James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03

by Bodicea

  “Living off the land… you have to like that, don’t you lieutenant. Have Enviro-Core send me a plan and I’ll approve it.”

  Fast Eddie’s Interstellar Slan and Jam was not normally open during the ship’s primary duty shifts (0600 – 1800 hours), but the Proprietor made certain exceptions.

  After her primary watch on the Bridge, Eliza Jane Change repaired to the Slam and Jam to recline on a couch sipping a concoction of ale, ginger, and vegetable oil called a Death Spiral while a small automech named “Puck” cleaned up some spillage in the corner.

  She held a small communit, which displayed the face of Flight Lieutenant Matthew Driver.

  “I guess I had forgotten how boring these Deep Space probes were. Prudence is mostly on auto-pilot. We check the telemetry every hour and send a message to Pegasus. In between, I’ve been meditating a lot. I try to get some physical exertion in. Lt. Commander Miller has been teaching me the Game of Resistance. He says I’ve gotten pretty good, but I still haven’t beaten him.

  “Maybe you could transmit to me some of the techniques you used to use in the Mining Guild. I imagine you had some long stretches with nothing to do. What do Mining Guild pilots do to keep occupied?”

  Eliza figured that Matthew probably did not really want to know how pilots passed their downtime in the Mining Guild, and would be even less likely to follow their example. There were reasons you were required to sterilize your hands before touching the controls in a mining ship.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you, except to say that I miss you, Eliza. I kind of wish you were here, but, then you’d be bored, too. At least we’d be bored together. … Oh, bugger, I wish I hadn’t said that. I guess I’ll be seeing you in a few days. Take care. Say hi to Eddie.

  Driver out.”

  When he heard the voice of the pretty and heroic flyer-boy finish, Eddie casually managed to find a table that needed to be wiped off in her vicinity. “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine, Eddie, what would make you think otherwise?”

  “I don’t know, you look, kind of weird. At first, I thought it was that slime cocktail you’re drinking, but then I remembered you were used to it. So, now, I have to ask, is there something wrong?”

  “Not really. I miss having Matthew around. I had grown used to having him around, and when he’s not around, sometimes I wish he was.”

  Eddie had to smile. “Are you going to tell him that?”

  Eliza shook her head. “There is no need to get the poor guy worked up. He would probably take it the wrong way.”

  “What’s the right way?”

  She sighed, maybe that was something she didn’t know the answer to. “I also have an odd feeling about this mission.

  “Like what, I mean, I don’t follow the news too closely. I thought he was flying off to look at some rocks. You think he’s in danger?”

  “I have a very strong feeling things are going to be different when he gets back.”

  “Between you guys?”

  She shook her head.

  As Pegasus was passing through the huge cloud of comets that surrounded the 10 655

  Vulpeculus system, Keeler was called to the Bridge. It was during the Night Watch, but Goneril Lear was already there.

  “Thirty eight minutes ago, we detected an incoming message, carrier wave, audio-visual, two-dimensional.”

  “From where, from the colony?” Keeler asked sleepily, reclaiming his command seat from Lear.

  “We think the signal is coming from the fifth planet. It’s very weak.” Keeler called up a display in front of his command chair. It displayed a snowstorm of static interference, and some ghostly image in the center. He had an instinctive urge to strike it hard on the side with the flat of his hand.

  The Communications Officer said, “I think I clean out some of the background noise.” Keeler nodded. A new adventure begins, he thought to himself.

  The Communications Officer began peeling away at the interference pattern, taking out electromagnetic interference from the sun and planets, and correcting the deflection of the signals that were bouncing from the surrounding cometary bodies. The static diminished, and a ghostly pale image came to the fore. A woman appeared on one of the primary screens. She looked to be a little younger than Lear, and rather on the heavy side. Her hair was blond and made a slightly unkempt bowl around her head. She wore a kind of teal sarong over a billowy garment with a pattern of blue flowers outlined on a background of white. She wore a very serious expression. Her lips were moving, but no sound came out.

