by Jean Johnson
The Salik had been a very clear-and-present danger. Jackie knew she had neither hallucinated nor imagined what they were thinking about doing to their Human—V’Dan and Terran—captives. Shi’ol . . . was the sort of danger one could only warn about, guard against, and hope it never happened. She disliked Jackie, disliked everyone on board, disliked her whole situation, disliked the lack of gravity and the clothing and the food and everything . . . but even Shi’ol would not have fed her hosts to the Salik.
Three explosive sneezes caught her attention. Kerchief over his face, Lars poked his head out of the near crew hatch a few seconds after Shi’ol sailed through the far door. He sniffed, rubbed, and spoke. “Are you done? I have secured everything and almost everyone in here.”
She caught his subtle eye roll. “Yes, we are finally done. I take it they’ve been waiting for us to finish before docking with quarantine?” Jackie asked. At his nod, she unbuckled her straps and started packing away both sets. Like virtually everything else on the ship, even these simple straps had to be stowed in a securely latched cupboard for ship maneuvers. It didn’t take her long to roll, stuff, and latch—about as long as it took for her to speak, with the aid of her psi. “I’d better get up to the cockpit then. See that Shi’ol is strapped in, please?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you for watching over them, Lars. Thank you for volunteering,” Jackie clarified.
He shrugged and switched to Finnish, no doubt to avoid any accidental insults from any eavesdropping among their guests. “One day, I will be a father. Herding our guests is like herding children, yes? Easier than cats . . . but only by so much.”
That made her bite her lip against the urge to laugh. Since her head hurt, she pulled herself forward through the cabin by her hands, now that the harnesses were stowed. Entering the cockpit, she found Li’eth seated at the geophysicist’s station. He was reading something on a pad—etiquette rules, she realized. Robert twisted in his seat, peering back at her.
“All done?” the pilot asked, and echoed the nod she gave him with a sharp one of his own. “Good. We’ve been in a holding pattern with a crew on the Aloha 23 on standby for the last hour and a half. The doc said it wouldn’t be a good idea to interrupt your little mind-meld whatsit, but the other team is getting impatient. I’m certainly ready whenever you are.”
“My fingertips were nowhere near her forehead, so it wasn’t a mind-meld,” Jackie shot back. Li’eth looked up at that. She maneuvered into her seat while answering his unspoken question. “Never mind, Li’eth; it’s one of those classical cultural references that takes too long to explain. I’m just glad I’m done and don’t have to do that again with her.
“Send the 23 my apologies for the delay, my thanks for their patience, and my wishes for a very smooth docking—oh, wait, that’s my job,” she quipped dryly, buckling the much bulkier cockpit harness into place. “Give me one more moment to strap in and find my headset, and I’ll be free to do it . . . Done,” she added, unclipping her headset and tucking it over her ear. Her hands touched the console, activating the comm system. “This is Major MacKenzie of the Aloha 9 to the MacArthur and the Aloha 23. Please accept my apologies for the delay. The language transfer on the last of our guests is complete; they all know Terranglo and will be able to communicate, hopefully effectively, with everyone they meet while they are our guests. Again, please accept my thanks for your patience, and my best wishes for a smooth dual docking. Commander Graves will synch his helm with yours when ready.”
“This is Station Control; your readiness is acknowledged, Aloha 9, and thank you for finally being done. Commander Graves, Commander Yesetti, synchronization begins in five . . . four . . . three . . .”
On . . . one, both ships adjusted their seemingly static drift—relative to the station, not to the planet in the distance—and started circling around it. Both ships moved in the same direction, the spin of the center wheel, counterpoint to the smaller outer tori. They danced with careful pulses of the insystem thrusters at their lowest settings, and tiny hisses from attitude jets. The great torus of the center wheel rotated at roughly two minutes to the circle, but it was quite large, which meant the rim was moving relatively briskly.
