by Rick Partlow
I made myself calm down and keep my voice even and friendly, and there was still a bit of an edge to it.
“There’s already a war. It’s been going on for years, decades. We just found out about it and got caught up in it. But if you’re asking if it’s coming here, well, that’s what we’re trying to avoid.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, trying to figure out how much I could tell him without winding up before a court martial board. “It comes down to this, Paul. The Tevynians are what would happen if you grabbed Atilla and the Huns off Earth, put them on a planet with nothing to do but fight each other for a couple thousand years, with no other cultures to influence them, no other philosophies to ameliorate their own, and then, you gave them hyperdrives and laser weapons and set them loose on a bunch of pacifists.”
“Shit,” Paul breathed, shoulders sagging. “I was hoping it wasn’t really that bad.”
“That’s why I do what I do. Well, also, science fiction has suddenly become current events, so I probably couldn’t make a living at that anymore. I don’t even know what all this shit has done to the ratings for the United Stars show and I haven’t talked to my agent in months.”
He laughed politely, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. This was worrying him, and I could understand, because it worried the hell out of me, too.
“It’ll be okay,” I assured him, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. Which felt incredibly weird since he was the guy who my wife had left me for, but fuck it, he was a good man. “I may have some faults….” I shrugged. “Okay, I may have a lot of faults, but I will die before I let anything happen to Zack. And since he currently lives on Earth, that means I pretty much have to protect all you guys, too.”
“Currently?” Paul repeated, picking up on the word I’d used almost unconsciously.
“Well, yeah. You’re into real estate, dude. Think of the big picture.” I nodded upward. “There’s a whole universe out there and it just opened up for all of us.”
“If we live.”
I sighed and nodded. “Well, yeah, there is that.”
“Come on,” he said, waving into the living room. “I got lunch ready for us. If we can pry Zack away from your girlfriend.”
“Oh, please, do me a favor,” I pleaded with him, eyes rolling skyward. “Do not call her that.”
Chapter Six
“By the way, I don’t know if I told you,” Julie said after a sip of Dos Equis, “but your son is incredibly cute. He must have to fight off the girls—or least, his mom must have to break out the garden hose to keep them away.”
“That’s what I hear,” I admitted, leaning against the bar of the Officer’s Club at Staging Base Alpha. It was nice having the whole place to ourselves…well, us and the bartender and a single waitress.
We’d arrived back in Idaho with two hours to spare before the shuttle launched and an appetite for an early lunch, and the O club was pretty much it here at Alpha. Not even a fucking Subway to be had unless you drove out into town. And in November weather in Idaho, no one even wanted to walk to the O club, much less drive into town. At least they had a good cheeseburger. We’d polished off the food and Julie had decided to have a couple beers since the Jambo was a dry ship.
I was having a Diet Coke. I don’t know that I’m an alcoholic or, that is, no one has ever told me I was, but I crawled into a bottle for a couple years after Venezuela. Afterwards I decided that wasn’t going to happen again. I had one addiction I wasn’t going to give up, and that was caffeine. My chosen delivery vehicle was the Mark One Diet Coke, 12 oz aluminum, one each.
“He seemed enamored of you,” I teased, leaning into her, laughing softly. “Guess the Clanton taste in women is genetic.”
“Or maybe it’s my glamorous career choices. Boys just love a girl who knows how to fly a starship.”
She was keeping it light, but I could hear a touch of melancholy in her voice.
“You sad you didn’t get to see your daughter?” I guessed.
“A little,” she admitted, hiding her frown behind another swallow of beer. “I mean, I know it’s not fair to expect them to be in town just because I get a day off, but you know how it is.”
“I do. We’ve been given a chance to live a couple hundred years, maybe more, but every time I see my son, I feel like it might be the last time.” I wished, not for the first time, that the Diet Coke was mixed with something stronger. “I guess none of us want to miss out on a chance to be with the people we love.”
Julie’s smile was warm and soft and very unlike her.
“I agree.”
She put her hand on my neck and pulled me into a kiss. She tasted like stale Mexican beer and French fries but I didn’t complain. She was warmth and comfort and comradeship and just about everything I ever wanted.
“Should we be engaging in public displays of affection right here in the O club?” I asked her, resting my forehead against hers.
“Aw, who cares?” she said, leaning in to kiss me again. “There’s no one here except the staff.”
The door burst open in a blast of cold that killed both the mood and perhaps an outer layer of my skin cells, and we pulled away from each other and straightened our jackets. Colonel Brooks stomped inside, shaking a layer of snow off of her field jacket and cursing under her breath, trailed by two Arctic mummies in the wrappings of that ancient Egyptian cult, the North Face. I’d expected Brooks, known she was coming up on the shuttle with us. I hadn’t expected the other two.
I’d known Delia Strawbridge was going along on the mission, but I expected her to already be up in orbit with General Olivera, conferring about some high-level shit, far above the pay grade of an overpromoted major. Strawbridge’s cheeks were bright red from the wind, her intricate bun fraying around the edges. She looked like a young Margaret Thatcher if said future PM of Britain had rubbed a balloon against her hair. Far too young to be a Deputy Secretary of State, going by appearance. That was going to be strange for quite a while, trying to guess how old someone was.
