Scales of Empire

by Kylie Chan

  ‘Your job will be to travel to Wolf with Shiumo, and reconnect with her. While you’re on her ship, ask her two things: one, if having sex with her is lethal; and two, if she has a cure for Commander Alto.’ She grimaced. ‘If she can cure Alto, the politicians would like to start a breeding program. They want to see how amenable she is to the idea, and whether it would be possible for a second dragon to come and sire a generation of dragons on our hybrids.’

  ‘That is a terrible idea, ma’am.’

  ‘Just be glad I talked them out of their other stupid idea.’

  ‘I won’t sleep with her to make a half-dragon baby for Earth,’ I said.

  She glared at me. ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t even think about it. That is not open to negotiation. If anyone asks you to do it, come straight to me. If you sleep with her, it is proof that she’s controlling our minds and using us as sex toys. Under no circumstances are you to accept her advances or make any of your own.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, relieved.

  ‘Good. You leave for Wolf in three weeks. Stick with Alto for the next week and keep his spirits up, but then you’ll have to go in-house for the final preparation.’ She sighed. ‘I hope Shiumo has a way to save his life that doesn’t involve giving him back to her.’

  ‘I hope so too, ma’am.’

  She saluted me. ‘I look forward to hearing what she has to say.’

  ‘I got the land!’ Mum said onscreen, full of smiles. ‘It’s so big, and flat! Victor took one look at it, looked at me, and said, “I’ll never get any sculpting done out here, will I, Connie?”’

  ‘He’ll find the time,’ I said. I lowered my voice. ‘How are they?’

  She waved her finger at me. ‘Don’t you start getting all guilty again. They’re fine. Dianne is in third trimester now, so it’s not as bad for her, and she’s frantically busy adding to our knowledge on alien biology. Marque provided her with some data. She’ll be famous for it.’

  I sighed with relief. ‘That’s good to hear.’

  ‘And Victor’s selling little dragon sculptures on the network. He’s promoting them as “identical to one given to Princess Shiumo as a gift”, and he’s made enough to support Dianne and your kid for a long time.’

  ‘I really should talk to them.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Every time they talk to you, they’re miserable. They feel they drove you away. If you’re doing what you want to do and being happy, it relieves their guilt. I’ll let them know that you’re doing great. Say goodbye when you head to Wolf, and let them have their little family. That’s the best thing you can do for them.’

  I shrugged and tried to hide my relief. ‘Okay then.’

  ‘So you’re going in for the test tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. The commander doesn’t like me. He’s convinced I haven’t learned enough to be useful while I helped Richard and studied remotely.’

  ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘He’ll throw everything he has at me to try to stop me from going to New Europa.’

  ‘And what will you do about it?’

  ‘What I usually do,’ I said, and we said in unison: ‘Succeed!’

  She sobered. ‘After you’ve gone to this planet, how long before Shiumo leaves and we lose contact?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been too busy with my training to talk to her, but I’ll find out while I’m on the ship.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, little sweetie.’

  My throat thickened. ‘I’ll miss you too, Mum.’

  ‘You’ll do great on the test. Go do wonderful things.’

  I nodded, and my tablet pinged next to me. ‘That’s me. I have to go.’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  I switched off the screen and checked my tablet. Time for the test.

  19

  Commander Geoffrey Vince, the head of the Wolf colony project, was waiting for us at the entrance to the enormous steel warehouse-style construction that held the simulated Wolf-c environment. It was situated in the middle of the space elevator island.

  He glared at me. ‘Choumali.’

  I nodded back. ‘Sir.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ General Maxwell said, and flashed me a short tight smile. She nodded to Vince. ‘Do your worst, Geoff.’

  He nodded to her, then scowled at me. I straightened; I was ready for this.

  I followed Vince to the warehouse’s airlock, where my team were waiting. The seven women and two men in the group were uneasy about the nature of the test, but relaxed when they saw me. A couple gave me hugs of welcome, and then we stood in a semicircle to listen to Commander Vince.