Graves and Yesetti took their time, murmuring to each other over the comm channel; as they swung each craft into position, the conflux of centripetal and centrifugal forces started giving everyone the illusion of gravity. At this distance, Jackie had set the communications system to lightspeed, now that they were well within normal broadcasting distance. She also knew that amateur lightwave enthusiasts would be scanning for the bandwidths carrying the news of this momentous event, so she broadcast—on official channels—a picture of the interior of the cockpit facing forward, showing their ship drifting into view of the station.
Brad sneezed twice and sniffed hard to clear his sinuses, rubbing his nose against the sleeved forearm he had hastily moved into place to block the flow of droplets. But beyond that, it was a serene image of the cockpit crew working quietly and efficiently, with a view of the station seemingly drifting closer and slowing down, relative to their position, for all it was the other way around.
In her opinion, it was far better to conduct everything aboveboard and well within public sight, save only the most sensitive of negotiations. Since she had nothing else to do while the tedious process of docking took place, Jackie checked her messages. The system caches were filling up with queries from all across the United Planets, wanting to know if they were finally docking, if the “alien Humans” would be willing to give interviews, if they were indeed from a planet other than Earth, how they got there, who they were, what was up with those funny markings on their face . . . and, of course, the inevitable queries on whether these V’Dan were a threat, if they were here to steal resources, or perhaps just to steal sex partners for bizarre mating rituals . . .
Just skimming the subject lines alone was enough to make her roll her eyes and almost miss the clunk of grapples hitting their targets, from ship to station and from station to ship. Robert eased off the thrusters very carefully while the winches did their job. A quick check of her secondary left screen showed the 23 being reeled in at the same time, according to station cameras. The two vessels kissed one right after the other, the 9 followed by its sister ship within a second, second and a half. The hull thunked with secondary grapples, these ones attached to stiff telescoping arms, not to flexible winching cables.
Before them, the quarantine hangar doors slid open, and the ship was pulled partway into the close-fitted bay. When they hissed shut again, they did so by sealing around the ship just a few meters past the port airlock, which sat behind the cockpit. Station space was too precious to waste on a full-sized docking hangar just for quarantine needs, but neither could they let the ship sit fully outside the station.
Its hull had to be swiped and examined for microbial and other contaminants, and counteragents developed for anything potentially inimical. The rest of the hull would be swabbed and sterilized via spacewalking cleaner bots, which would do random samplings, so on and so forth, but they had to dock directly with the quarantine pods all the same.
Jackie was just glad they were firmly docked. She double-checked the hatchway seals—foam-based and similar to the primary material of a p-suit—to make sure there was no air loss while the modest bay space was being pressurized, then contacted the station. “Aloha 9 to MacArthur, we appear to be green on the seals. Air pressure seems to be stable in quarantine alpha. Confirm, please.”
Telltales along the bottom of her screen showed the data conduits hooking up, switching from lightspeed broadband to direct-cable input, making the reply she received private instead of public.
“. . . Confirmed, Aloha 9, you have achieved green hatchway seals, along with correctly coupled data and fuel conduits. You may disembark when ready. Be advised that as your crew is able-bodied—and we are pleased no one was harmed during your mission—your crew is responsible for basic pos
tmission cleanup of the ship’s interior. Let us hope your guests haven’t brought along a bug that’ll cause ship and pod to both be scuttled.”
“If they did, we’d have to be scuttled with them, so I’m hoping right along with you,” she quipped lightly before resuming a level of seriousness appropriate to the moment. “But so far, we seem to be doing okay, beyond hints of common-cold symptoms among the Terrans, sniffles, watery eyes, and the occasional sneeze fits . . . and a lack of overt symptoms but matching elevated immune system activity from the V’Dan. Dr. de la Santoya is looking forward to having a proper lab for further research into these subtle differences.”
“The medical community await her results. Aloha 9 . . . you are now connected to station power. All conduits are active, all seals are green. Please shut down engines and transfer yourselves to quarantine.”