The man, though, I hadn’t expected to see either here or on the ship. Not that I wasn’t happy to see him, since he was the one who’d given me the gift of Methuselah in the first place. Dr. Jack Patel was a short, slender man and so far, hadn’t come up with any alien biotech to change that, but I knew he’d be working on it.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Julie said, sliding off her barstool. “What are you doing here, Doc? General Olivera didn’t tell us you’d be coming along.”
“I’ve been tied up examining the Tevynian prisoner you brought back,” Patel said, a shiver in his voice from the cold. “I found some interesting data and General Olivera wanted me to be there to help present it to the Helta government.” He grinned with the sort of cheerful abandon I’d come to appreciate. “Besides, it’s the first human voyage to the Helta homeworld! Do you think I wouldn’t want to be along on that?”
“And the whole part about the Tevynians and space war and maybe dying doesn’t bother you, Doc?” I asked him.
“Oh, it scares me shitless,” he admitted without hesitation. “But so do a lot of things and you can’t let fear run your life. I mean, we’re going to live a long time and what’s the use of spending two or three centuries sitting on your couch, right?”
“Drinks are on him, if you want a beer,” Julie invited, hooking a thumb at me. “He doesn’t drink, so he’ll live vicariously through you.”
“I wouldn’t say no to that,” Brooks replied, unzipping her jacket and sitting at the bar. Rivulets of melted snow dripped from it, making pools on the hardwood floor. She flagged down the bartender, an older woman with graying hair tied in a ponytail, an apron covering her T-shirt and jeans. “You have any dark ale? Imported maybe?”
“Jeez, you think I’m made of money?” I complained. “When did we go from a beer to an imported ale?”
“Shit, I know how much money you’re making, Mr. United Stars,” Julie said, digging an elbow into my ribs. “You should work f
or the government for nothing as much as this whole thing is goosing your book sales.” She touched Strawbridge’s arm and the woman stared at her hand like it was an alien appendage. “What about you, Ms. Deputy Secretary? You want a drink?”
Strawbridge was an odd duck, very much an officious bureaucrat when I’d first met her, and if she’d mellowed over the months, it had been in a nod to the momentous nature of what we faced, not to us personally. I saw a debate going on behind her eyes just as surely as if there were candidates lined up on a stage taking questions from a moderator about the benefits and risks of accepting free drinks from subordinates.
In the end, perhaps the suggestion that I was more of a writer masquerading as a military officer than someone serious and vital to the mission helped her decide it was safe to be human with us.
“Yes, thanks,” she said, and nodded to the bartender. “Please pour me a glass of red wine. Whatever you have.”
The woman behind the bar stared at her a moment, and I knew from experience that the twitching muscles at her temples was an energetic attempt to keep her eyes from rolling.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, her western accent as dry as sandpaper.
“You want anything, Doc?” I asked Patel. Everyone else had pulled up a chair, but he was still standing, brushing melting snow off his dark blue jacket.
“Water, I suppose. I would say ice water, but it would be a little redundant in this weather, no?”
“You don’t drink?” I asked him, not exactly shocked, but a little surprised. He was a Christian and while some denominations of Christians didn’t drink, including my late father’s, the percentage wasn’t as large as with some other religions.
I offered him the stool beside mine and he sat down. A few stray water droplets hit the side of my head and I shivered involuntarily at the chill.
“No,” he said, taking a glass of water from the waitress, who’d finally come from the back to help serve our drinks. “It’s not a religious thing,” he added, as if he’d been reading my thoughts. “Though I think my parents would be happier if it were. They’re much more devout than I am. They moved to this country for religious freedom. But no, it’s just that I can’t stand the taste.” He tilted his head in curiosity. “You have a problem with alcohol? Or am I misremembering?” He raised a hand. “If you don’t wish to discuss it, I apologize.”
“Naw, it’s okay.” I took a sip of my soft drink. “I did, but I’m not sure if the alcohol was the problem or just a symptom of PTSD.”
“Aren’t you worried this….” He motioned around us. “…is going to bring back your old problems?”
“The problems usually hit when the action stopped,” I said, “and I had to try to live a normal life again.” I laughed softly. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to have a normal life again. So, I got that going for me.”
“I suppose you and your Delta boys are going to want to crow and brag now,” Brooks said, her voice traveling past Julie and Strawbridge to target me like a guided missile. “I mean, since you managed to capture one of those fanatics alive and my Rangers couldn’t.”
“That was just luck, ma’am,” I told her, and I wasn’t being humble. “And maybe a little bit because we have so much experience in that team, bottom to top. If we hadn’t grabbed that one alive close to the beginning, we would have had to go inside the refinery to get a prisoner.”
“And probably taken a shitload of casualties,” Brooks countered. “My boys and girls are still learning, but they’ll get there.” She sighed, then lifted her very expensive bottle of dark ale in salute. “I suppose this is my backhanded way of saying I’m glad you stuck around, Andy.”
