First of the First

by Andrew Maclure

  “What did she do?”

  “I’ll tell you about it on the shuttle.”

  “Are you going to give me the location of a beach we can go to on Tefran?”

  “There are plenty of beaches on Tefran, but none of them will be empty, they’ll all be crowded. We would be better off on that shithole Gnn’Ath. We’ll go up to the Swift and sit by the pool.”

  Chapter Sixty Six

  Asleep On The Beach

  Mark collected one of Mike’s pale milky drinks served in a cone shaped glass, plus a cola and a sleep suppressor for himself from the bar. He used the sleep suppressor, injecting it into his neck, then tossed the empty tube back to the bar bot. He carried the drinks to Mike and dropped to the sand beside her.

  “What did Sally do to piss you off?”

  Mike took the drink and had sip from it before answering. “We were talking about me telling the People that they couldn’t be in the honor guard. She said they ought to be grateful for not having to attend such a boring ceremony, because she would be.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

  “I’m sure she did. If she can’t be bothered to come to my raising to First of the First, I have to reconsider whether she really is a friend. I don’t think I want to be part of her team anymore.”

  Mark put an arm round her shoulders and pulled her to him. She started shaking and he realized she was crying. He didn’t know reptiles could cry. He sat silently with her for a while. Eventually she stopped shaking, and Mark asked her, “When did you last get some sleep?”

  Mike sniffed and said, “I don’t know. Two, maybe three days ago.”

  “Have you been taking sleep suppressors?”

  “No. I keep thinking I’ll be able to sleep soon, but it doesn’t happen. There’s so much going on.”

  “Mike, you need to sleep. Do you want to sleep on the beach or go to your quarters?”

  “I don’t want to go back to my quarters. I’m so used to sleeping in a group of soldiers. I don’t like being shut up in a room by myself.”

  “We can fix that. There are probably others who feel the same. But you can’t sleep with Sally and me.” he added hastily.

  “With you two shagging all the time? Yuck, no thanks. But maybe Simon and Orange…”

  “We can sort that out later. Would you like me to get you a tissue?”

  “What? No, I’ll use my sleeve.

  “Settle down and go to sleep,” Mark said, “I’ll stay here with you.”

  She looked up at Mark and said, “You really are weird, but right now, I’m glad you are. I’ll lay on the heated sand pit. It will keep me warm. Wake me after an hour.”

  They walked over to the sand pit and while Mike scraped out a shallow hollow to lay in, Mark went to the bar synthesizer to collect two blankets he had ordered.

  “I’ve brought these for you.” he said as he handed them to her.

  “Two? I only need one on top of me. Herassans evolved in scrubby desert, a bit like the plains of Aarn, but drier, so sleeping on sand is natural for us.”

  “Like the plains of Aarn?” Mark said.

  “Oh yes. I forgot. You don’t know anything about Aarn.”

  “Is that it? Is that all you’re going to say about Aarn?”

  “Yes.”

  Mark shook his head. It seemed the more he learned about Aarn and the Aarnth, the less he knew. Do you want me to rig this blanket up to keep the sun out of your eyes?”

  “No. You haven’t seen the pool at night, have you?”

  “There is no underlying day/night cycle on the Swift, so it’s never night here.”

  Mike smiled up at him from under her blanket. “But I designed the pool, and the sky, and the sun. And if you tell your AI to put the pool in night mode, you’ll see how I designed night time in the pool.”

  Mark instructed his AI, and the sky slowly darkened as the sun faded out. The blue of the sky became darker until it faded to black, with a dense scattering of stars across it, looking like the milky way as seen from Earth, but much thicker and brighter, and a small reddish moon low on the horizon. It was beautiful.

  He turned to congratulate Mike on her design, but saw her eyes were closed and her breathing had slowed. He had no intention of waking her after only one hour. She was exhausted and needed to get some natural sleep, then she could use sleep suppressors for the next few days if necessary. Wide awake after administering a sleep suppressor to himself, he settled down for a busy few hours, starting off with telling his AI to lock the doors to the pool and set its status to ‘Do Not Enter’ so no one could blink into it.

  His first action was to contact Sally. He told his AI to check if she was able to have a VR meeting with him. She responded that she would go into one of the landers parked by the Freedom Movement headquarters and be ready in a few minutes. He told his AI to show his virtual environment as being a room furnished with just a table and one chair, with him sitting at it.

  His and Sally’s AI’s made a VR connection and Mark found himself in a woodland clearing with dappled sunshine lighting up the ground, which was covered in moss and small ferns. “This is nice.” he said.

  “Not like that crappy room you’re in. Tell your AI to synchronize your virtual environment with me.”

  Mark complied. “Is that better?” he asked Sally.

