Milor!

by Thomas DePrima

  Marueck continued his rant for the first ten minutes of the council meeting. He finally took a deep breath, sat down, and said, "I want each of you to tell me what you're doing to combat this menace."

  Each minister talked about the problem, how it affected his department, and the measures that he had enacted to prevent attacks or find the offenders. At the end of the presentations, Marueck was no more satisfied than he had been at the start. He stood up again.

  "I will no longer tolerate these attacks from the Selaxians. I want a plan to take the war to them; one that won't bring Space Command down on our heads. Any suggestions?"

  "Terrorist attacks, such as the ones we're being subjected to," Minister Deruuw, the Minister of Intelligence suggested.

  "Good!" the Prime Minister shouted as he immediately embraced the idea. "Very good! How will you go about it?"

  Surprise at being designated to plan and carry out the attacks, made Deruuw fumble for words. "Well–– well–– it will take a while to implement. The information agents that we've worked into their society are having greater difficulty securing classified data since the Selaxians learned we were formulating attack plans. They have no doubt heightened their vigilance. We'll need to plant new agents; agents capable of carrying out the attacks."

  "How— long?" Marueck demanded loudly.

  "We should be able to begin activity in six months to a year."

  "A year?" the minister shouted. "Not good enough. By then our citizenry will be calling for my head. We need something now."

  "There might be something that we can do to slow or even stop the terrorist actions on Arrosa," the Minister of Protocol said musingly.

  "What? What is it? Speak up, Petliop."

  "We could enter into formal negotiations over ownership of Isodow. That might be enough to stop the terrorism and give Minister Deruuw a chance to infuse his people into Selaxian society."

  "Are you mad? We can't risk losing Isodow through the ruling from some— some— alien."

  "I'm not talking about negotiations involving Space Command. I mean direct negotiations with Selax. We publicize it heavily all over the planet, and drag out the talks endlessly. When Minister Deruuw's people are in place, we declare an impasse and break off the talks."

  Marueck thought the plan over carefully. "I like it. Very good, Petliop. We'll do it. Prepare press releases immediately."

  "Hadn't we'd better contact the Selaxians first?" Deruuw asked.

  "I don't think that's necessary," Marueck said dismissively with a wave of his hand. "They'll jump at any opportunity to avoid an attack by us. I'll contact them, of course, once we release the announcement to the press. We must be seen as reaching out first."

  * * *

  President Bezeel Tasenal read the message aloud several times. Selax and Arrosa were close enough to allow direct calls, but the two chief executives had never spoken directly. Written messages allow opportunities to craft a masterful document, steeped in subtleties. The cabinet members at the large conference table listened carefully to every single word.

  "Any thoughts?" President Tasenal asked after the third reading.

  "Marueck is after something," one member said.

  "I agree," another said, "he's not really interested in having a meaningful discussion and settling the issue. I believe that he's only interested in halting the terrorist attacks, and he believes that this is the means to that end."

  "You think that he'd risk giving up control of our moon to stop the attacks?" President Tasenal asked.

  "No sir," another said. "He's probably only using this as a ploy to buy time to find the attackers. He believes that the terrorism will cease if he appears to be engaging in meaningful dialogue. He'll eventually find some excuse to break off the talks, but not until he's gotten the time that he's seeking."

  An aide interrupted the meeting just then when he entered and handed the President a note. After reading it quickly, he said, "Prime Minister Marueck has released a press statement in which he announces that Arrosa and Selax have agreed to open a meaningful dialogue over ownership of Isodow and its resources." He put the paper down and looked at the cabinet members. "He apparently feels that we're not in a position to refuse."

  "I can't believe that he released that statement before we even responded," a cabinet member said.

  "Why not?" another asked. "He knows that we can't refuse. If we do, it'll look like we were behind the attacks all the time. And if we try to back out now, he really gets the moral high-ground."

  "Perhaps we can swing Marueck's announcement to our advantage," the President said, "and teach Marueck that two can play the game of releasing press statements without first getting agreement from the other party."

  * * *

  Prime Minister Marueck was having dinner when an aide brought him the news bulletin. The press service was reporting that Arrosa and Selax had agreed to work out the issues over ownership of Isodow. Marueck thought the article was simply a report written from the press statement released by his office, and he was about to put it down when he saw a quote attributed to President Tasenal. It read, 'The President reports that, at the invitation of Captain Jenetta A. Carver, the conference will be conducted at the Stewart Space Command Base. They will be conducted under the rules of binding arbitration and both parties have agreed to abide fully with the impartial decision of the Galactic Alliance representative.'

  Marueck's face became a mottled red from rage as he jumped up from his chair. Ripping up the bulletin, he swept his arm across the table, sending the dishes, silverware, and everything else crashing to the floor as he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  * * *

  The Hunaray, under the temporary command of Commander Dansiger, moved into line for inspection after dropping off its cargo sections. There was only one other ship waiting for clearance to enter the port, and the teams had already been aboard her for a couple of hours, so the wait shouldn't be more than half a watch.

