by Michael Orr
The only thing in the Alliance’s favor was its numbers. The Hwarak’mogk were more powerful, but the Alliance had six to every one of the Hwarak’mogk ships. In the end, it was this that turned the tide — a war of attrition.
“Pyrrhic victory,” Nash mouthed, stunned that the omnipotent Alliance had once been brought to its knees.
The vision ended abruptly and Nash found himself still sitting beside Ambassador Ran. They were alone now in the record hall.
“I apologize, Commander,” Ran said. “I’m afraid I was caught up in the events and failed to register your distress. You should not have been subjected to such a prolonged record.”
“I...um...” Nash stumbled. Distress? Had it really been that long?
“The Hwarak’mogk fleet was totally destroyed,” Ran explained, reciting what sounded like facts taught to any Alliance child. “It’s general knowledge that the Hwarak’mogk themselves were reintegrated into the Alliance following their defeat. They’ve since been reduced to a recessive genetic remnant. Traces of them can be found among various Alliance races, but there’ve been no pure Hwarak’mogk since a generation after those events.”
Nash forced his wits to regroup. “So, there’s no real-world explanation for our sighting.”
“None.” Ran shifted her tri-limbed body in the seat. “And there would be no race memory of them within the Terran subconscious, since the Schism occurred before your race developed. Your Admiralty’s image of a Hwarak’mogk ship suggests coincidence. Being a documented design, it’s bound to find its way into subsequent constructions. And even were it to be an actual Hwarak’mogk, vessels of that construction would pose no threat to current Alliance patrols, although I cannot speak to the Terran fleet’s capabilities.”
“I see.” Nash carefully filtered all innuendo out of his voice. “Well, at least we have some idea what we’re looking at. I presume it’s safe to say the Alliance has no political correspondence with whoever’s operating such a ship?”
“That is a certainty, Commander. I believe you may approach them as befits the situation without fear of diplomatic repercussions.”
“Excellent.” Nash straightened up, all business. “Would it be acceptable for me to add this information to our database, Madam Ambassador?”
“I believe that was exactly the arrangement.” She handed him a carefully distilled version of the Hwarak’mogk data on a fresh holokey.
“Ambassador Ran, you have my gratitude.” Nash wanted to shower her with thanks, but nothing would tip his hand faster. “Please feel free to call on me should you find occasion.”
Ran bowed with her customary formality and left Nash in the company of his ever-present guide, Tivya. Through some miracle of indifference, the Alliance had given him everything he’d hoped for without so much as a glimmer of interest. As far as Ran was concerned, sightings of a Hwarak’mogk ship were little more than children’s ghost stories.
8
* * *
ALLIANCE CENTRAL – MAR 8, 2371
“You are satisfied, Commander Nash?” Tivya asked.
“Well,” he muted his elation as best he could, “I have more information than when I arrived. That’s worthwhile.”
Tivya smiled in her way. “Will you be staying for a time, or shall I make arrangements for your departure?”
“I guess that depends on your recommendation. Would I be missing something if I left now?”
“Only a tour, if you still desire one,” she offered. “I took the liberty of arranging it for you.”
After yet another spaghettification — Nash’s third of the day — Tivya introduced him to the Alliance’s Grand Atrium.
They stepped out of the travelpod into a variable-gravity polyhedral landing area with exits stemming from each face. Nash looked around with interest, studying the discrete use of G-tech as Tivya selected an overhead exit. Following her lead, he skirted the nearest exits by keeping to the walkways between each facet of the chamber. He always felt firmly grounded despite transiting three different gravity orientations, and they stepped through the chosen exit into a sight that blew his mind.
The core of Alliance Central was more like a cylindrical continent with landscapes clinging to the curved walls, just the way he’d always imagined a Dyson sphere. Here, the cylinder stood on its end with Nash at the center of its base, gazing up overhead into a distance so hazy he couldn’t make out the opposite cap. They were at least two dozen klicks from the environments wallpapering the cylinder, and the central space was so large it could’ve sheltered a hundred or more Betan cruisers with abundant elbow room.
“My god...” he exhaled. “The station doesn’t look this big on the outside.”
Tivya was silent, gesturing him toward a conventional mover that spirited them upward on a central column from which they could choose any destination. It reminded Nash of a space elevator without the space.
“The upper regions house extremophiles,” explained Tivya. “We’ll keep to the lower sectors.”
“I’m all yours.” Nash was too giddy at setting foot in the Alliance’s inner sanctum to notice his guide’s curious glance.
“I do have a question about the Terran diplomats.” Nash broached the subject while he and Tivya sampled some Dahl delicacies in the Alliance version of a sidewalk café. All around them, aliens were going about their day, some as curious about the lone human as he was about them.
Returning to his plate, he bit into something that popped wetly against his tongue and stopped everything, not at all sure he was willing to swallow. But Tivya was waiting for him to continue.
He forced it down, paying as little attention as possible. “How long d’they stay? Are they required t’spend a certain amount of time here?”
