Solbidyum Wars Saga 4: Too Late for Earth

by Dale C. Musser

  “Do you think Ming had the others killed so he would have more women to himself?” Kala asked with a dubious tone.

  “I find that difficult to believe, but he might conserve resources in an attempt to make sure he had enough to eat.”

  “Do you think the others are buried someplace back on the Moon?”

  “Possibly but Ming’s the sort who would have had them made into fertilizer and used it in their greenhouses. I don’t really know what to think.”

  Suddenly my wrist com began beeping again. “Now what?” I asked before opening the link. “Tibby here.” I answered.

  “Tibby, this in Marranalis, you need to get down to the gym where we work out for martial arts. Jenira nearly decapitated and neutered Láng!”

  “WHAT?!” both Kala and I exclaimed in unison.

  “I’ll be right there.” I answered as I rushed out the door.

  “I’m coming with you, Tib.” Kala said as she hastened to keep up with me. “What do you think caused her to attack him?

  “I’m not sure, but I am sure she has a good reason.” I said, and then under my breath, I muttered “at least I hope she has.”

  When we arrived two of Marranalis’s men were holding Jenira by both her arms, a third stood by holding both her swords, while yet another two firmly held Láng.

  “Now, what's the meaning of this?” I asked. Before anyone else had a chance to answer Láng exploded. “This wild beast attacked me with her swords; she nearly cut off my head. You need to get her off your ship, jettison her into space for the safety of everyone aboard!”

  “And what did you do that caused her to attack?” I asked, as I looked at Jenira, who glared a hate-filled gaze at Láng.

  “Nothing, I was merely walking by when suddenly she attacked me with her swords. It was only my quick reflexes that saved me from the little bitch.” He didn’t actually use the word bitch, which is an English world and for which the closest translation would be ‘doesee’ in Federation language; instead he used 'Biǎo zi', a Chinese word that translates to bitch in English. In my mind, both bitch and doesee translated simultaneously into both English and Federation, causing me a moment of dizziness as I was not used to having a word translate into two different things at one time.

  “I see,” I said as I turned facing Jenira. “And what’s your explanation for what happened?”

  Jenira tried to jerk her arms free, so she could start signing, but the troopers at her sides held her arms firmly.

  “Release her arms,” I ordered, “she needs her hands free to sign.”

  The two men released her arms and immediately Jenira began signing. “He grabbed me in an inappropriate manner and said he wanted to have sex with me! I shoved him away and signed NO, then he slapped me and said he knew I was a little whore and I would do as he said. Then he tried to grab me again, that’s when I pulled my swords. I didn’t kill him or hurt him, but I could have. I only wanted him to go away!” All the time she was signing, she glared at Láng.

  All this time Láng had been watching Jenira sign and I knew he understood, as he had received the knowledge of the Federation sign language from the learning headbands.

  “She lies, the little Biǎo zi lies. She tried to proposition me. I told her I was not interested in a child!” Láng spat. I could see fear in his eyes and I knew he was lying, but I could not go with my feelings alone.

  “Marranalis, what do you know of this? Are there any witnesses?”

  “”I’m afraid not, Tibby, we were just finishing working out when suddenly we heard Láng screaming for help and we rushed here to find him pinned two the wall by Jenira with one blade pressed to his throat the other blade between his legs. If he had tried to move he would have gotten cut for sure.”

  “See,” Láng spat, “she is a dangerous little beast; she should not be allowed to carry those swords. It’s all your fault for allowing her to do so. I demand you have her executed immediately!”

  “Not so fast, Láng, we need to check the recordings made by the security cameras. “I said as I pointed to the security cameras mounted in the corridor.”

  Suddenly Láng began squirming and looking even more terrified. “I’m sure this is all a mistake,” Láng muttered. “Perhaps I may have brushed into the young lady and she misinterpreted the accident as an affront. I am sure that’s what must have happened.”

  “Hmm, we shall see.” I responded as Marranalis activated one of the vid panels in the wall and entered the codes to play back the security monitor recordings from the corridor.

  “I’m sure this is not necessary,” Láng tried to smile and laughed nervously, “my apology to the girl should smooth over the matter,” he said looking Jenira hopefully. Jenira stared back at him defiantly, and Marranalis said. “Here is the playback from the far hall monitor.”

  As the scene played out we could see Jenira coming out of the gym area adjusting her uniform. She walked down the corridor, moving to the side as she and Láng approached each other coming from opposite directions. Just as they were about to pass each other, Láng reached out and grabbed Jenira with one hand, pulling her close to himself as he grabbed her between her legs with the other hand. Jenira quickly broke his hold with a martial arts move and shoved him back. Láng suddenly slapped Jenira and we could see his lips moving, and then there a blur of motion, too fast for the monitors to fully capture as Jenira reached over her shoulders and grabbed her swords. When the blur was over, Láng was pinned to the wall with a sword pressed to his neck and one pressed to his groin by a very angry-looking Jenira. Láng could be seen screaming as Marranalis and two troopers came rushing into the corridor and pulled Jenira off Láng, who immediately tried to flee, when a third trooper came out of the gym and stopped him.

