The Centauri Surprise

by Alastair Mayer

  “If you like. Yes, I can make that recommendation to my superiors back on Earth.”

  Regina could almost hear Ducayne’s teeth grinding. She knew he loved his independence.

  “Thank you, Ambassador. And to you.” Ducayne placed the handset back in its cradle, confirmed that the circuit was really off, and muttered a curse.

  Then he looked up at Elliot. “If you want my job, now is probably a good time to ask.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No thanks.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  “What was that all about?” Regina asked. “Although I think I can guess.”

  “You probably can. Space Force, or somebody, wants to do a training exercise. Essentially, stage an invasion. Jump into the system and land en mass on some remote area of Kakuloa. Obviously, we need to keep Sawyers World in the loop so they don’t freak out when a dozen ships materialize in the system. Ambassador Hadron thinks their Space Guard might be a bit upset anyway, and wants to make it a joint exercise.”

  “What do you think? And why does Space Force want to do this?”

  Ducayne thought for a moment, and then said, “Well, it might actually have been my idea.”

  “What? You lied to the ambassador? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you,” she said, not shocked at all.

  “I never suggested it in so many words. But my reports lately have been raising the spectre of an armed Velkaryan contingent out here. You know yourself that certain parts of the UDT government are getting nervous about Velkaryan activity on Earth, too. Venezuela was just the first. Several other member states are showing increasing Velkaryan sentiment. They’ve gotten very good at infiltrating social media and the like.”

  Elliot nodded. She had brought some of that information back herself. “It’s been what, four standard years since Space Force’s last exercise? They’re probably due for one anyway. A show of force might help keep the Velkaryans in line.”

  “Then it might be better for Space Force to do it in another system, like Delta Pavonis. Verdigris has been grumbling about seceding from the UDT for a while now, or parts of the planet have, according to reports from our agents there. A visit from the Force might sober them up.”

  “Really?” Elliot had her doubts. “That could either trigger them to action or force them underground for a few more years, building up their reserves and hiding themselves even better.”

  “Neither of which is particularly appealing,” Ducayne said. “Although I do like the idea of making them jump before they’re fully prepared.”

  “The question is whether our Space Force is fully prepared either.”

  “That’s a good point. In which case, a training exercise in this system might be just what they need.”

  “What about having the local Space Guard be the red team?” Elliot suggested. “Doing an unopposed landing doesn’t teach our forces much. For that matter, there must be some places left on Earth they could do that.”

  “Oh, sure there are. But there’s also a lot more traffic, and it’s a very familiar system. They need a touch of the unexpected. I’m sure the ship’s crews are fine with it, most of them would have been on multiple patrols and visits to other systems. Helping to discourage piracy, smuggling, and that sort of thing. The landing forces are a different matter. Some of them will have experience, but for many of them it might be their first taste of non-standard gravity and non-standard day lengths.”

  “A full-scale land and occupy drill, then? Do these troops cross-train with Peace Enforcers?”

  “Technically they are Peace Enforcers,” Ducayne said. “Except for a few planets like Sawyers World and Taprobane, we’re all happy UDT member states or territories. Any landing in force would technically be a police action, not an invasion.”

  “That could be interesting if we ever actually need to carry out a military invasion,” she said. “For unpleasant values of interesting.”

  “There’s always the approach of dropping rocks from a great height. That would take the spirit out of those on the ground.” Ducayne didn’t sound convinced, and Regina understood why not.

  “Maybe. It’s not a precision approach, and it may just end up pissing them off. Especially if they have ships of their own.”

  “As long as we’re only dealing with humans, at least we know what to expect.”

  “Who are you worried about this week? The Kesh or Carson’s ancient spacefarers? Surely not timoans.”

  “Oh, I worry about timoans too, but they’re way down on my list. Our concern is any spacefaring species, especially the ones who are either keeping themselves secret or we’ve only found secondhand evidence of.”

  “So, all of the above, then,” Regina said. She knew that Carson—and possibly others—had met Kesh individuals on a very few occasions, and they weren’t willing to make formal contact. Of more concern were the species the Kesh referred to as “degkhidesh”, or enemy of the Kesh, since they—again, according to the Kesh—had attacked a Kesh world some hundreds of years previously. Of the ancient spacefaring civilization who had built the pyramid-museums, little else was known. They had apparently disappeared fifteen thousand years earlier, but that might be temporary. Worse, there could be other species out there who, like the Kesh, had built on the lessons of those pyramids and were technologically advanced spacefarers in their own right . . . perhaps to be stumbled across by the next traveller beyond the loose borders of known T-Space. Or vice versa.

  It used to be assumed that the chances of encountering another spacefaring species were vanishingly remote, or else they would have long ago made contact—the so-called Fermi Paradox—but thanks to the ancient Terraformers, that theory had gone out the window. With who knew how many Earth-like planets out there, all seeded with Earth lifeforms, evolution on multiple worlds at roughly the same level as Earth was almost inevitable.

  That wasn’t even counting the possibility of civilizations developing on planets where life had developed independently. After all, the Terraformers had to come from somewhere, and even within T-Space, life—albeit relatively primitive life—had arisen on some non-terraformed worlds. Of course, not counting a few special exceptions like the Eta Carinae expedition, explored space was a region barely more than fifty light-years across. A flyspeck on the galactic map.