  “Much better. Shall I add a stream with a small waterfall?” she asked.

  “Better not. The sound of running water will make me want to pee.”

  She rolled her eyes and said sarcastically, “You are so romantic. Is Mike there with you?”

  “Yes, but she’s asleep. I’m sub-vocalizing this so I don’t wake her.” He went on to tell her about Mike’s lack of sleep, and why she was angry with Sally.

  “But that’s not what I meant! Of course I want to be there for Mike. I meant that if I were one of the People I would find it boring and wouldn’t want to go, just as I would want to avoid a People’s ceremony. An enraged massoon couldn’t drag me away from being there for Mike! Wake her up and tell her!”

  “I’m not waking her now; she’s only just gone to sleep. It will make no difference to her if I tell her when she’s had a good sleep or wake her and tell her now, apart from disturbing her sleep.”

  Sally snorted but let the subject drop. She was mortified that Mike thought she didn’t want to go to her raising ceremony, even if she was going to decree the end of the position of the First of the First and renounce it almost immediately - but she could see the sense in what Mark said. “You may have the interpersonal skills of a piece of wood, but you seem to have a really good connection with Mike. I’m almost jealous of how well you two get on.”

  “You have nothing to be jealous of.” Mark smiled. “My relationship with you is completely different to the one I have with Mike.”

  “You mean you and Mike’s relationship isn’t just based on sex?”

  “I don’t think ours is either, though that is a great added benefit. I think it’s more based on you wanting to bully me all the time and me being prepared to put up with it.”

  “Ha bloody ha. When this is over, we’ll have one hell of a party, then go somewhere quiet where we can spend some time together, just the two of us.”

  “You want to kick everyone else out of the Swift?”

  “Of course not you idiot. We’ve got a good team here, apart from the People, but they won’t stay around.”

  “Even Ranesh. You two don’t seem to get on that well.”

  “I won’t force her to, but I’d prefer her to stay. She is an exceptional soldier and as loyal as anyone I have ever known. She is totally trustworthy and if she is ordered to do anything, she would do it or die trying. But she doesn’t make friends easily, I don’t think she wants to, but that makes her very lonely. If she stays with us, maybe she’ll bond with the rest of the team. Everybody needs friends they can rely on, and she doesn’t have any. Bekkreshan has the nearest anyone has to a friendship with her. I have a bi
t of a complicated history with Ranesh. When I first met her, I was a rookie. She was pretty bad to me. She assaulted me and threatened to kill me if I got in her way.”

  “That’s never the best way to start a friendship.”

  “But then she surprised me by being one of the first to join my army, and in her own surly way, was really helpful and supportive.”

  “What about Kar Fen? I didn’t even know you knew him until he came on board.”

  “That was different. He saved my life when I first met him, but that’s a story for another day.”

  “How are we going to be able to spend time together with just the two of us if the whole team is with us?”

  “Use your imagination. We’ll go to a big resort planet that’s got something for everyone. What it will have for us is some seclusion and privacy. The Swift is churning out landers on your orders, you’ll soon have enough for everyone to have one to themselves if they want to.”

  “Is that where you’re planning to have the party?”

  “No, Touren’s got somewhere planned for that. If there’s nothing urgent, I’m going to join in with the training. That was a good idea about having the Herassans unarmed by the way. Good call.”

  “Thanks. I’m staying here with Mike while she sleeps. I’ll message you when she wakes up and we’ll come and meet with you.”

  “OK.”

  Sally abruptly disconnected and Mark found himself sitting on the sand next to Mike in the near dark. It was disorienting as only moments ago he had been sitting in a virtual woodland in the sun.

  “Kate,” he asked his AI, “if the Swift can make a pool and beach like this, could it make a real woodland like the virtual one that Sally and I just met in?”

  “Of course Mark. If you want an Earth-like woodland though, we’ll have to visit a planet with that kind of environment and collect a big enough sample of its biosphere to make it self-sustaining.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of an Earth-like woodland, I was thinking of an Earth woodland. Specifically, a southern England woodland, like the ones I visited with my parents sometimes as a child.”

  “That could be complicated. You would have to discuss that with Alan. It’s because Earth is pre-emergent, so you can’t just drop a spaceship in and scoop up ten or fifteen hectares of woodland. Someone would notice. Particularly if they were walking their dog there at the time. You could collect a series of small samples and the Swift could culture them into a viable enclosed biosphere over time, but we are talking decades at least. In the meantime, I could set up a permanent virtual woodland that you can share with your companions.”

  “I keep being told that I could live forever, so I guess I don’t need to rush. I’ll speak to Alan when this is all over, but, yes, go ahead with the virtual woodland please – but no virtual mosquitos. Now, let’s go through the inventory of equipment for the Herassan Freedom Movement and the team.”