  ‘The interior of this building is filled with an atmosphere roughly similar to Wolf-c’s,’ he said. ‘There’s a scale model dome inside fitted with everything you’ll have when you go to Wolf. You have to survive in the dome for seven days.’ He gestured towards the rack of breathers. ‘I’ll be back in a week.’

  ‘Double-check the breathers,’ I said. ‘At least one of them will show as clean when it’s out of order. If it’s yours, hold your breath and I’ll give you a different one.’

  My team looked from me to Commander Vince, then took the breathers off the rack and fitted them over their heads. There were two extra so I held them ready. I fitted my own breather and nodded to Commander Vince. He went out and I sealed the door behind him, then cycled the airlock.

  I waited for whoever had taken the bad breather. Elise put her hand up, so I took a deep breath, held it, and gave her mine. I fitted one of the extras, and it was bad as well, so I tried the other extra and it was okay.

  I turned the comms on. ‘This is going to be our lives for the next two days – he’ll have sabotaged everything just enough to make it three times harder than it was for the other teams. You can choose to leave now if you like – I wouldn’t blame you. He’ll happily put you in another team.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to say this over comms, Jian?’ Bonnie said. ‘He’s probably listening.’

  ‘I know. Anyone want to leave?’

  ‘It’ll be three times harder when we get there anyway,’ Gordon said. ‘Let’s do this.’

  The rest of the team nodded, and I straightened. They were showing enormous faith in me and I had to do this right.

  The light on the airlock interior door went green and we entered. The dome was a third the size of the one we were taking to Wolf. A greenhouse, also one-third size, stood next to the dome, connected by an oxygenated tunnel. We trudged over the bare ground to the dome’s airlock, and went in. I closed the door and cycled the airlock.

  ‘Pattie, test the internal air before we remove the breathers,’ I said. ‘My bet is there isn’t enough oxygen.’

  The light went green, so I opened the internal door.

  Pattie checked her instruments. ‘There’s enough oxygen to breathe.’

  None of us removed the breathers; we were all spooked by the sabotage.

  Pattie checked again. ‘As you thought: too much carbon dioxide. Not enough to knock us out. No monoxide. Wait a moment, I’m checking …’ She flipped through the display. ‘I’m seeing it as acceptable.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Gordon said, and removed her breather. She sniffed the air, and gagged. ‘Holy shit!’ She panted a few times. ‘I think it’s okay to breathe, but holy hell, the smell!’

  Pattie removed her breather, and I did too. The air smelled strongly of decay – like rotting fish and vegetation.

  ‘Something’s rotting in here,’ Pattie said. ‘We’ll have to manage bacterial growth, the smell … damn. What a completely dick move.’

  Remember he’s listening, I said, and she winced.

  We went further into the dome; everything seemed in order. The privacy units around the edge provided individual accommodation, with a central dining/meeting area and kitchen. The minimal bathroom facility was a fibreglass modular lean-to with a tunnel connecting it to the main dome.

&nbs
p; ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s put our heads together and think about what we would have sabotaged if we were in his place.’

  After we’d allocated tasks, I went with Alison and her husband, Lawrence, to our first checkpoint – the water reservoir. We put our breathers on and headed outside the dome to the four-metre-wide spherical rainwater tank attached to its side. Alison and Lawrence climbed up to see whether there was any damage. I checked around the base and didn’t find anything.

  My comms clicked. ‘Jian, it’s Helen. You need to come inside right now – you will not believe this!’

  ‘Found it,’ Alison said. ‘Slow leak at the base.’

  ‘I checked the base!’ I said.

  ‘It’s below ground level. There’s moisture in the soil here; I can feel it.’

  ‘Jian?’ Helen said into my ear. ‘We really need you.’

  ‘Jian, I need you here. The hydroponics are stuffed,’ Ben said over the comms.

  ‘Can you fix it?’ I asked Alison.

  ‘We can,’ Lawrence said. ‘Go to Helen.’

  I went back inside the dome, and cycled the airlock.

  ‘Jian?’ Ben said again just as I pulled the breather off.

  I put it back on to speak to him. ‘You’re next. Give me a minute.’