  “Yes,” Ducayne said wearily. “I worry about all of the above.”

  CHAPTER 22: LEAVING KAKULOA

  Kreschets Landing Spaceport, Kakuloa

  REID SAT IN THE spaceport lounge waiting to board the shuttle for Sawyers World. Between take-off, landing, and maneuvering to position, it would be a three-hour flight, all but about thirty seconds of that in normal space. Since most of the rest would either be under high-gee or no-gee, there wouldn’t even be any in-flight service. Reid looked at the time. Departure had been delayed for some mundane reason, so it would be another hour before the boarding call. He decided to check out the bar.

  The place had seen both better and worse days. Kakuloa had once been the thriving hub of interstellar commerce, between pharmaceuticals like the anti-aging drug harvested from squidberries, the tourist beaches and casinos of nearby Kakuloa City, and the exploration missions to stars beyond Alpha Centauri. Sawyers World had then been the ugly stepsister of the two terraformed planets in the system, until Kakuloa’s economy crashed.

  The official reason for the crash was that the bottom fell out of the squidberry market when pharmaceutical companies on Earth finally figured out how to synthesize the anti-aging drug. The less-widely talked about reason was the fall off in the high value tourist trade as organized crime moved in to take over the casinos, and the psychoactive properties of squidberries and other native plants fed a growing illicit drug trade. As if, Reid mused as he sat nursing his drink, organized crime could really have gained much foothold given the original libertarian, almost anarchic legal system on Kakuloa.

  As far as Reid was concerned, the real problem had been the movement to treat the tree squids as intelligent n
atives. The measures needed to keep tree squids out of the plantations without harming them raised the price of the squidberries to the point where the synthetics could undercut them. Declaring the entire Southern Continent off-limits to humans just compounded the problem. There were valuable resources on South Continent. Reid couldn’t name any off hand, but it just stood to reason.

  He drained the last of his drink and set the glass down on the bar a little more forcefully than he’d intended, earning him a dirty look from the bartender. You’d think Kakuloans would be friendlier to the Velkaryan cause, he thought as he got up to return to the boarding area. Many were, mostly the older inhabitants, but with the economy diversifying and growing again, the squids were being seen less as a threat to the planet’s livelihood and more as a curiosity. What the fools didn’t understand was that tree squids were the reason that Kakuloa still had to import all its flour, cereal, rice and other grass-derived crops. Despite their relative ubiquity on other terraformed planets, grasses had never taken hold on Kakuloa, and it was now prohibited to even attempt to grow them here, just in case they messed up the ecosystem in a way that threatened the poor tree squids.

  Reid shook his head. It was something else for the Velkaryans to fix when they came into power, but it was not his immediate concern. The Sawyer shuttle was boarding.

  CHAPTER 23: LEAVING PROXIMA

  Departing Grainger Station

  DINNER WITH THE Grainger Station team was a pale shadow of what dinner at Rick’s Cafe had been, at least as far as the food was concerned. The conversation had been slightly more interesting, but xenobiology wasn’t Jackie’s forte and planetology not much more so. Besides, Jackie wanted to get back to solving the puzzle of Carson’s talisman, and she didn’t want to do that until she was aboard ship in deep space.

  Breakfast was a step up from her usual autochef fare, at least, since the cargo she had carried had included a crate of fresh eggs and frozen, but deliciously spicy, sausages. And coffee.

  She finished stowing what little outgoing mail and cargo the station had and bid the station crew goodbye.

  “Are you making the next run?” asked Jennifer Rudloe. She was the woman who had helped unload cargo the day before. “If so, we’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Undetermined at this point,” Jackie replied. “I’m on contingency in case the Lark’s maintenance isn’t finished, so there is that possibility. If not, it was certainly good to meet you, and the others.”

  “And you. Thanks again.”

  With that Jackie secured the hatches and began the pre-flight checks while the bus trundled back to the safety of the base.

  “Sophie, Grainger Station here. You’re cleared to lift at your discretion. Safe trip.”

  “Copy that, Grainger. Cleared to lift. It’ll just be another minute or so.”

  She had green lights across the board, plenty of fuel, and the area around the ship was clear.

  “Grainger Station, Sophie is departing. Thanks for your hospitality.” She powered up the thrusters, and Sophie lifted toward space.

  Home was an easy target to line up on. Alpha Centauri A and B were by far the brightest stars in the sky, aside from Proxima itself. Jackie didn’t even bother precisely lining up the target, instead just eyeballing the half-way point between the two. She’d warp in that direction for three hours, then fine-tune her approach for the last 2500 AU. That should give her plenty of time correlate Carson’s talisman against known stars.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Three hours later

  There was no question about it. Jackie had checked the code and the data twice. She had compared the new omniphone copy of her program against the three existing talisman patterns for known stars; Chara, Delta Pavonis, and the one that had to be Sol, despite Carson’s insistence that there was nothing on Earth that could be a Spacefarer pyramid. They had all returned exactly those locations. Maybe Earth’s pyramid—if there had been one and that talisman wasn’t meant for something else—had been destroyed or buried after fifteen thousand years of geological forces.