  “Raise the gain on the audio signal,” Lear ordered.

  “It’s in bits and pieces. Lingotron is working on matrixing the facial movements with the bits of audio signal. Then, it can begin reconstructing the language,” the words “Negative Analog,” flashed repeatedly on the screen. Then suddenly, “Analog identified…

  Reconstructing 10% … 20% … 30% … 50%… 65%… 75%… 78%”

  “Lingotron is getting much better at this,” Keeler observed.

  “I think Caliph has been tweaking the translation matrix. She’s much better at pattern recognition than the baseline AI.” Keeler sensed that Lear did not entirely trust Caliph, and was uncomfortable with the entity’s access to ship’s systems. In a way, he couldn’t blame her.

  “We have a translation. Lingotron says it should be about 40% accurate.”

  “I’m being Ciel. First advocate the Circle Interior. All the communication will do that canal otherwise exclusively. You cease at once educate broadcasting messages our planet a few organizes other!”

  “Go Lingotron!” Keeler cheered.

  A smile broke out across Lear’s face. “Our planet… this means they’re unified. They have the technology to receive and respond to our signal.”

  “We are a community very peaceful. We don’t let’s have engaging intention oppose! We do not have hostility to you. We do not have of arm and it been a threat the offensives you.”

  “They are peaceful,” Lear said, reading over the Lingotron’s extrapolator for shades of meaning contained in tone and context. “They have no offensive weaponry, they are not a threat to us.”

  “Good. Good. Incredibly stupid thing to broadcast, but good. Excellent. Good.” Keeler thought.

  The woman, Ciel, fixed the camera in a stern glare. “You can approach our nobody closer planet than the orbit the our exterior Moon. That use frequency orchestra when communicate you arrives! We will account then. If you have some hostile intention leave our system at once.”

  If I had any hostile intent, Keeler thought, I would find this message very encouraging.

  “The message repreats,” said the Communication Officer. “Would you like to see it again?”

  “Neg, not now and not ever,” Keeler answered. The woman reminded him uncomfortably of the Chair of the Department of Contemporary Culture Studies at USNC. Any meeting she was involved in expanded to three and a half times its scheduled length, and tended to leave him either with a severe degree of stomach upset or a total lack of will to live.

  Lear crossed to the Telemetry Station. “Order our probes to hold position outside the outer moon.” She turned to Keeler. “Isn’t it wonderful? Another human colony, surviving intact with peace and order.”

  “I know, it makes me queasy just thinking about it.”

  “Shall we prepare a response?”

  “Sure,” Keeler said. “To the People and Government of the fifth planet, this is the Commander of the Pathfinder Ship Pegasus. We are on a peaceful mission to explore the galaxy and find the lost colonies of humanity. We are peaceful, but we are also armed to the teeth. We will remain outside the orbit of your outer moon and prepare to meet on your terms.

  We look forward to contact with your peaceful community.”

  “Commander!” Lear began to object.

  Keeler held up a hand for silence. “Have Lingotron translate that into the native language, then translate it back our own using the same algorithm.”
The Comm Officer nodded. A moment later, Lingotron read it back to them.

  “At the People and the Authority of the Planet Fifth, these that it being the Pathfinder Commander Send Pegasus! We let’s are a mission peaceful explore and the galaxy ascertain the lost settlements a humanity! We are peaceful we are also armed the prongs. We will let’s stay the orbit a your exterior Moon you are about to and meet your quarters! We let’s look touch your peaceful commune!”

  “Oh, my…” said Keeler. “About what I suspected. The last time I look touched a peaceful commune, I almost had to marry the girl.”

  “That message is unacceptable,” Lear said. “These are a peaceful people. There is no need for us to assert tactical superiority over them.”

  “Tell them whatever you want, then,” Keeler told her, heading back toward the transport dock. “Prepare a First Contact Team, and have Tactical Core go to Alert Situation Three as we approach the planet.”