  As it turned out, an inspection team arrived in less than a half-hour. The special team had been waiting for the arrival, to speed the Arrosian ship through the process. When declared free of hazardous materials and bio-toxins, it continued into the asteroid port. And no sooner had it docked then another team of investigators boarded. The new team, all forensic specialists, would thoroughly check the ship, its logs, and the bodies of the dead Arrosian crewmen. Commander Dansiger and his small team were relieved from their temporary duty assignments and told to return to the Thor, which had docked earlier since it didn't need inspection clearance for entry to the port.

  As Commander Dansiger walked through the airlock, he encountered Captain Carver standing on the docking platform. Dansiger stopped and saluted.

  Jenetta returned his salute and said, "How was the trip, Commander?"

  "Uneventful, ma'am, with the Thor right next to us. I'm glad that's its over though. Ten days in a Munchkin Land ship," the six-foot tall officer said, smiling, "is about as much as a full-grown Kansas boy should have to take. We had to bunk on the decks because there isn't a bed over a hundred-forty centimeters long on the entire ship. We couldn't fit into the seats so we had to disassemble the sides, leaving only a tiny base to perch on and a short back against which to recline. We had to stretch out our legs in front of us because we couldn't raise the seats high enough to be comfortable. We ate our meals standing up, or sitting on the floor, and most of us whacked our heads on doorways or overhead conduits, at least several times a day. We're about the same height, Captain, so if you're ever invited to travel on an Arrosian ship, I suggest that you pass."

  Jenetta smiled. "Thank you, Commander. I shall remember your advice. Did you ever find any trace of the missing passenger?"

  "Negative, ma'am. He must have bugged out as soon as he'd done the deed. He could have made it to Scruscotto or another planet in the Frontier by now."

  Jenetta nodded. "That's very true. He could be a long way from here. Thank you, Commander."

  * *
*

  Chapter Six

  ~ May 10th, 2275 ~

  Three months passed before Arrosa finally announced that their delegates would soon leave for Stewart Space Command Base to begin arbitration talks over the ownership of Isodow. The Prime Minister had delayed as long as possible, and finally only named a delegation when enormous crowds of citizens began to protest in the capital over the inability of the government to stop the increasingly violent acts of terrorism being experienced all over the planet. As soon as the date was set for the talks to begin, the acts of terrorism began to slow. This was sufficient proof for the Prime Minister of Selax's responsibility, but the process had begun and he would have to send the delegation as promised.

  * * *

  As the GSC battleship Chiron, prepared for a six-month patrol, Jenetta and her sister Christa met for their last dinner before deployment. The Thor, having just returned from patrol, would now remain in port to provide security for the base in place of the Chiron. For more than six months, while the Chiron had been in port, Jenetta and Christa had dined together as often as possible. Even on those evenings when Jenetta was entertaining the senior staffs of newly arrived ships, her custom since she had first become base commander at Dixon, the nearest base to Stewart SCB, Christa had a standing invitation to the evening meal if she was free. For this final dinner, the two women were alone in the base commander's private dining room.

  "Have you heard from Mom?" Jenetta asked.

  "I got a message two days ago. You?"

  "The same. I got messages from Billy and Dad, yesterday.

  "Ditto," Christa said. "It's great that Dad's so happy with his new command. He was lost when he was playing golf every day. I'm glad they raised the mandatory space retirement age to eighty-five. Dad was much too young to be forced out when he was just sixty-five."

  "Mom sounds sure that he'll opt for base duty when he reaches eighty-five, instead of retiring again. She thinks that the extra fifteen years of duty will be better for him and keep him out from under foot at home."

  "I wonder how we'll feel when we reach that age," Christa mused.

  "That's a long ways off. You and Eliza are only five-year-olds now. You have almost ninety-five more years to go before you reach mandatory retirement."

  "The only advantage of being clones. With stasis time now discounted when computing mandatory retirement, you only have seventy-one more years. What will we do with our other four-thousand nine-hundred years?"

  "We don't know for sure that we'll live that long," Jenetta said. "Arneu only said that we might."

  "So far, everything else that he said has come true. With soft tissue injuries, we heal ten times faster than other Terrans, alcohol has virtually no effect on us, our bodies have developed into a man's vision of a sexual goddess, and we haven't appeared to age a day since they experimented on you. I'm glad that you were cloned after the DNA recombinant process, so that Eliza and I inherited the same modified DNA."

  "I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I'll handle near immortality, if it does happen."

  "Me too," Christa said as she sighed.

  "It's distressing to think that we'll still be around while our family and friends leave us at a hundred-forty or maybe a hundred-fifty. Think of the generations that we might see born, and then have to watch die."

  "It's too depressing. I get depressed even thinking about Mom and Dad not being here, and they should be around for at least seventy more years. Do you think that our offspring, if we have offspring, will have our modified DNA?"

  "I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. I know that when testing to determine lineage, they always try to match a child with the mother, instead of the father. There seems to be a closer bond with matrilineal DNA. Here's an interesting thought for you. Since our DNA keeps us looking like we're twenty-one, what do you suppose would be the situation with offspring? Will a child always be the size of a newborn? Will it ever physically mature?"

