The Terrans

by Jean Johnson

  JANUARY 14, 2287 C.E.

  BARNARD’S STAR SYSTEM

  The rushing, swaying, nauseating whirl of hyperspace whooshed silently back into normality. Clinging to the armrests of her chair, Jackie could not convince her fingers to let go. It was all she could do to keep her breakfast down, though from the way her body was screaming with hunger, the half sandwich she had eaten was long since gone from her stomach. Except it was still in her stomach, threatening to come back up. Hypersickness. She hadn’t experienced it before, though she and Lars had been given a lengthy class lecture on what to expect of its effects and side effects. Jackie had additionally received advice on how to handle the psychic side effects.

  Breathing hard, she focused her gaze firmly on the back of Maria’s head, then on the back of Robert’s head as he quickly checked off their arrival location with the help of his copilot and their navigator. Hands trembling, she pulled the nutrient pack from its clip on her console, brought the straw up to her lips, and pulled the valve open with her teeth, sucking at the sugary-salty-meaty stuff inside. At any other time, it would have tasted nasty, but her body craved it so much, the flavor seemed fantastic right now.

  While the various proteins, electrolytes, and carbohydrates soothed her shaking hunger, Jackie focused on the numbers in her head. Facts and figures, ones she had memorized for this flight, as something solid to concentrate on instead of her stomach and her nerves and her trembling limbs.

  Barnard’s Star was considered an excellent test case for navigation calibration since it had a very concise movement pattern among the various stars surrounding the Sol System. Astrophysicists called it “proper motion.” It moved at an apparent 142km per second, making it important to get the exit point aimed right when firing the “spark,” the packet of strangely entangled energy that opened the hyperrift. It wasn’t the fastest in near-Sol space; that honor went to Wolf 424, moving at 555km/s in relation to their home system, a measurable fraction of the speed of light, but Barnard’s Star moved fast enough to make it a solid, accurate navigation test.

  More urgent than that, however, was the need to brake quickly. Entering and exiting a hyperrift tunnel required moving at half Cee. Half the speed of light—150,000km/s. Fast enough to kill themselves on anything larger than a basketball, which was the limit the smallish ship’s insystem thrusters could swerve out of its path as makeshift shields. It was important to slow down and ping the nearest hyperrelay unit . . . which was technically her job now, but which Robert had promised to handle for her while she recovered from her first taste of hypersickness. That ping would hand them the latest scans of the system’s known objects.

  “And . . . we are coming to a stop forty-six thousand klicks from the hyperrelay,” Robert finally announced with satisfaction. “Delightfully close without any real risk to the probe.”

  “That’s 46,143 klicks, give or take a kilometer in relative positioning,” Ayinda corrected. “Lightspeed delay on both signal and pingback is negligible.”

  “Oh, so precise,” the pilot mocked lightly. “But excellent piloting, yes? I always come out within a few planetary diameters of my goal.”

  “Yes, Robert, you win the bet,” Ayinda singsonged. “I have to buy you a drink, next time we’re on Leave.”

  “Shouldn’t our comm tech be handling the navigation ping?” Colvers asked.

  “It’s her first trip through hyperspace, Brad. Lay off,” Ayinda told him.

  “Is that an order, sir?”

  “Do you want me to inform the major, here, just how many trips it took you before you stopped heaving your boots up?” Robert countered. He didn’t mention that Jackie technically had not heaved yet. They’d all know if she had.

  Brad kept his mouth shut.

  “Ignore them, you two. How are you doing, back there?” Maria asked, craning her neck to look behind her. “Lars? Jackie?”

  “I’m surprised you’re not feeling ill,” Jackie muttered, grateful her nausea was fading.

  “I’ve been through hyperspace five times now, but just to Alpha Centauri and back. A, to be precise. Didn’t get close to Proxima B, but the view was nice,” Maria confessed.

  “My stomach is okay, but . . . I am having troubles with my . . . other end,” Lars confessed, sounding miserable. “Is it safe to move about the ship?”

  “I am not cleaning up that mess,” Ayinda muttered. “Commander?”

  “It is indeed safe to move about the cabin,” their chief pilot stated. “We’ll be here for an hour, taking measurements and calibrating for the return trip. Hey, Jackie? How are you feeling?”

