've done—"

  "No, you don't."

  "I know you've killed thousands of people. Innocent people. I won't—"

  "No, Councillor," she sighed. "Millions."

  Zura heard Lang gasp beside her, his step faltering to a stop. She kept walking down the path, toward the landing pad where the shuttle sat. When she glanced over her shoulder she saw Lang, now some distance back, standing in the middle of the street.

  They didn't understand. None of them did. What did it matter if he knew what she'd done? She knew. She'd been living with it for centuries.

  Chapter Seven

  The colony's lone defensive structure was a weathered and rusted laser turret. It was installed beyond the edge of the colony itself, past the farm fields, at the top of a low ridge to the west where the land started its rise into the red-covered foothills.

  Zura's coldsuit creaked as she walked; its folds and creases pinched at her skin. But it kept her comfortable in this heat, this sweltering, humid mess the humans preferred.

  Her boots crunched in the loose stones underfoot. The red grasses — called uran — weren't native to this world. They had been transplanted here millennia ago, by the first Palani settlers. Through all the chaos of the centuries since, the rugged little grasses had continued to thrive, spreading out across the planet's islands. Clusters of black-trunked bora trees — their drooping leaves a deep burgundy — lay beyond the ridgeline. They were transplants as well, surviving on this world until the humans came and started chopping them down.

  Apart from her knee, it was an easy climb up the ridge. She'd seen some of the softer-looking humans puffing from less exertion.

  Zura looked up at the turret. A two-storey box with a spherical turret on top, the entire structure was streaked with black stains from centuries sitting outside in the elements. Ugly smears showed where extensive growths of mildew or fungus had been clumsily cleaned off. The thing had probably spent time on some jungle planet somewhere.

  Craning her head to look up, Zura got a good look at the weapon itself. The barrel was probably original. Surrounding it were coolant pipes, some of which had been replaced, sometimes even with the correct parts. Extra cables had recently been wound along the barrel's length, held in place by metal straps. Zura could see black scorch marks around the muzzle, a sign of the weapon being fired while improperly calibrated. But the soot was partly washed away, so it hadn't been recent.

  Zura sighed, and turned to look back the way she'd come. A path led downhill from the turret, following the slope of the hill through the grid of fields and into the heart of the colony. The inner fields were neat and tidy: lush rows of crops patrolled by farming robots. Around those were an imperfect ring of wood-fenced fields, their crops sparse and stunted, likely never seeing the robots. Beyond the cluster of colony buildings — and the gleaming white Palani shuttle that looked out of place — the ground dropped away to the sea.

  The sea, a vast blue ocean that went from one horizon to the other. A short distance from shore, there was a drop-off where the seafloor fell away. The ocean looked alive, sparkling in the sun and frothing with whitecaps. Further out, the surface of the deep ocean rose with giant swells that rolled across the horizon.

  "Hell of a view, huh, General?"

  Zura looked behind her. Major Roche was standing in the doorway of the turret base. His green fatigues were rumpled, and his blond hair was askew; he looked like he'd just got up. In one hand he held a datapad. A small white tube was sticking out the corner of his mouth, and a curl of smoke was coming from it.

  "Major," she replied.

  He paused before speaking, as if her one-word response required consideration. "I knew it was you. Your boots sound different than ours."

  "They do. And yes, the view is… impressive."

  Roche nodded toward the horizon. "You should be up here sometime when a storm rolls in. You can see it for hours before it gets here. Hell of a show."

  Zura glanced back out to sea. She remembered enjoying thunderstorms in the desert when she was a child. Long ago. "I will do that some time, Major."

  Roche took a deep breath, sucking in through the tube; its end glowed with fire. He exhaled smoke, blowing it to the side.

  Zura pointed at the smoke and the little white tube. "I've seen those before."

  "Huh?" Roche looked down, as if surprised to see it. "It's called a cigarette. It's a paper tube, filled with leaves from a plant." He shrugged. "You set it on fire, and breathe the smoke."

  "A narcotic?"

  "Nah. It's just a carcinogen."

  Zura frow
ned. "I don't understand."

  "I don't either." Roche plucked the cigarette from his mouth, holding it between two fingers of his free hand. "It calms the nerves. And when you're hiding in a trench, under bombardment for a week, and all your squadmates are smoking, well—"

  "Ah. Now I understand."

  "Yeah." Roche exhaled more smoke. "So. Anyway. I don't suppose you came up the hill to learn about my idiotic habit, General."

  "I did not."

  The cigarette had burned down to a small nub. Roche flicked it away; it landed on the ground near several others. "This turret," said Roche, "is the defence of New Fraser. A three-hundred-year-old turret. Someone said it should be in a museum, but I disagree. It should be in a scrapyard."

  "Earth gave you this to defend the colony?"

  "Not really, General. We were supposed to get a brand-new turret. But this is what arrived. When I complained, and when Councillor Miller made a stink, we were told to 'make do'."

  "There is a pattern here, Major."

  Roche raised his eyebrows a moment. "I know, right?" He huffed, like he was suppressing a laugh. "We're so far down the list of priorities, I'm not sure we're even on the list at all."

  "Why is this?"

  "Why?" Roche tilted his head, looking into the distance for a moment. "General, there are millions of refugees from Earth and other destroyed planets. On planets like New Tacoma or New Portland, there are camps that span entire continents. Everyone's got to be resettled somewhere. The Colonial Office was supposed to arrange everything. Everyone would be sent where they were needed, or had family, or whatever." He rolled his eyes. "But if you're rich…"

  "The rich get to choose where they settle."

  "Yeah. With a few thousand credits, you can get your family sent to a nice, comfy colony in the middle of human space. A place where it's summer all the time and no one has to work." He nodded past her, in the direction of the colony buildings in the distance. "Us, we didn't have thousands of credits. We get what's left."