  "Perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves. Our chosen profession is about the most dangerous job there is. We may not live long enough to become near-immortals."

  "At least there are three of us with my DNA. One of us should survive long enough to bear children."

  "Not at the rate we're going. Eliza and I are just five, but you're approaching forty in chronological years, and you're still a virgin."

  "I spent almost eleven years in stasis, so I only think of myself as twenty-nine."

  "I wonder. Would you still be a virgin if you were stationed at Higgins?"

  Jenetta reflected for a minute before speaking. "I really don't know. I had begun to think that Zane was my true love, but he never even returned my last message to him. I think he was disconcerted when I made Commander ahead of him. Now that I'm a Captain, I doubt that we'll ever get together."

  "It's inexcusable that he never called, but he wasn't right for you anyway. You know that he tried to date Eliza while you were away?"

  "What? She never told me."

  "She didn't want to hurt you. She refused his advances, of course, despite the fact that we both inherited your feelings for him. She said that he told her he never tried to hide the fact that he dated other women while you weren't in port."

  "We never discussed it, but I assumed that he wasn't monastic during my absences. We weren't engaged after all."

  "You're better off without him. It's time to find somebody new."

  "It's difficult, being the supreme military commander for this part of space. Regulations prohibit fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel, and I can't have a relationship with an officer under my command. I'm certainly not attracted to most of the alien species that live on the base, so that leaves the merchants on the concourse or the freight haulers passing through."

  "The merchants that I've met here are only interested in one thing, amassing as many credits as possible."

  "And the freight haulers are only here for anywhere from a day to a month, and then gone for a couple of years, possibly much, much longer."

  "They're definitely not good material for a long term, intimate relationship," Christa giggled.

  "There's not even time to begin to develop a real relationship. It looks like a series of one-night stands is all that we can hope for."

  "Speak for yourself, sis."

  "What? Have you found somebody?"

  "Well–– remember that I'm not hampered by all that gold you carry around on your shoulders."

  "Come on, give. Answer the question."

  Christa giggled. "Okay, there is a certain Lieutenant(jg) aboard the Chiron that I've sort of been seeing."

  "What's 'sort of been seeing' mean?"

  "When you're too busy in the morning, he and I exercise together after my watch and then have breakfast. He's on second watch."

  "Is he cute?"

  "Dreamy. And he wants to get together, but I've held him off so far."

  "Don't wait too long or you'll wind up like me."

  "Stop it. You make it sound like you're going to die a virgin. You're going to look like a twenty-one-year-old goddess for possibly five-thousand years. There's no way that you'll die a virgin."

  "Perhaps not, but I've felt that way at times. Every night I go back to my apartment alone, and talk to my cats. Remember our school teacher, Mrs. McBride. She once told us she had eighteen cats. She was a spinster."

  "Just be careful if you do bring somebody with you someday. Your cats might misunderstand the passion." Christa giggled.

  Jenetta had to giggle also. "You mean that the claw marks on his back won't all be from my nails?"

  "And the bite marks won't be from your teeth."

  The two sisters broke into a fit of laughter that lasted several minutes.

  The Selaxian delegation arrived at Stewart aboard the GSC destroyer Ottawa. Selax didn't yet have faster than light ships and the Arrosians had refused to carry Selaxians on any of their ships since the Hunaray incident. It turned out, Jenetta learned,
that the missing passenger from the freighter had carried a Selaxian passport disc.

  Jenetta greeted the delegation at a conference room that had been especially prepared for the arbitration sessions. The conference table was horseshoe shaped, and while the floor to table height at the center of the horseshoe was seventy-three centimeters, the proper height for Terrans, platforms built along either extension provided a table to floor height of only forty-one centimeters, the height found throughout the Hunaray. Chairs, also constructed to agree with sizes aboard the freighter, had been especially prepared to suit the physical attributes of the delegation members.

  The Selaxian delegation was extremely pleased with the arrangements and thanked Jenetta profusely for being so understanding of the physical differences between humans and their species. They said they'd had a difficult time aboard the Ottawa, despite Captain Crosby's indisputable attempts to make their stay as comfortable as possible.

  "I'm sorry that he couldn't be more accommodating," Jenetta said, "but we have quite a bit more flexibility on the base. Your accommodations have likewise been altered to conform to your physical requirements, using measurements taken from the living quarters aboard an Arrosian freighter in determining what we felt would make you most comfortable."

  "Your consideration to our needs is most appreciated, Captain. I'm surer than ever that our President made a wise decision when he appealed to the Galactic Alliance Council for assistance. We know that you'll be a fair and impartial arbiter on the matter of Isodow."

  "I'll do my best to render a fair and equitable solution. I hope that you'll feel the same afterwards."

  "More than anything else, we wish to avoid war with Arrosa. We're ill equipped to defend ourselves against their superior weapons. Will Space Command enforce the decision that you issue?"

  "We'll enforce any decision reached as a result of the arbitration, and we'll do everything possible to see that Arrosa doesn't commence hostilities if the decision goes against them."