  “This sludge is still tasting good, but it’s calming my nausea,” she confessed, grimacing between swallows. “How much of the bag does one have to suck down before it starts to taste bad?”

  “Usually about half,” Maria told her. “The first time, you’ll want to drink a little more, and when you string several jumps, the whole bag after the first two, no matter what it tastes like. Brad, you should be sucking, too. And you, Roberto. I am not treating you for hypersickness. You are adults, not children. I do not heal stupid, so start drinking.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Robert agreed

  “Aye aye, Doctor,” Brad added.

  “And don’t sass me,” Maria warned them.

  “No, ma’am,” both men said in unison.

  Jackie and Ayinda both slurped on their straws, exchanging brief looks and silent shrugs. Her bedside manner was not the absolute best, but at least Dr. de la Santoya was conscientious about her work.

  “Jackie, how are you feeling psychically?” Maria asked next.

  Swallowing her current mouthful—the nutrient juice was starting to taste a bit odd—Jackie tested her mental walls. “I’m centered and grounded just fine. I was warned not to ‘anchor’ myself when entering a hyperrift, so I didn’t get super-nauseated or a reaction headache from that.”

  “Anchor?” Robert asked over his shoulder.

  “It’s some mumbo jumbo about sinking mental claws into the world around you,” Colvers dismissed, sounding bitter. “Do we have to listen to this? Can’t you go back to the crew quarters?”

  “My job is to monitor the automatic chatter between the ship and the local hyperrelay hub,” Jackie said. “Which I am doing, now that I’m used to my first OTL trip. The connection is holding steady, if a bit on the low side for signal strength, and the latency is minimal, with no signal delay, not even all the way back to Earth. There are also twenty-one ships on assignment at the moment, linking with forty-one hubs. The TUPSF Aloha 9,” she added, meaning their own ship, since there were currently thirty-five active in the fleet of this particular type, with more being added each week as they came off the assembly lines back home, “is currently linked into the network with . . . twelve channels out of twenty.

  “Current scanner data from the Barnard System are transmitting on five more, with three in the clear. Stress testing in . . . ten seconds.” She sipped at the pouch, grimaced at the taste, and clipped it back to her console. Tapping in a couple of commands, she sent a pulse of data packets through the system, and waited for the various ships and MacArthur Station scattered through the network to receive and send it back. “. . . Ping . . . and pingback, round trip to the farthest was 4.31 seconds.”

  “Good, now how about giving us a telepathic pingback?” Maria asked.

  Jackie stilled, her eyes flicking to the copilot. Colvers looked rather stiff and unmoving. She returned her gaze to the woman seated at the station in front of hers. “That would depend on what you mean. Do you mean contacting one of you specifically? With permission, of course . . . Or did you mean lowering my mental walls to try to get a general sense of the minds currently within range?”

  “You are not touching my mind, you modofrodo!” Colvers snapped, his shout overwhelming the modest confines of the cockpit. “You touch my mind, and I will kill you!”

  “Lieutenant Colvers, stand down!” Robert shouted back, while the others gaped, stunne
d at his outburst. “Stand. Down! You do not threaten an officer of the Space Force—and you certainly do not use language like that. I will overlook this incident once, but not a second time. Do you hear me, soldier?”

  Brad muttered something.

  “I didn’t hear you, Lieutenant. Did you hear me?” the Texan demanded.

  “Message received, Commander,” Colvers growled. Audibly this time.

  “. . . And?” When his copilot said nothing, Commander Graves stared hard at the junior officer. “You owe Major MacKenzie an apology for threatening her life. Not a fake one, nor an insincere one. A real one.”

  He didn’t face her, but Jackie could see just enough of his face to notice the way his muscles flexed in his jaw, clenching his teeth for a moment. A deep breath allowed him to speak. “I apologize for threatening you, Major MacKenzie.”

  She didn’t verbally accept it. “Whatever your problem with me may appear to be, Lieutenant Colvers, you are going to have to air it politely very soon, and find a way to get past it. I would like to say that I would never touch your mind, particularly with said attitude problem running rampant through your thoughts . . . but the truth of the matter is, if the precognitives are correct, and if we do contact friendly, sentient, alien life-forms . . . then at some point, I am going to have to learn their language, and transfer that language to the rest of this crew.