  I put the breather on the recharger, then went to the storage area, where Helen and Bonnie were doing a stocktake.

  ‘How bad is it?’ I said.

  ‘Look.’ Helen held up one of the foil-wrapped emergency rations. The foil was torn, and the food appeared to have been chewed.

  ‘They tore open everything, and what they didn’t eat they pissed on,’ Elise said. ‘We lost all of it.’

  ‘Apparently rats stowed away in one of the pods on the spaceship,’ Helen said.

  ‘Not possible – wait. How do you know it was rats?’

  Elise held up a piece of paper. ‘They left a frigging note.’

  She handed it to me. It said: A rat stowed away in one of the transport pods, and had a litter before it arrived here. Have fun tracking it down. It’ll be chewing on everything.

  ‘We can feed the rations to the pigs and chickens,’ I said. ‘I’d better go see Ben. If the hydroponics are wrecked, we’ll have to request another Shiumo transfer sooner than any other colony, and probably fail the test.’

  Marcia, the vet, was waiting for me in the middle of the dome. ‘I checked on the animals.’

  ‘Are they alive?’

  ‘They’re fine.’ She shrugged. ‘Our saboteurs aren’t into torturing innocent animals. They even milked the goats for us.’

  ‘Good. Come with me – we’ll look at the hydroponics. You and Ben can work together on keeping us fed.’

  In the hydroponics area, the water in the PVC channels was bright green, and the plants growing up the wires from the channels appeared to be dead. The rotting fish and vegetation smell was coming from here.

  ‘We’ve lost about half the plants in the channels,’ Ben said when he saw me. He lifted the lid of the urine-recycling vat and the area filled with a noxious haze of ammonia. ‘Someone left the urine tank open, and the spirulina contaminated the hydroponics. It sucked all the nutrients out of the bath and killed the food plants.’

  ‘It’s pure spirulina? No other bacteria?’ I said.

  ‘No other bacteria as far as I can see. Just the spirulina.’

  ‘Wait,’ Marcia said. ‘The briefing notes said the spirulina was blue-green algae, not bacteria.’

  ‘It’s called blue-green algae, but it’s bacteria,’ Ben said. He shrugged. ‘Terminology.’

  ‘I see. Thanks,’ she said, nodding to him.

  ‘Are there enough food plants left to feed us?’ I said.

  Ben shook his head. ‘We’ll have to resort to rations until we can clear the spirulina out of the channels and bring the hydroponics back online.’

  ‘The rations are toast,’ I said. ‘Rats got into them, and what they didn’t eat they pissed on.’

  ‘The hell?’ Ben said. ‘Rats? How do you know it was rats?’

  ‘They left a note.’

  ‘Let’s eat them,’ Ben said with grim humour.

  ‘Marcia, if you can clean up the rations to use as animal feed, we’ll eat the spirulina,’ I said. ‘Can you process the spirulina into food for us, Ben?’

  ‘We can eat the algae?’ Marcia said. ‘It isn’t toxic? It smells like rotten fish!’

  ‘I wish I had a big screen to write on – I haven’t given this lecture in a long time,’ Ben said. ‘I was a huge advocate for using spirulina as an interstellar colony food source, and now it looks like that idea’s come back to bite me on the ass. Geoff may have done this deliberately to spite me – he’s making me spend a week eating this stuff because I made his life miserable arguing about it. Spirulina’s a complete food; it has all the amino acids, fats, carbs, everything we need to survive. The only thing it lacks is vitamin B-12, and it has low levels of A and D. It produces more oxygen than regular chlorophyll plants, and the spirulina in the urine vat processes the urine into a much milder solution suitable for the hydroponics. It’s high in some minerals and protein, and low in carbs, so we can’t live on it indefinitely or we’d go into ketosis. But in the short term, until the rest of the plants are re-established, we can eat it as a solo food source.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we eating more of it instead of the less efficient plants?’ Marcia said.

  Ben smiled. ‘You think the smell is bad? It tastes ten times worse. It tastes like absolute shit. Even the pigs had to be trained to eat it. It’s vile.’ His smile turned grim. ‘Believe me, by the end of this week you’ll be puking at the sight of anything green.’