  “Well Láng,” I said. “I certainly can see how your accidental brushing into Jenira could have seemed to her like an affront.”

  “You have no right to do anything to me,” Láng growled. She is just a common whore. I know all about her. I have heard of her past.”

  I don’t know what Jenira tried to do just then; I heard her struggle in the arms of her guards. It didn’t matter what she did, because I punched Láng so hard in the face I knocked three teeth out, and he fell to the deck like a turd dropping from a fubalo’s butt.

  “Get this piece of crap to the med unit. I don’t particularly care if the doctor fixes him up or not. Once she is done with him and he is conscious, I want him placed in a holding cell with two guards outside his door. He is to have no visitors and only minimal rations until we get to Megelleon, where he will be turned over to the judicial system and tried for sexual assault.”

  “Right, Tibby,” Marranalis said as he grabbed Láng’s feet and began dragging him down the corridor, “I may just have to drag him up and down a few sets of stairs before I get him to the med unit. I hope his head can take the steps.” I had to chuckle at Marranalis’s humor; while I knew he wouldn’t really to any of those things, I do not doubt for an instant that he seriously wanted to. As he rounded the corner Jenira came to me and gave me a hug and Kala came and put her arms around both of us. “I’m glad you punched him in the mouth, Tib, because if you hadn’t I would have.” Kala said. Jenira looked at both of us and smiled.

  It was about an hour later when a red-faced and angry Ming approached me outside my study. “What have you done with Láng?” he demanded. “Why is he in a cell and under guard? I wished to speak to him; your men will not allow me to see him! You have no right!”

  “Ming, I have every right. First of all, he sexually assaulted one of the women on this ship, then he lied about it. Secondly, this is my ship. It operates out of Federation space, but on this ship Federation laws are enforced. Láng will be taken back to Megelleon where he will stand trial for sexual assault.”

  “So you beat him based on the accusation of some woman, and you beat him without a trial! You call that justice.”

  “I knocked his teeth out; I didn’t beat him! However, I sure want
ed to. No one speaks to a woman, or about a woman, the way he did on my ship! He’s lucky I didn’t space him right then and there.”

  “Ming looked at me a moment and then continued. “I suppose you have men prepared to lie and say that he attacked this woman. But you have no real proof; it is only the words of liars.”

  “No, Ming we have much more. We have the entire event captured on video recordings from two separate cameras and angles. They speak quite clearly as to what took place.”

  Ming looked as though he were about to say something else and then suddenly shut his mouth and turned and stormed away. I was glad to see him go, but I had a gut feeling that Ming was not about to let the matter end.

  News about the event between Jenira and Láng spread quickly about the ship. I was concerned about how the Chinese would react to the event and was pleasantly astonished when the Chinese women suddenly all wanted to be around Jenira, laughing and smiling and treating her like she was their best friend. Even the majority of Chinese men seemed to look upon her with great favor and spoke politely and favorably with her, smiling and treating her like a beloved daughter or a princess. Only a few of the males that had been guards and soldiers serving Ming showed any form of disapproval of her, and those that did seemed to keep it to themselves. It was three days after the event with Láng that Kala and I were coming out of our private garden that Cantolla tracked us down.

  “Tibby, over the past few days Shuǐ Cǎo has started opening up to me more about Ming and what went on at the lunar colony. While she won’t go into details, it sounds like things were really bad. I tried to get her to tell me exactly what happened but she seems afraid to say anything. What I have pieced together from what she’s said is Ming had most of the male scientists executed shortly after his arrival on the Moon. He only kept alive those he believed vital to equipment maintenance, and food, water and air production equipment maintenance. I’ve tried delicately to get her to talk about the women and their pregnancies, and while she won’t go into the details, she did reveal that none of the women wanted to be pregnant nor had any desire to carry their babies to term. At first, the women were going to the doctor at the lunar colony and having abortions, but when Ming found out he had the doctor beaten severely. After the first woman had her baby, Shuǐ Cǎo won’t say what happened to it, and the doctor committed suicide. “Shuǐ Cǎo also implied that at least two women who became pregnant later also committed suicide; and while she would not elaborate further; it was clear their reasons were that they did not wish to have a child.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “I mean, I can understand under the conditions existed on the Moon some of the women may not want to have a child, but I would expect that some mothering instinct in some of them would want to keep a child regardless. Everything I see and hear in this instance seems to indicate just the opposite.”

  “I agree with Tib,” Kala interjected. “It really doesn’t make sense.”

  “You say that Ming had the doctor beaten for performing the abortion?” I asked.

  “That’s what. "Shuǐ Cǎo said.”

  “And after delivering the baby the doctor committed suicide! Hmm, was the child deformed in some way, I wonder?”

  “Shuǐ Cǎo didn’t mention it; in fact, she said nothing about the child at all.”

  Kala spoke up, “Obviously, Ming wanted the child to be born, or at least that would explain his reaction to the doctor performing an abortion on one of the women.”