  “That will require prolonged mental contact between you and me, should you wish to remain a member of this crew. Think carefully, Lieutenant,” Jackie added. “Think about why you want to be on this ship, engaged in these missions. Precognitive placement or no, if you continue down this path of resentment, anger, bitterness, and blindly judging me for perceived crimes I personally have never committed against you, I will remove your presence from these missions. I may even have to involve the legal division of the Space Force. Believe me or not, but I would rather not have to do any of that.

  “Now . . . why do you have to be on board this ship, Lieutenant? Convince me of that, and remind yourself of why it’s important for you to get along with everyone on board. Including me,” Jackie said, watching the back of his head, the set of his shoulders, the tension in his arm. The rest of him was too hard to see at her current angle. “Feel free to speak honestly. Just do it politely.”

  “This is my ship. I crewed it for months before you came along!” Brad snapped, resentment laced throughout his dark tone. “We might not be the first crew, but we are among the first, and should be honored and respected and treated properly by everyone around us. But in you come, with your mind tricks and your fake dreams of what’s supposed to be, reading our thoughts behind our back, lying to us, snickering and plotting and—”

  “Whoa!” Ayinda asserted, holding up her hand. She reached around his seat and poked him in the shoulder. “She has not once lied to us. I think you are mistaking her for someone else, soldier. So you are going to sit there and tell us who really pissed you off—and it isn’t Major MacKenzie.”

  “I will not!”

  “That’s an order, Brad,” Robert told him. “From me. An order from your commanding officer.”

  “One moment . . . before you answer that . . .” Jackie felt bad that he was being forced to confess . . . but the issue did need to be discussed. She checked her console, pressed several commands into the system, then nodded. “Okay. Everything but the black box has now been shut off. This is officially off the record. Go ahead, Lieutenant. Get it out into the open. All of it, if you please.”

  He sat silently for so long, Lars came back. The Finn drew in a breath to ask a question. Quickly holding up her hand, she whispered in Finnish, “Keep quiet and let the copilot speak.”

  Colvers seemed irritated by the geophysicist’s return . . . but after another thirty or forty seconds, once Lars had settled in place, he finally spoke. “I was engaged. To a psi. Alicia Fawkes. She was a civilian consultant to the Space Force Navy. And the bitch booted me out the door because I wasn’t one. She married some mental freak she worked with, named Wyzer Beekins—who the frag names their kid Wyzer Beekins? Wyzer, with a W Y Z, as if there’s something oh-so-special about weird name spellings . . .”

  “It’s not a usual name, I’ll admit,” Robert offered lightly. “But as far as points go, a lot of people have relationships that e—”

  Brad interrupted him. “My point is, telepaths are deceitful modos! If she starts working with any aliens, she’ll turn on us and betray us to them, peaceful or otherwise,” he asserted, slashing his hand through the air, before clenching it in a fist. “They’ll have something she wants, and she’ll want it so bad, she’ll turn on us and cast us out of the ship, out of the fame, out of the spotlight, out of everything we worked hard for, while dragging her deadweight boots in our wake.”

  Gesturing in the weightless depths of space made him shift in his harness in counterpoint. Brad grabbed at his straps to steady himself, then looked away, out at the stars beyond the cockpit windows. If one ignored the panel-screen projections forming the heads-up displays for piloting and targeting, and the shimmering effects of the insystem-thruster field, sheltering their vessel from impacts with tiny objects, it was a pleasant enough view. He wasn’t the only one who looked out the viewports, but Jackie doubted he was actually seeing anything out there.

  Their tactical displays were still projecting things like relative speed in relation to the local star, which itself was traveling fast through the night. Near-space objects within a few hundred thousand kilometers were ringed with color-coded outlines, and approximate locations for objects farther out were circles and boxes and triangles on the screens with lines pointing between them and their text-based labels. The displays of those distant celestial bodies flickered and jumped from time to time as the incoming lightwave readings allowed the navicomp to update its projections more accurately.