  ‘Can you process it?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Strain out the algae through a cloth and drink the slurry. It’s a first-class high-protein food source.’

  ‘Enough for all of us and the animals as well if the rations are too contaminated for them to eat?’

  ‘Two hundred fifty metres by four tiers by twenty-five centimetres,’ he said under his breath, then did some quick calculations. ‘I’ll have to double-check, but I think so. We may have to mock-slaughter some of the animals though.’

  ‘We really should use this stuff as a main food source,’ Marcia said. ‘It sounds magical.’

  ‘You’ll be saying different later,’ Ben said. ‘I was a huge advocate for a long time – and then I tasted it and changed my mind completely.’

  Pattie poked her nose into the greenhouse. ‘We found three areas where the dome’s been weakened. It may never have torn open, but we’ll make sure it doesn’t. There was a small hole – small enough for a rat to travel through – near the rations. All fixed.’

  At the end of the week we gathered for a small celebration of our success. The table held the routine glasses of bright green spirulina, as well as two eggs from the hens, a litre of goat’s milk, and three carrots that had survived the contamination.

  We all raised our green glasses.

  ‘Here’s to a great team,’ I said. ‘We made it. You guys are the absolute best. It’s been a pleasure working with you, and I cannot wait to get to Wolf and really get started.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ a few people said quietly.

  We all held our noses and downed the slurry, then slammed the glasses on the table and made varied sounds of disgust. Marcia gagged loudly. She coughed and turned away, shook herself, turned back towards us and raised one hand in triumph. We all applauded her.

  The eggs and carrots had been cut into fifteen tiny pieces. We passed the plate around, each taking two pieces and eating them with relish. The fishy aftertaste of the algae didn’t ruin the flavour: the egg was rich and fatty, and the carrot was stunningly sweet. We washed them down with a drink from the shared jug of ice-cold milk.

  ‘That’s provided we did actually pass,’ Rennie said. ‘It’s possible that Commander Vince will find something wrong with what we did.’ She looked around. ‘We all lost at least five kil
os, and that’s really not sustainable.’

  We all sobered at that.

  The airlock cycled, and we turned to see Commander Vince. He came up to the table and winced. ‘That stuff really does smell awful.’

  ‘The entire dome stinks, sir, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,’ I said.

  We all fidgeted, waiting for him to speak.

  When he didn’t, I said, ‘So, did we pass?’

  Vince grinned at us, pride bursting from him. It was a complete turnaround of his attitude. We’d won him over.

  ‘Of course you did. You were magnificent.’ He put his hand out to me, and the respect was genuine. ‘Well done, Lieutenant.’

  Everybody erupted in cheers. Alison and Lawrence hugged each other.

  ‘You have a week before you leave,’ Vince said. ‘Go spend the time with your families and say goodbye. After that, I expect you back here for the final preparation, and we’ll begin the transfer process. Well done, everybody. I was sure you’d need at least two remedial transfers, but you carried it through with what you had and all did very well.’

  He grinned at Ben. ‘Are you still convinced that spirulina is the way to go?’

  ‘I’d prefer never to see the damn stuff again,’ Ben said. ‘Do I have time to investigate using chlorella instead of spirulina as the urine processor?’

  ‘Too late, sorry,’ Vince said, smug. ‘You’re stuck with the green stinky stuff.’

  ‘Damn,’ Ben said softly.

  ‘Come on. We’ll have a meal in the space elevator station, then you can all sleep in proper beds. Drinks are on me,’ Vince said.

  We cheered again, and followed him out of the dome. The air inside the building had already equalised and we didn’t need to use the airlock. When we were outside, we all stopped and breathed deeply of the fresh air.

  ‘You don’t appreciate an atmosphere until you don’t have it,’ I said.

  ‘You can still back out,’ Vince said. ‘We will have to remove five people from the program. Take the next few days to make sure you really want this.’ He gestured towards the building. ‘Now let’s go celebrate.’