by S. H. Jucha
“We would. How is Speaker García? A most disagreeable man, I have to admit,” Alex said.
“Actually, we haven’t heard a word from him,” Shimada found herself admitting.
“What about our battleship, the Hand of Justice?” asked Shimada and saw, for the first time, tension radiate from the two heavy-massed individuals.
“Your High Judge Bunaldi chose to challenge our sovereignty, Captain,” Tatia replied. “He and his people aboard that ship paid the ultimate price for their aggression. We’re deeply sorry it came to that, but he left us no alternative.”
When Alex saw the jaw of the slender captain tighten, he asked, “Did you have people on the battleship, Captain?”
Shimada would have wished these strangers banished to the nether worlds, but the president, despite his enormous size, had a gentle manner about him. She unclenched her jaw, and replied, “A younger brother.”
Of all the responses, Shimada might have expected, what she saw wasn’t one of them — both individuals crossed hands over hearts and bowed their heads. She waited but they held their pose. Finally, Shimada cleared her throat, which had threatened to close up on hearing of her brother’s loss, and said, “I accept your condolences.”
Alex raised his head, but before he could press on, Captain Shimada beat him to it.
“So you’re here in our system. Are you declaring war on the UE, Mr. President?”
“Exactly the opposite, Captain. I’m trying to prevent one. And on that subject, I need your station.”
“You know I can’t let you have it, Mr. President. It’s my duty to prevent that.”
“I thought as much, Captain. So I have a demonstration for you, and a line of dialogue you might offer your superiors to keep you out of trouble. But first the demonstration. You will see on your screen, a small asteroid about the size of one of your patrol vessels. Watch carefully.”
Shimada and her officers had their eyes glued to the monitor when the asteroid disappeared in a cloud of dust, rocks, and expanding gas.
“Captain, the guide detected an object moving across the face of Neptune,” Shimada’s second mate reported. “It was traveling at … one moment, Captain … it was … sorry, Captain. The guide reports the object was traveling at 0.91c, and an energy source initiating from the object struck the asteroid.”
“Impressive, Mr. President,” Shimada said, trying to keep her voice calm and controlled. “Would you care to explain what we’ve just witnessed?”
Tatia sent to Alex.
“That was one of our fighters, Captain, what we call a traveler. I brought a few ships full of them to ensure I’m given the opportunity to be heard by your Supreme Tribunal. Now, as I said, I need your station. My suggestion is that you pull your destroyer back about 1M kilometers inward of Neptune, along with your patrol ships, and you tell your Tribunal that since we came to offer peace, you thought it better to let the Tribunal communicate with the aliens than start a war with them.”
Shimada had to smile at the president’s description of themselves as aliens. That’s exactly what the entire UE populace was thinking the explorer ship found. Shimada was running down the options in her head. The fighter’s velocity as reported by the ship’s guide was incredible, and it possessed an unknown beam weapon. If the Haraken president spoke the truth, he had ships full of them. Not to mention, the president didn’t have to show me his demonstration, Shimada thought. He could have sent a squadron of his fighters and blown my ship into space debris before we sounded battle stations.
“Suppose I agree to your request, Mr. President. May I ask some questions?”
When the president nodded, Shimada addressed her first concern. “You might not be aware, but we have militia aboard the station.” Before she could continue, the admiral had held up a hand to forestall her.
“We are aware of the situation aboard Idona Station — your militia, the civilians in the outer wheel, and the Independents … I mean the rebels in the inner wheel and core,” Tatia replied. “That’s why we’ve chosen Idona Station as our starting point. We wish to speak with all of your people.”
“I do not command the militia, Admiral Tachenko. Major Lindling does, and he will not be a willing participant in your schemes.”
“All we need you to do, Captain, is relay our entire conversation, in your own words, to the major. We will handle the rest,” Tatia said.
“One more point, if I may. Unless you have a means of shortening your comm lag time to Earth, you will have a difficult time communicating with the Tribunal. That’s where they’re headquartered.”
“We have that subject covered as well, Captain,” Tatia replied.
“Of course you do,” Shimada murmured and then in her command voice, “Very well, Mr. President, I will pull my destroyer and patrol ships back the distance you’ve requested. It will take several days for some of my patrol ships to pass inward of Idona Station.”
“So long as you’ve informed your officers to proceed without any aggressive action on their part, Captain, all will be well. And Captain, should you or your patrol ships need supplies or emergency services, do not hesitate to comm. Open broadcast is fine. We’ll always be listening.”
“May I recover my crew from Idona, Mr. President?”
“Certainly, Captain,” Alex replied.
“Mr. President, Admiral,” Shimada said, saluting the superior ranks. It felt appropriate, and the admiral responded with a sharp salute. Her first academy training officer once told her that a superior who couldn’t return a proper salute was a danger to his people — someone who played at being an officer.