  Either way, she couldn’t wait to see the look on Carson’s face when she told him that the star map on his latest talisman unmistakably pointed to the Alpha Centauri system.

  CHAPTER 24: MANDRAGORE

  Sawyer’s World, UDT Homeworld Security

  DUCAYNE’S DESK INTERCOM chimed, then a voice announced: “The Mandragore is in-system, we just received a transmission.”

  “They’re back early. Great news, thank you.” The Mandragore must have departed Chara III—the planet of St. Jacobs—ahead of schedule. They must have important news, and yet not so urgent as to use up one of their higher-speed, antimatter-powered message torpedoes. Or perhaps, they were carrying something too big to fit in one of the compact message carriers. Ducayne hoped that was the case. “What’s their ETA?” he asked.

  “About five hours. They sent a burst as soon as they came out of warp. Wait, subtract two hours from that for signal delay. We’ll probably get another signal shortly.”

  One of the challenges of warp travel within a planetary system is that a ship could easily outrun its own transmissions. Usually a ship came out of warp in the outer fringes of the system, got its bearings, then made a series of hops to get closer to the target planet without wasting days in normal space. Since Alpha Centauri was a busy system, ships had to keep their jumps in and out of warp short and relatively slow, but they would still average faster than light.

  “Keep me posted. And have them bring the ship into the hangar when they land.”

  Ducayne’s Homeworld Security offices were largely underground, but the aging hangar building at the Sawyer City Spaceport under which they lay would keep any prying eyes away from the cargo that Mandragore had brought back. He was eager to see that cargo for himself.

  CHAPTER 25: SOPHIE'S RETURN

  Sawyer Spaceport

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Jackie piloted the Sophie in for a landing at the Sawyer City Spaceport. On the approach, she was surprised to see the doors of the familiar old hangar building open, and a ship being towed into it. Landing the Sophie was not a time to be rubbernecking, so she only took a quick look, even though her ship’s computers could have handled it themselves. What’s that about? she wondered. She would ask Ducayne when she got a chance, although he was just as likely to respond with “what ship?” even if it were still plainly visible on the hangar floor.

  She parked her ship, secured it, and finished transferring the few packages she had brought from Proxima to the port cargo office. Then she called Carson.

  “I’m back in town,” she said when he answered. “You want to do dinner with me.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I do? I mean yes, of course I do. Did you have something in mind?”

  They agreed to meet at an unpretentious restaurant near campus.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Drake’s Diner, Sawyer City

  “You sounded eager to get together. Was the food at Proxima that bad?” Carson asked when they had ordered.

  “Well, it wasn’t Rick’s, but then neither is this place. But I have some news.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you know anything about the ship I saw pulling into Ducayne’s hangar when I landed?”

  “No. Should I? Is that the news?”

  “Just curious. And no, it isn’t. I had a chance to look at the, ah, star data you gave me.”

  “Star data?” Carson wasn’t immediately sure what she meant.

  Instead of answering, Roberts held up her hands with her left and right thumb-tips touching, likewise the tips of her forefingers. She bent fingers and thumbs to form the crude outline of a rounded square. Then she put her hands together under her chin as though that was what she had intended to do all along.

  Carson got the significance of the gesture. She meant the star map from the mysterious talisman he’d received. She had his undivided attention.

  “Oh, right, that star data,” he said, feigning only m
oderate interest. “Anything interesting?”

  “Alpha Centauri.”

  “What?” he blurted out. A diner at a nearby table looked over at him to see what the fuss was about. Carson coughed noisily, trying to cover his outburst.

  “What?” he said again, this time in a lower voice. “Did you say—”

  She nodded. “Yes. Alpha Centauri. AKA Rigil Kentaurus or Toliman, Gliese 559, Boss General Catalogue number 19728, and a handful of other catalog designations. In other words, here.”

  Carson had so many more questions. He went with the obvious. “Which star, A or B?”

  “It’s not that detailed. Given the distances involved, it would just look like a single star anyway. So, Sawyers or Kakuloa, take your pick. Maybe both.”

  “I’m not aware of anything even vaguely pyramid-like on Kakuloa,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Now I really want to take a look at Pete’s Peak.”

  “I thought you were convinced it was a volcanic plug?” Jackie said with a light grin, her green eyes twinkling.

  Carson refused to rise to the bait. “An intelligent person is always willing to change his mind in the face of new data.” He grinned back.

  “So now what? You go check it out?”

  “It’s not that simple, unfortunately. Remember, it’s in the middle of a wildlife preserve.”

  “Right. Finley’s leopard. So, how hard would it be to get permission for an archeological survey? It’s not like you want to go hunting.”

  “The thing is, I don’t particularly want to tell anyone why I think it’s of archeological interest, at least not yet. And I’m sure Ducayne wouldn’t want me to either.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Maybe I could sneak in.” He thought about his earlier discussion with Ducayne. “I could parachute in from the Sophie, if you’re willing.” He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “I’m sure there were times you’ve wanted to shove me out an airlock, right?”