  “We should begin preparing for the first contact teams at once.”

  “You do that,” Keeler ordered in a voice that was a near yawn. He returned to his quarters, knowing any attempt at sleep would be futile.

  Pegasus came closer, passing by the outer planets and making a final approach to the fifth planet, the lost-and-found colony of Esmerelda. Their sensors had produced maps of the entire surface of the planet. It was a gold and emerald world dominated by two large continents shaped almost symmetrically, with two great peninsulas reaching toward each other across the equator. These peninsulas boxed in a vast sea whose warmth moderated the climate of both landmasses, except for the extreme north of the top continent, which would get very frosty in Winter.

  The Esemereldans could only communicate by lightspeed carrier wave, so contact primarily consisted of instructions from the planet, and acknowledgements from Pegasus.

  Questions about population, environment, and technological capability sent from Pegasus had been utterly ignored, perhaps misunderstood, although Lingotron’s translations were presumably improving as more data was received.

  It was always the same women making the transmission, a middle-aged and rather plain-looking woman. “Pathfinder ship. Your instructions are as follows: You will meet with the Inner Circle, representing the leadership of our people, at a location known as Fond Glacine, a remote locality which will avoid unnecessary contact with the general populace.

  You may send one vessel, and no more than five representatives.”

  “Demanding little crusts aren’t they?” Keeler said, reviewing the latest transmission.

  “We have to respect their concerns for security,” Lear answered, sitting next to him in his private study off PC-1. “Our original broadcast signal was picked up by numerous receivers throughout the planet, and apparently caused a panic. Understandably, they want to restrict further contact to their leadership.”

  Keeler was clearly uncomfortable with this. As a Sapphirean, he despised the withholding of information from the population. Lear tried to sooth him. “It is their way. Until we understand the condition of their society, we are obliged to respect it.” Keeler pulled up a report from the Planetography Core. They had found thousands of cities on the planet, most smaller than 250,000 inhabitants. This was fine with him.

  Sapphireans preferred smaller cities and open space. What perturbed him was the uniformity of the inhabitations. Nearly every city was shaped like a circle or a semi-circle, loosely fitted into the topography of the local landscape. The pattern of streets and buildings varied little, although there appeared to be a conscious effort to utilize local materials in construction. The cities were so well blended in with the surrounding areas that many were difficult to detect.

  Keeler wondered whether this was an aesthetic choice or a tactical one.

  He would find out within hours.

  Lear announced to him. “I have prepared my list of candidates for the contact ship.” She gave him the list.

  Executive Commander Goneril Lear

  Flight Captain Halo Jones

  Lieutenant Navigator Eliza Jane Change

  Diplomatic Attaché Bridget Armatrading

  Medical Technician Lance Murdoch

  “Because their demands suggest a possible tactical threat, we had to exclude you from the list,” she explained.

  “I didn’t want to go anyway,” said Keeler, reviewing the list. “What about a Marine, for security.”

  “Technician Murdoch is trained as a Marine Medic, and serves part-time in the Guardian Core. Because we were limited in the number of people we could bring down, I chose a doubler.”

  Keeler decided not to argue the point. He was all set to approve the expedition, when an advisory caught his eye. “What’s this?”

  “That need not concern you.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. ‘Advisory: Lieutenant Navigator Eliza Jane Change specifically requests not to be assigned to planetary excursions.’ It’s a codicil attached to her personnel file.

  You must have been aware of this.”

  Lear shifted uncomfortably. “I was, but I don’t believe self-exclusion from these missions is to Lt. Navigator Change’s best interests.”

  “Lt. Navigator Change may have another opinion.” He touched his communication pad:

  “Lieutenant Navigator Change, would you report to PC-1 please.” Her face appeared. She was resting on a couch in front of a mural in some station of the ship with which Keeler was entirely unfamiliar. “Lt. Navigator Change responding, what’s the situation commander?”