  “And I need to update you with the requests for equipment that Sally has made.”

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  Of Sharks And Crocodiles

  Mark spent several hours going through the requirements of the Freedom Movement to ensure that they had everything they needed, including fitting out two landers as fully equipped hospitals for the Herassans, not because he anticipated injuries from fighting, but so they wouldn’t have to leave the site to deal with any illness or accidental injuries. It occurred to Mark that although the landers they were using were good for small numbers of troops, thirty two passengers for an average mixed species group, for larger numbers it would be useful to have bigger landers that could carry four times as many passengers. So not as big and cumbersome as a full sized troop carrier, and still agile and flexible. They could also be self-configured to provide living quarters and shelter for troops on the ground. He added them to the Swift’s build program for standard landers.

  Mark decided that the landers for transporting the Herassans from Tefran to the Swift and back could be configured to hold a lot more than the thirty two seats they were using. Herassans were slightly smaller than humans and lightly built. If there wasn’t such a big empty space at the front, they could easily get fifty six seats in, seven rows of four on each side with a wide enough aisle between them, and they would still have at least twice as much room as they would on a EasyJet airplane.

  With the limit of two of the Peoples synthesizers on Tefran that Alan had imposed, Mark found the logistics of providing food, uniforms, weapons, ammunition, body armor, medical supplies, transport and a myriad of other things, mostly prompted by his AI, even less interesting than sorting out the documents from the archive at IFG. He messaged Sha Ast Ral asking her to find some volunteers among the Freedom Movement with logistics experience who could arrange things on the ground and to tell them to send him a request for anything they couldn’t get themselves, like weapons, ammunition and helmets with energy field armor.

  He checked Mike; she was still asleep. Having abandoned his self-imposed task, he thought he might as well try out his newly learned skill at swimming, It was only a few days since his AI had shown him how, on the deserted beach on Gnn’Ath. He slipped off his boots and jumpsuit and waded into the water. It was pleasantly cool, he guessed just below blood temperature. Although the simulated night sky was stunning, the familiar surroundings looked slightly sinister in the dim light, and he suddenly had a fear of sharks or alligators in the water.

  “Can you tell if there is anything in the water?” he asked Kate, his AI.

  “I might if you taste it, but what are you concerned about? I can ask the environment AI to provide a detailed analysis, but it is mostly water and sodium chloride.”

  “There’s an environment AI?”

  “Of course. Maintaining optimum conditions throughout one of the People’s craft is no trivial undertaking.”

  “I guess not. But that’s not what I was worried about. Is there any, uh, wildlife in the water?”

  “Do you mean bacteria, algae?”

  “I was thinking of something bigger, with teeth.”

  “You have an overactive imagination. Is it caused by fear of the dark? You weren’t concerned about what was in the sea on Gnn’Ath, and there are several varieties of large, aggressive predatory animals in the sea there. Didn’t you wonder why there were no Gnn’Athians on the beach?”

  “I never gave it any thought, but Mike was further out than me, so they would have eaten her first, giving me time to get out.”

  “It’s just as well I deployed aerial and aquatic drones to ensure Mike’s safety, you had nothing to fear with your phase shift armor. However, you can rest assured, the only wildlife in the pool are a few residual bacteria which will be filtered out in the normal process of cleaning and sterilizing the water.”

  “So I’ll be safe swimming in the dark.”

  “Yes Mark, of course you will. There is nothing in the water that will eat you and I won’t allow you to drown.”

  “You are very patronizing sometimes.”

  “You are very childlike sometimes.”

  “I thought that was part of my charm.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Mark waded into the water and started to swim. He surprised himself by really enjoying himself, and told his AI to let him swim freely, without any assistance from his phase shift protection. He regretted telling it that when he tried doing a handstand underwater and water rushed up his nose and invaded his sinuses. He forgot the time as he ventured further out. While he was resting, floating on his back and looking up at the stars on the artificial sky, he heard a splash.

  “What’s that, a shark?” he asked his AI, with a slight note of panic in his voice.

  “It’s a reptile.”

  “A crocodile?” He had read about the huge man-eating saltwater crocodiles in Australia.

  “Where would I get a crocodile from at this time of night.” his AI answered. “I’ll give you a clue. You know her.”

  “It’s Mike?
”

  “As you had the door locked and ‘no entry’ status set, who else would it be?”

  “But she’s asleep.”

  “Evidently not. Do you have any more silly questions?”

  “You’re being patronizing again.”

  “And your being childish again. You could easily have worked that out for yourself.”

  “Well, make yourself useful and bring a little light into here. Leave the moon and stars, pre-dawn light would be good.”