“You’re concerned about EID,” she said, and Nash was surprised she knew of it. “Not to worry, Commander. Alliance Central accommodates your energetic needs properly. Your ambassadors are as safe here as on Earth, although they’ve complained to me about the difficulty in programming spices like thyme and dill into the food generators. They indulge in the flavors of the Alliance as a supplement, and it doesn’t always suit them.”
“Ah.” He veiled his suspicions beneath the optimism of a tourist. “Well, we are a curious bunch.”
“Indeed.” Tivya’s enigmatic voice returned, and Nash suspected it was time for him to return home.
He spent most of the shuttle ride back to S-12 thinking about his exchange with one Terran liaison who’d snuck up to him without being noticed:
“Commander, would you do something for me?” She sounds burdened. “Would you look up a woman named Nelle Aushgie? I’ve sent her several holos, but nothing ever comes back.”
Jerrett studies the profile she shares to him.
“We were fairly close when she left, and at this point I’m wondering if she’s okay.”
“I could check the records on S-Twelve,” he figures, mostly to convince himself.
A melancholy smile softens the woman’s stark features. “It’d mean so much t’me.”
“I understand.” He glances around the Alliance's human sector. “Being so far from Earth. All this alienness. I’ll see what I can find out.”
He was musing about the best way to go about it when Tivya’s shuttle landed at S-12.
“I think I’m getting a sense of your expressions, Tivya. You’re wondering about something.”
She tipped her head as usual. “It’s said that each visitor births a new tale of Alliance Central. I’m curious what yours will be.”
He offered his smile as a shrug. “You and Ambassador Ran’ve been most accommodating, and the Alliance has treated me well. I’m afraid that’s about as much of a storyteller as I am.”
Nash made his diplomatic goodbyes and watched her ship warp back out into space. Then he made his way to a station interface and checked his messages. It wasn’t until after his debriefing with the commodore that he was able to look up Nelle Aushgie.
“That
’s not right.” He stared at the ‘No record found’ banner. “She would’ve had t’come through S-Twelve on her way home. There’s no other weigh stations out here.”
COMMAND SHIP – ALLIANCE SPACE – MAR 10, 2371
Jerrett snapped awake in bed, recognizing the ambience of the command ship in slipstream. Still a week out from Earth, his thoughts were more occupied with the problem of Nelle Aushgie than he liked. Mysteries existed to be solved, not tolerated.
He barely remembered the dream that woke him, but it had left a sizeable footprint on his psyche. He was an intelligence officer, at least for the time being. He needed to be thinking like one.
Sitting at his console, he began cross-checking ‘Nelle Aushgie’ for tangential references, but still nothing.
“And now, it’s time that I act like the field agent the Admiralty expects me t’be.”
He converted the name to phonetics and searched for correlations among Alliance dialects. Of the eighty-three entries, there was one solid match:
N’elaash Geeh – Tahnalese: ‘forget me not’.
“I’ll be damned!” he hissed, bringing up his lens record of each liaison he’d met in the Terran sector and cross-checking them. Many of the names were blank, others sketchy.
“She was tellin’ me nobody ever comes back.”
He leaned into his chair, now spooked by the void surrounding him. Whatever was going on with the Terran liaisons, the Alliance and his own government were in cahoots on it. And they’d just shown him their hand.
“Why? Why ’n the world would they expose me ta this kinda thing? What if I’m a loose cannon?”
Tingles snaked down his spine as the implications crystallized in his consciousness.
A trial.
The transition from junior officer to command-level required a test of character. How he handled this revelation would determine the nature of his next post and the trajectory of his career. If he couldn’t handle it like a company man, he’d find himself discredited and dismissed from the service.
EarthGov was in collusion with the Alliance about the status and fate of Terran ambassadors. And if that was true, then they’d be colluding on just about everything else.
For all its posturing and public efforts at maintaining Earth’s independence, the global Conglom was nothing but an Alliance puppet.
Jerrett stared out at slipstream space in a daze, realizing his career had come of age. He’d have to proceed on the assumption that everyone at his level or above was aware of this same truth. As far as EarthFleet was concerned, you’d either keep the secret and move forward or you were out.
“s’All just play-acting.” He exhaled from the hollows of his soul, now robbed of the illusion of Earth independence that had fueled his existence. An EarthFleet career was nothing but another way to kill time; no more meaningful than mopping floors. The Alliance was in control at every level.
“Good god almighty...” He shivered. “No one makes command with their beliefs intact. That’s the price.”
9
* * *
ESS ASHERAH – SOL SYSTEM – MAR 14, 2371
After weeks of back and forth from orbit honing her routines, getting them approved and learning all that was expected of a Goddess staffer, Trish had imagined this moment differently.
She was expecting excitement and liberation as Earth shrank into nothingness. Asherah was now speeding toward interstellar space, but what Trish ended up with instead was a solid lump of bleak.
It struck her hard that the little globe disappearing into the blackness of space was all Humanity had. Everyone who’d ever lived had spent their entire lifetime anchored to that one little blip in the vastness of existence. So claustrophobic. So limited and insignificant. She herself had never known more than what that miniscule blue dot had to offer. It took Humanity almost three thousand generations to finally make it out of the nest, and everything that ever happened across all of human history had happened there.