“We’ve been very lucky,” Strawbridge cut in, her tone sharp. Every eye turned toward her, including mine. She didn’t shrink under the attention, still sipping her plastic cup of wine, not looking at us. “Things could have gone much worse,” she added. She finally looked up, searching out my eyes as if her point was particularly for me. “Most of our success so far has come from surprise. And yes, to some extent it’s the reason the Helta recruited us, because we have far more experience at high-tech warfare than they do. Also, and this is something we didn’t know until we had a chance to talk to your prisoner, but the main reason the Tevynians simply use Helta weapons instead of crafting their own is that, for all that they consider the Helta their moral and physical inferiors to be dominated, they also revere their technology as a gift from the Elders, who they consider gods.”
She laughed, a sound thick with bitterness and little humor.
“When we saw what the Helta could do, our first thought was how we could adapt their technology to weapons we favored, make them more tactical and destructive. When the Tevynians saw the technology, they considered it as a medieval knight might have if you’d given him a magic sword. He wouldn’t start thinking about mounting it on the end of a spear to increase its range, he would have said prayers of thanks and run into battle using it as best he could.”
“And thank God for small favors,” I said, not quite getting where the rant was coming from. “I’m sure it made your job easier. It was hard enough selling an interstellar war to Congress and our allies when we’d won a couple battles. Can you imagine if we’d gotten our asses kicked?”
“It’s going to happen,” she declared. “We have superior tactics, more experience, but the Tevynians have hundreds of ships. Maybe thousands by now. And they get more with every Helta system they conquer. To quote Stalin, quantity has a quality all its own.”
“If we’re throwing quotes around,” I said, “I’ve always preferred Voltaire.” At their curious faces, I took one last drink of Diet Coke and smiled. “God,” I recited, “is not on the side of the biggest battalions but of the best shots.”
***
Even if I did live to three or four hundred years old, I was, I decided, never going to let myself get to the point where I didn’t stare out the window in childlike wonder at the sight of Earth turning below me.
“Thanks for letting me up in the cockpit,” I told Julie.
“I’m just glad they gave me the chance to fly a shuttle for a change,” she said. “It’s cool and all being at the helm of the Jambo, but this is more what I signed up for. More like flying an F18 back in the day.”
“What do you think would have happened if they hadn’t come?” I wondered, eyes still on the blue arc of our planet, so large and yet so tiny and isolated in a sea of stars.
“I guess the Tevynians would have eventually swept over everything and ran the show,” she said, shrugging. “I mean, unless one of the other races we haven’t met yet stepped up, but Joon-Pah seems pretty confident they won’t.”
“Not to them,” I clarified. “I mean to us. Here on Earth.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they would have found us, maybe they wouldn’t. If they’d left us alone, I guess we would have discovered all the shit the Helta gave us on our own, eventually.”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve been talking to Gatlin. Well, messaging him. He couldn’t talk about a lot of the stuff he’s working on because you don’t share that kind of thing on a text message, but I was curious from the point of view of a science fiction writer about how far away we were from figuring out the gravimetic field that’s the basis for their drives and shields and pretty much everything they have that’s really far in advance of us. He said it’s something we would never have stumbled on. I mean, his best people, some of the best physicists in the world, still don’t know how it works. They know it works, and they know how to hook it up and turn it on, but it might as well be black magic to them.”
Julie glanced over at me, eyes narrowed. “What’s the upshot? Does he think the Helta are that much smarter than us?”
“No, that’s the thing. He’s talked to the Helta engineers and they don’t really know why the shit works, either. They know how, know the effects it has, and they know how to build it, but they don’t know why, don’t really understand the physi
cs of it. He thinks they didn’t invent the technology, that they found it.”
“You’re talking about these Elders, right?” she asked. “Do you think they just left some of their shit lying around when they left?”
“That’s just it,” I said and glanced around. I was in the gunner’s seat since this flight wasn’t a combat mission and didn’t really need one, and we were the only ones in the cockpit, but I wanted to make sure no one was listening from outside. “I don’t think they are gone.”
“Well they aren’t getting involved in this whole war that’s been going on,” she pointed out. “Do you think they just gave the Helta the technology then what? Turned invisible?”
“We don’t know where they came from originally. The Helta don’t know. They don’t know what they looked like, what their culture was like, anything about them. They haven’t found any remnants of what had to be a galaxy-spanning civilization. To me, that says they never lived here in the first place. They came here, looked around, found Earth and I’m just guessing here by the fact all the life the Helta know about is based on Earth DNA, but I’d say the Elders considered Earth a biological treasure trove. So, they started playing around with it.”
I motioned at our blue planet.
“They took some plant and animal samples and transplanted them to worlds they terraformed. It might have taken thousands of years, but these were obviously people who thought long-term. Then, once they had the worlds all nice and set up for life, they decided to take the experiment to the next level and make some friends they could talk to. I think humans were already around by this point, so they didn’t bother fucking around with us, they wanted something different. They took sun bears and some kind of lizards and wolves and maybe, I don’t know, octopus or squid? And they made the species the Helta know as the Vironians, the Skrith and the Chamblisi.”