  “There’s no situation. Exec. Commander Lear has requested your presence on her first contact team. I note you have requested not to be assigned to any planetary excursions.”

  “That is correct.”

  He waited for further explanation, then remembered Change was the kind of person who seldom answered more than was asked. He was about to ask more information when Lear interrupted him. “Lt. Navigator Change, you have not visited any of the planets we’ve contacted, and, in the Republic year leading up to our departure from the home systems, you never once left the ship. Don’t you want to visit another world.”

  “No.”

  “Not just for yourself, but to broaden the range of skills and experience you bring to the ship.”

  “I guide the ship through hyperspace. How would flying down to a rock enhance my skills?”

  Lear did not detect it, the hint of disgust on the word ‘rock,’ but it resonated with Keeler.

  “Why don’t you want to be sent on this, or any other planetary excursion he asked.” From wherever in the ship she was, she fixed her eyes on him in a glare that might have melted concrete. “I don’t like planets.”

  “What’s wrong with planets.”

  “What’s wrong with a planet? What’s wrong with diving to the bottom of a gravity well just to be surrounded by filthy, unfiltered air that’s filled with microbes, and walking on dirt that’s nothing more than the decayed and digested remnants of other life forms?” Keeler turned to Lear. “We could issue her an environmental suit, but that would look kind of silly.”

  Lear addressed Change. “Lieutenant, I have sympathy for your background, but personal growth requires us to have diverse experiences. A time may come when you must face your fears.”

  “I am not afraid,” Change answered. “My duties are on-board this ship. I don’t want first contact duty, and I would advise you to find someone else. Now, may I be dismissed?” Keeler nodded. “This could be a delicate situation. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone who was unmotivated to be on this team. We’ll assign Specialist American in your place. She could use some landing experience.”

  “Thank you, commander. Change out.”

  “Keeler out,” but before Keeler could finish, Change had already closed the channel.

  “You indulge her too much,” Lear said. “Part of command responsibility is the growth and nurturing of your crew. Sometimes, that means making people do things they don’t want to do.”

 
; “I’m her commander, not her mother,” Keeler answered. “When is the landing team schedule to depart?”

  “0500 tomorrow.”

  “The Esmereldans still have not responded to our request to send an atmospheric probe to the surface. We can’t dispatch a landing party until we have those surface reports.” Shortly after leaving EdenWorld, he had developed an itchy rash in an embarassing anatomical locality. Dr. Reagan said it was unrelated to the planet. Keeler had his doubts.

  “I’ll resend the request. They seem to respond more positively to messages when I send them. I’ll emphasize that we request a course away from populated areas, it would help put their minds at rest.”

  Keeler listened to her tone, as casual as though she were ordering an order of Arcadian take-out. He shook his head. After only three planets and two contacts, had these missions already become so routine?

  Pegasus maneuvered into position behind 10 255 Vulpecula Five’s outer moon, a hunk of gray rock nearly 6,000 kilometers in diameter, a very large moon indeed. A thickish yellow-green atmosphere wrapped its surface, and the ruins of an ancient spaceport filled one large crater. Okay, not ruins exactly, just abandoned.

  I would really to get a closer look at that, Keeler thought. It might contain artifacts from the Colonial Era. It might even contain historical records. He was almost giddy with anticipation. For some reason, the prospect of an abandoned spaceport was more exciting than an inhabited planet.

  “We are in stable orbit, 1,670 kilometers above the surface of the outer moon, 730,000

  kilometers above the surface of the planet,” the helmsman reported.

  “Send the surface a ready-to-receive signal,” Lear ordered.

  Lear would probably say we need permission from the Esmereldans, but they have no space-faring capability. Their sovereignty is only over their planet. I know it sounds bureaucratic, but damb it, I want to see what’s there.

  “Receiving Response Signal.”

  “Primary viewer.”

  I’ll just wait until Commander Lear is gone, then, I’ll take in my own team. It’s all for knowledge.