“Roger, MacArthur. Major MacKenzie and the crew of the Aloha 9 are signing off . . . now.”
“Are we actually free to disembark?” Li’eth asked, raising his brows as she punched buttons, shutting down her station.
“I’ll get your things while you take them on the safety tour, amiga,” Maria told Jackie. The doctor had already shut down her station and unstrapped her seat harness. She hopped down into the aisle between the seats and made her way aftward. “You’re the host, so you get to play the tour guide.”
“Thank you, Maria. Since you have nothing to collect, Li’eth, yes, you are free to disembark with me. However, I want to group up all of you for the tour of the facilities.” Activating the intercom, she spoke. “Shi’ol, V’kol, Dai’a, and Ba’oul, you are free to disengage from your seats. Please come toward the cockpit. I will be opening the portside airlock to the quarantine section of the station, and will be giving you a tour of the facilities. This tour will include explanations of safety features, safety drills and exercises, directions on where to go and what to do in the major categories of possible emergencies, and at the end, you will be issued datapads with further reading material, all of it in standard Terranglo.
“This is a mandatory tour for all newly arriving station personnel, both military and civilian alike, which means residents and guests. The rest of us have already been made familiar with these drills and lectures through our military training. Your cooperation and your careful attention as good guests will therefore be deeply appreciated . . . and may potentially save your life in an emergency. Jackie out.” Shutting down her station, Jackie unstrapped herself from her seat.
After several days of floating around, it was a little awkward to have to maneuver around the armrest and so forth, now that they had toroidal gravity to work with. Li’eth was in the middle of offering his borrowed datapad to Ayinda. The other woman shook her head, her dreadlocks resting naturally against her shoulders now that they were in simulated gravity.
“Keep it,” the navigator said. “You can borrow it for as long as we’re docked in quarantine. I loaded it with several hopefully useful things. Manuals on etiquette, how to recognize basic military insignia, even a timeline of Earth’s history.”
“Earth?” he asked, then checked himself. “Right . . . the name you use for your homeworld.”
“You can hardly complain, partner,” Robert said as he worked on shutting down the ship as instructed. “Your planet, people, and language are all one and the same word. We, at least, like a little variety. Or does everyone out there in the big, wide galaxy call themselves, their homeworlds, and their languages all the same thing?”
“No . . . it’s . . . The homeworld name for the Salik is Sallha,” he said, aspirating the h almost as if he was trying to clear something from his soft palate, not quite as harsh as if he’d been trying to clear his throat. “It means Fountain in their language. And the homeworld of the Gatsugi . . . it’s easiest to say in V’Dan, which is the trade tongue we use. It means Beautiful-Blue . . . blue is their color-word for happy.”
“It could be worse,” Jackie said. “We named the first planet in our system, an airless, star-baked rock we call Mercury, after a winged messenger-god, which is also what we call a very toxic metal that is usually found as a liquid at Human-compatible temperatures and pressures.”
“Yes, and our second planet, an overly hot planet with a volatile atmosphere filled with sulfuric acid, is named after the goddess of love and beauty,” Robert quipped. He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “By comparison, calling the one we live on Earth, as in mud or dirt, seems downright homey and welcoming, doesn’t it?”
Li’eth chuckled and dipped his head, clearly amused by the commander’s joke. “That, it does. If it’s that marbled world nearby . . . it is a beautiful world. I look forward to seeing it personally, depending on how soon we can get out of this quarantine.”
“That will depend on how soon we can vaccinate everybody,” Jackie said, knowing that she had to be vague for the sake of all the doctors who would be poring over the medical data Maria would be sending them on each pathogen’s shape, chemical properties, and genome patterns. Jackie might have the job of introducing these V’Dan to Terran humanity, but poor Maria had the job of making sure it would be a safe introduction.