Earth’s light faded and Trish couldn’t hide from the smallness it left inside her. The emptiness of space smothered all else. It was eerily dark and silent and disconnected from everything the human creature took for comfort. It whittled away at her, digging out her innards to make a canoe, and what it meant to fill her with she couldn’t guess.
Asherah was heading toward the initial slipstream point and the only antidote for these weird feelings was looking ahead, wondering what she’d encounter out in the Alliance. Whatever it was, she prayed it would be big. Something Earth couldn’t provide. Something that would make life feel less meaningless than it did in this hollow moment.
She ached to share the experience with others, but the only person she knew was Saia, who happened to be on duty. All alone, she sat on the platform of her stage in the deserted Zodiac Lounge looking out into space and hoping this wasn’t an epic, disastrous mistake. Later tonight she’d be entertaining hundreds of guests on the Zodiac’s opening night, but at this moment it was just herself and this gnawing existential angst.
Lying on her back staring into the nothingness, she noticed a shift in the dark. The view brightened noticeably, and for an instant she thought she caught a glimpse of raw light spiraling upward into an endless height. It wasn’t simple light, but a kind of cloudscape as if she were peering through a window into another realm.
“What’n the...?” She sat up, guessing that Asherah had launched into slipstream. She knew about the change in space caused by surfing the gravity of subtler dimensions. Quantum gravity. The warping it caused was the basis of slipdrive, and it turned the view outside strange and surreal. But the vision of light evaporated as soon as she refocused her eyes. The ordinary blackness of space returned, leaving no hint that Asherah had gone FTL.
“Weird.” She got up and brought the stage to life, needing reassurance that she was on her game for the grand opening. She’d spent the weeks before launch frantically developing her act, running ideas by Fey and getting a feel for how her zero-G stage worked.
Like most devices, it was controlled by eye movements registered on her connec-lens, but the stage itself was disorienting. The platform she danced on always maintained positive G at her feet, so she always felt upright even as the platform swept all around the spherical stage, spinning and pendulumning and creating wild spectacles.
She had to train her eyes not to follow the dizzying view of the club as she whirled around. There were helpful orientation points built into the stage at various places, but staying upright demanded that she ignore what was going on around her. Any lapse in concentration would quickly lead to vertigo and create a PR debacle for the cruise line. And if that wasn’t enough, her extreme dance heels made it even more perilous. Only her long years studying Nouveau made this work.
She snapped awake to the blare of a public announcement, letting go of the ‘wounded eyes’ dream that always haunted her:
#Attention, Asherah passengers, staff and crew. We will be arriving at Wyuki in the Sirius system in half an hour. Anyone previously registered with the Alliance is welcome to enjoy any of the exciting shore excursions available. For those who’ve never been outside the Sol system to visit the Alliance, please make sure your Alliance ID application is ready. You’ll be notified as soon as your application has been registered. Thank you, and enjoy your visit to Sirius and exotic Wyuki.#
“Oh fuckeddy.” She rushed down to her ready room, having forgotten all about her application. After uploading it, she made her way down to street level and threaded herself through the tourists to watch her very first planetfall.
Zodiac Plaza was thronged with people, but no one was paying attention to the plaza itself, with its majestic fountains and charming greenways spanned by arching footbridges. All eyes were skyward, waiting for Asherah to exit slipstream.
The milkiness of space cleared away and glare from the Dog Star bleached the atmospheric bubble high above Mumbai’s towering skyline. The crystal skyscrapers transformed into mirrored reflections of t
he space around them and traces of orange began to play across forward-facing surfaces. The first hints of an alien planet.
Soon, one burnt-umber hemisphere of Wyuki played peek-a-boo through gaps in the skyline, and the crowd’s excited buzz quieted into an awed hush.
Trish’s heart thumped in time with the people around her, everyone tingling with a single thought:
“This is really happening! I’ve made it all the way to a different world!”
Celebrated exojournalist Alec Knoor likened one’s first planetfall to birth and death. Escaping Humanity’s home planet and ‘going rogue’ changed one’s psychology in indescribable ways, and Trish was beginning to see his point.
It was a bitter pill having to stay aboard Asherah waiting on her Alliance ID, but by keeping her ear to the crowd she learned of an observation bay for a full view of the planet.
She had to take a mover to the district’s forward sector and a lift to the top of a community skyscraper, but soon she stood with a new crowd facing a wall-sized view of Sirius’s only civilized planet.
The oranges and umbers of Wyuki’s continent-sized swamps were partially obscured by a misty layer of clouds, their centers glowing with bio-luminescence in Sirius’s garish light. It couldn’t have been less Earth-like. And then, there was the absence of glinting metallic things orbiting the alien world. Bio-sheathed Alliance craft didn’t give off telltale gleams like Terran ships, so there were few satellites visible around the planet. It was as if Asherah was the first ship ever to visit this distant world, and Trish was among its initial explorers.
“We’re a lo-o-ong way from home,” somebody gushed.
This IS home, Trish told herself, grinning.