“Comms, get me Major Lindling,” Shimada requested. When she failed to get a response, she repeated the request in a power-laden command voice, which caused her bridge personnel to jump to and appear busy.
“Aye, Captain,” the comms officer repeated loudly, a little too loudly.
Watching the reaction of her bridge personnel, Reiko Shimada realized it wouldn’t take long before the entire ship and the station, for that matter, would know that the aliens had come, and they were human — mostly.
* * *
With the asteroid fields behind them, Z, who had the fleet’s advance position in the Rêveur, signaled Julien and Cordelia, relaying the positions of the UE’s patrol vessels.
Tatia froze in the middle of her discussion with Commanders Lucia Bellardo and Franz Cohen and held up a finger to forestall their conversation.
Tatia refocused on Bellardo and Cohen and said, “Commanders, I’ll leave you to it. You’ll have incoming signals from your commodore. Good fortune,” Tatia said and left, making her way to the carrier’s bridge. She was taking these actions in stride and breathing easily. After heavy losses at Niomedes against the Hand of Justice’s massive wing of fighters, Tatia feared that Alex might not allow her the time necessary to repair the large number of damaged travelers that Sheila reported, but to her great relief Alex relented.
On the way through the asteroid fields, Sheila and Tatia had held several vid conferences. During one of the
m, the admiral apprised Sheila that the Rêveur carried a single traveler. Sheila had raised an eyebrow in query at the liner’s lack of travelers, but Tatia had just replied “Z” and shrugged her wide shoulders. Now, Sheila hurriedly signaled her wing commanders to launch protective forces, including a request to the Last Stand, which was second in the fleet’s order, to cover the liner from that carrier.
After Sheila’s comm, Wing Commander Ellie Thompson began arranging the protective shield for her ship, the No Retreat. She was another individual who was pleased that the time was granted for the Swei Swee to repair the battle-damaged fighters. Ellie smiled to herself as she recalled the eventful morning.
The flight crew was preparing the launch of the first traveler from the No Retreat, shortly after it had made Haraken’s orbit, its bays full of travelers with nicked, dinged, and cracked shells. Ellie claimed the privilege of first launch and was on the way to the bay when she heard swift and nearly silent footfalls behind her. It was movement only two individuals she knew could execute.
Ellie whirled around, drawing breath to shout, when she was almost bowled off her feet by Étienne de Long, who had wrapped her in his arms, squeezing her so tightly she could barely breathe. His embrace surprised her, for while Étienne was an ardent lover in private, he was quite reserved in public. But as he held her, all thoughts fled her mind, and she lost herself in his embrace.
When Ellie landed at the shell construction base near Alex’s home, she settled the fighter onto its grav cradle and found a committee waiting for her — Alex, Renée, Tatia, Sheila, Mickey, Alain, and the SADEs.
“This will be a day for public demonstrations, my heart, and one of them is long overdue me,” Ellie said and winked at Étienne before she scrambled down the traveler’s hatch steps and adopted a purposeful stride toward the group.
Walking directly up to Alex, Ellie announced, “I have a personal message from President Gonzalez for you, Mr. President.” Then Ellie laid a deep, long kiss on Alex. When she pulled back, she took a moment to catch her breath and announced, “The message is from Maria, Mr. President, you have her sincere thanks for your protection of New Terra … but, um … the delivery was all mine,” Ellie said, grinning at Alex.
Alex didn’t bother to respond, but he did catch Étienne’s grin. The escort sent,
Alex threw a comradely arm around Ellie’s slender shoulder, saying, “Let’s see what the Swei Swee must repair.”
Passing Sheila, Ellie gave her superior a big grin. When she heard Maria Gonzalez ask Sheila to give Alex a kiss for her, Ellie pleaded to deliver the message. “He owes me one, Commodore,” Ellie said, and both knew she was referring to the aftermath of the critical and successful first test of a Haraken traveler. Sheila, a New Terran who had been with Alex since the beginning, had received a generous kiss on the mouth, while Ellie, who had great expectations, had received a chaste kiss on the forehead.
While the humans and SADEs conversed, the Swei Swee matrons swarmed over Ellie’s traveler, examining the damage and warbling their laments at the nicks, gouges, and cracks the vessel’s shell suffered.
Mickey was prepared for the dilemma he thought the matrons would face. When a traveler shell was built, the first female laid down some shell compound on the bow’s frame crosses. The material was masticated from minerals the young females prepared and was mixed with additional material the matrons chewed. As the Swei Swee spit dried, the matron tested her work by clamping her mouth parts on the piece of shell, blowing firmly, and producing a harmonic. The females picked up the sound and tuned their keen sense of vibration to it. All subsequent work was done to preserve that original sound. It was the harmonic nature of a Swei Swee shell that enabled a traveler to intercept gravitational waves so efficiently.