Facing the airlock, she pressed her thumb to the scanner, then touched the button when the door beeped. The hatch retracted, allowing her to step into the airlock proper. The others filed in after her. They jostled a little, settling themselves into a semblance of rank, or at least seniority; while Li’eth was the undisputed captain, the others were all the same rank, Leftenant Superior, the equivalent of a Lieutenant Commander. Li’eth, Shi’ol, Ba’oul, V’kol, with Dai’a standing at the rear. Double-checking the pressure readings on the panel for the outer door, Jackie thumbed the controls that would equalize the slight pressure difference between the ship and the station, and faced their guests.
“This will be your new home for the next month or so, while we make sure it is safe to expose you to our common pathogens and that it is safe for you to expose the rest of our people to yours,” she added as the door panel beeped, letting her know the air was stable. Thumbing it open, she waited while the station’s airlock cycled open as well. “May you enter and reside in the spirit of aloha . . . which is a single, simple-seeming, yet very complex word of my mother’s people. It means compassion, caring, peace, mercy, affection, harmony, love, and more. It is the measure of how well we treat each other as we go through life, and we remind each other of this whenever we greet each other when we meet and say farewell when we part.
“So. Aloha, and welcome to the MacArthur,” Jackie concluded, leading the way through the white-painted station airlock. “Which is the name of a famous war general. A bit contradictory, but the military is in charge of all interstellar interactions at the moment.”
“Your mother’s people?” Shi’ol asked as they stepped into the station’s airlock and prepared to cycle through it. “Are they in charge, then?”
The question made Jackie’s mouth twitch. She almost laughed, but confined it to a smile. For once, the other woman had not asked a snide question. Or at least not an overly-supercilious-sounding one. “The Hawai’ian Islands and its people host our government; they do not run it. At least, no more so than anyone else. You will have time to learn how the Terran United Planets runs itself. Let me squeeze past you so I can close the middle airlocks—that is the first rule of ship and station life, to keep the airlock hatches and section seals closed at all times when not in use.
“The second is what we call the Lock-and-Web Law,” she said, launching into her explanations on how they were to live and pay attention while on board the station, “which is to secure everything while on a ship when it is not being used at that moment, to ensure it doesn’t rattle around and damage anything. It isn’t as important to follow on a station as it is on a starship, in terms of potential damage, but it is important to keep things tidy as we go. Obviously, we will not have any staff to perform common housekeeping chores while in quarantine, so we must do it all ourselves . . .”
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CHAPTER 9
FEBRUARY 1, 2287 C.E.
Li’eth was rather surprised to see, on a military space station, so many civilian amenities crammed into the confines of this “quarantine” sector. Garden plants that were placed to be ornamental, though he had been told many were edible in one way or another. Furniture that could be easily cleaned and sterilized, yet was also comfortable thanks to some sort of closed-cel foam padding. Kitchen facilities that were a bit odd compared to V’Dan but included a “snacks cupboard,” and not one, but two largish chambers for “recreational activities.”
The first one was for lounging and relaxing, for playing board games and reading from data tablets, even for dancing, with a broad floor inlaid with thin strips of something called bam-boo. The second was for exercising, and included a small swimming pool just long enough for swimming laps, and just wide and shallow enough at one end for more playful activities, plus a smaller, pond-sized pool for soaking in heated water, and something which the tall blond male, Lars, exclaimed in delight over, a sow-nah, a sort of steaming room lined in an entirely different sort of wood, one with a scent somewhere between briskly pleasant and mildly pungent.
The floors were not carpeted, making them easier to clean and keep sterile. There were artworks hanging on the walls, some sculptures, but mostly a series of monitor screens that slowly rotated between collections of images—famous works of art representing many cultures and thousands of years, Ja’ki had explained. The wide variety certainly attested to that. None of the physical art items were originals, “. . . since the whole quarantine section has to be considered expendable in the event of a truly incurable, irremovable problem, which hopefully won’t be a problem,” but they were excellent reproductions from what he could tell.