  But beyond all of that . . . the night sky was stark, spangled with pinpricks of light that neither shifted color nor twinkled, thanks to the lack of an atmosphere outside. They shimmered a little, the pinpricks turning briefly fuzzy as the fields brushed aside stellar dust. Jackie found it soothing, even if the lack of minds beyond this one small cabin was frighteningly blank to her inner senses. From the way Colvers seemed to be calming down, the one hand in view no longer fisted, it was a tiny point of similarity between the two of them . . . so maybe he was seeing the view rather than whatever uncomfortable memories were trapped in his head.

  “You do realize that Jacaranda MacKenzie is not this Alicia Fawkes, right?” Robert finally asked his copilot.

  “I know that. But she’s still one of them,” he added fiercely. “She’ll ditch us for someone . . . some thing shiny and new, and we’ll be left in her dust, and off the team, and our lives in ruins!”

  “The only way any of us could get kicked off this team, Brad,” Maria stated bluntly, “is for one of us to do exactly what you are doing. Acting loco and causing problems. Like you already are.”

  “You are a good pilot, Brad, and a good mechanic. But I have to agree; you are indeed acting loco in how you’re handling all of this,” Ayinda asserted.

  He twisted in his seat to peer at the navigator, then narrowed his eyes, looking beyond her dark features to the pallid face of the geophysicist. “I suppose you have something to add to this?”

  “Me? No . . . I’m too lazy to dig holes that don’t need digging,” Lars added lightly.

  The lieutenant blushed, then twisted the other way, peering at Jackie. “And you? Do you have something to say to me?”

  “Yes. I will reassure you right here and now that I will never boot you out of a relationship with me, Brad Colvers,” Jackie stated calmly. “Because I will never be in a relationship with you.”

  “Why, because I’m an anti-psychic bigot?” he challenged her. At least he had the grace to admit it.

  “Considering that when I merely touch someone, I am so strong a telepath, I have to actively block out whatever they’re thinking . . . y
es, that is one reason. But it isn’t the biggest reason,” Jackie told him. “Even if you weren’t a psi-hating bigot, I simply have no interest in being romantic with anyone at this point in my life.”

  “So, what, you’re an asexual freak?” Brad asked, tossing the hateful words over his shoulder like verbal garbage. Ayinda reached over the back of his seat cushioning to smack him in a glancing blow along his buzz-cut scalp, muttering something about sticking to only one source of bigotry at a time.

  “No, I enjoy sex,” Jackie defended herself, ignoring their byplay. She skipped over the information where lovemaking could get derailed very quickly for her if her partner started thinking about the proverbial grocery list, or cracks in the ceiling, or whatever nonpassionate things might cross their minds mid love play. Even cuddling came with risks of reading a stray, disturbing thought. Most people just weren’t practiced at watching their thoughts and shielding them from being picked up while touching someone else. “I’m just not interested in dating anyone at this point.”

  “How can you not be interested in dating anyone?” Lars asked her. “I am Finnish, and the Finnish people are almost the worst when it comes to asking people on dates, but even we manage it. Sometimes.”

  “Between five years in the military—where you don’t sleep with anyone you work with,” she added pointedly, “unless you want to get slapped with a Fraternization charge and thrown in the stockade—and five years of hopping from island to island as a government translator, more at home in hotel room after hotel room than an actual apartment or home, plus five years on top of that of pouring all of my energy and attention into being a good representative for Oceania . . . when would I have had the time or energy to date anyone? Everyone I was meeting was a coworker, a client, or a constituent, and I saw no point in ever trying to date one of those.

  “As for the nonmilitary, nongovernment side of things . . . My eldest sister Hyacinth has already had her and her husband’s allotted two children, so she is able to successfully distract our mother from demanding grandchildren from our brother and me. So all of that is covered,” she stated firmly, sweeping her hand. Like Brad, the weightlessness of the ship made her body shift slightly to the left when her hand slashed to the right. She compensated with old, remembered skill, bracing herself by shifting shoulders and flexing thighs against the harness straps and the chair cushions. “Of course this doesn’t deny the fact that I would like to date someone . . . but trust me, Lieutenant, it will never be you. Thus you can rest easy knowing that I will never dump you for someone named Wyzer Beeker.”