However, the damaged traveler Ellie landed was only charging at 32 percent capacity, and its true harmonics were corrupted. As the Rêveur’s chief engineer, Michael “Mickey” Brandon had also been with Alex since the beginning, and he had become the de facto person for all things traveler related.
Once the Harakens discovered the Swei Swee method of tuning a shell, Mickey engineered a unique method of interrupting the shell’s integrity to build in hatches, and he kept a library of every shell, tagging the traveler with a code number and linking the code to a harmonic recording in his database.
Alex let loose a shrill, high-pitched whistle, and the First scurried across the cliff top, his six legs tearing up lumps of grass as he raced across the 40-meter distance. His 3-meter length and snapping great claws still gave pause to humans and SADEs alike, but not Alex.
Ellie smiled at that memory of the committee freezing, including herself, while Alex released her and hurried to greet the First, the two of them whistling some unknown concert. The First held out his great claws and Alex formed fists and thumped down on top of them with a resounding thwack. Alex had looked around for Mickey and laughed when he found the engineer waiting back with everyone else.
Mickey’s embarrassment showed in his grin as he hurried forward with his device. Alex worked for several minutes to communicate to the First what they were attempting to do, but, in many respects, the worlds of the Swei Swee and humans were still far apart. Finally, Alex whistled for the First’s eldest mate and she, with her blunted claws and scarred back from her years of forced labor mining resources for the alien race known as the Nua’ll, had hurried to the Star Hunter First, as Alex was known among the hives.
Alex led the matron over to the traveler’s bow, placed Mickey’s device against the foremost point, and played the harmonic recording. The matron placed her mouth parts against the bow, but she failed to duplicate the sound. Her four eyestalks moved from the recording device to the bow and back to the First. She warbled her confusion.
Alex thought for a moment and then played the recording again, whistling “affirmative.” He pointed at the bow and whistled “negative” and then walked along the shell pointing at the dings and cracks, two sets of eyestalks following him.
The audience waited while the First and his mate communicated, then hopes rose when the matron loosed a shrill whistle and the females crowded around her while she whistled and warbled her instructions.
Humans sat down in the grass to wait, while the SADEs remained standing, locking their avatars in place, and the Swei Swee First hunkered down beside Alex, who leaned on his shell to watch. Ellie had a memory of watching three pairs of eyeballs, Alex and the First’s, following the lead matron as if it was some sort of sporting match.
The Swei Swee were faced with an entirely new challenge but devised a means of solving it. The young females prepared their batches of shell compound and passed them to the matrons, who added their contributions. Then the damaged areas were patched or filled and allowed to set. The First’s mate would swing a couple of eyestalks at Mickey, who would play the recording, and she would test the traveler’s harmonics, whistling further instructions to the hive’s females. Step by step the Swei Swee fine-tuned the traveler while repairing its damage until the mate whistled success, and the females joined in chorus.
Alex hurried over to the mate and held out his fists. It was a rare gesture for a female to be invited to a greeting of claws with a First, much less the Star Hunter First, and the matron whistled her appreciation and held up her blunt, scarred great claws. Alex thumped them firmly several times, which, for a moment, confused the matron, but when the First
whistled his appreciation, the females joined in a chorus of tribute to the mate.
A pilot flew the traveler back to the carrier, and two more fighters, hovering above, landed. After the first traveler was repaired, an assembly line followed, a tech taking over the device playback and matrons substituting for the First’s mate.
The First whistled his concern to Alex about the absence of the Hive Singer, and Alex assured him that Mutter was safe, but hunters still roamed the stars. The First was momentarily placated, but as he watched the long line of travelers requiring repairs, his confidence faded. The Star Hunters demonstrated dominance when they defeated the Swei Swee in their dark travelers and showed their cleverness when they aided the Swei Swee in defeating the Nua’ll. But the number of damaged travelers said his People’s protectors fought great hunters and would soon leave for the hunters’ star. He was concerned for the Star Hunter First’s safety — should he and his people be sent to travel the endless waters, so might the Swei Swee meet the same fate.
* * *
Darius was a deeply disappointed man as he stepped onto the traveler’s small bridge to relieve his backup pilot. They passed hosts of ships on the passage inward to deploy their package, a probe, and the count increased the closer they got to Earth, but no one had attempted an interception.
“Upset we’re being left alone, Captain?” Lieutenant Sanders asked when he saw Darius’s disgruntled expression. The traveler carried not only the two pilots but a crew of four, who would ensure the probe’s quick launch.
“Foolish, I know, Sanders,” Darius admitted. “I’m surprised the commander requested me in the first place, considering the mood I’ve been in since we lost Sean.”
“We lost a lot of good people at Niomedes too, Captain,” Sanders reminded him.
“True. Maybe it’s time I screwed my head back on straight.”