  I rubbed my head as though in some way that would help to align my thoughts. “Okay, here is what we know so far. None of the pregnant women, at least the current ones, were impregnated by Ming but rather Láng is the father of their children. Ming wanted the women to have babies even though they weren’t his. The women did not want to have the children, but appear to have been forced into having them against their will. The women are afraid to speak up about what happened. A doctor committed suicide as a result of one woman having a baby. Have I missed anything?”

  “Tib, I don’t think you can say that the doctor committed suicide because of the birth of a child, even though it may appear that way; it may just be a coincidence.”

  “Granted, but for the moment, I think I will keep it in the equation or at least until it is disproved as a related factor.”

  “So what you are saying is that Ming wanted these women pregnant, even though he was not the one impregnating them, and that none of them wanted to be carrying offspring. That at least one and maybe more women at the lunar colony had children, but there were no children present on the Moon that we saw and the women were getting abortions to prevent them having children, also that a doctor killed himself because they were forced to have children?” Cantolla said with a puzzled look on her face.

  “I feel like the answer is right in front of us and we aren’t seeing it.” I said as I scratched my head.

  “Tib, you keep scratching your head like that and you soon will be bald.” Kala teased.

  “Not to change the subject, but how are things progressing with the space-folding frames that you and A’Lappe were working on?” I said, looking at Cantolla.

  “I’m afraid we haven’t made any new progress,” Cantolla replied. “The amount of power required to join the space between two frames increases exponentially as the frame gets larger. A frame of sufficient size to pass a cup through requires nearly one millionths of the NEW ORLEANS’ solbidyum reactor’s power. To make a frame big enough to pass a ship through you, will max out the reactors' power output, and that’s just on one side of the frame. You would need a duplicate matching set up at the other end, with another solbidyum reactor to make the system work.”

  “Well keep working on it; with the way engagements with the Brotherhood have been taking place and the limited number of Federation starships available to patrol one million planets, we need a way to get from one location to another quickly to defend different planetary systems. Right now there simply aren’t enough ships to go around, and the Brotherhood is slowly picking off worlds here and there. In the meantime, see if you can get Shuǐ Cǎo to provide you with more details.”

  One of the things that impressed all the refugees from the Moon and Mars on the NEW ORLEANS was the main employees' lounge. Actually, there were several lounges on the ship catering to different tastes but this one lounge stood out above the others, partly because of Kerabac and A’Lappe and their singing and partly because of the dancing. Added to that were a variety of other acts from talented crew members that kept everyone happy. Recently, the number of amateur acts had been growing, and it had become necessary for Kala to appoint an individual to be an entertainment director just to book and handle events. One of the first things the new entertainment director did was to put together a talent show, and everyone aboard the ship was invited to participate. The event was too big to be held in the employee lounge, so we used the huge event area that could hold the entire ship’s complement of people at one time. As it turned out, almost everyone not on duty showed up for the event. Of course, Kerabac and A’Lappe received a lot of cheers, and that was no surprise, but a few others really caught the attention of the audience and were big favorites. Padaran amazed everyone with his voice impressions in a comical routine that had people crying with laughter. Kala laughed so hard at his impressions of Kerabac and me that I was afraid she was going to have a miscarriage. He further surprised us by imitating Ming and Norkoda, both who had voices I would have thought difficult to mimic, but he was so good I honestly think that if I had my eyes closed, and I could not see him, I would have believed it actually was them. Another real shocker came when Doctor Volkov and a woman from the Mars colony sang an operatic duet from back on Earth. The place went dead quiet while they sang; it seemed that no one moved through the entire performance. When they finished, everyone in the room was silent for a few seconds and then the room exploded in cheering and foot stomping that went on for several minutes. When the sound began to die down, Kala asked. “Was this a
musical form common on Earth? I’ve never heard anything quite like that!”

  “Yes I said, it’s called opera, it is one of the Earth’s older music art forms. It was more popular among the aristocratic classes of people but started coming back into vogue about the time I left Earth. I’m glad to see we have two talented opera singers aboard; I hope they can teach others. All the operas of Earth should be stored in the data cubes the Mars team brought with them.”

  Regata performed next, playing a drum at times and a flute at others with tweeting sounds that mimicked the creatures from Goo' Waddle’s jungles. The following two acts weren’t nearly as good and while no one booed them, the audience was less than enthusiastic about them. There were a couple of dance acts representing some popular dance styles from around the Federation, and one couple performed many of the dances that I had brought with me from Earth.. The last act of the evening turned out to be Jenira; both Kala and I looked at each other questioningly when she walked out on the stage. As always, she was dressed all in black with her two swords strapped to her back. Her long black hair hung down her back in a single braid. She moved with the grace of a lioness as she approached the center of the stage and knelt down on one knee with her other leg and foot extended behind her. She placed her right fist on the floor in front of her; her other hand was extended back gripping a sword pommel The pose reminded me of a football player from back on Earth when they were lined up getting ready to make a play.

  “What’s she going to do?” I asked Kala.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she responded, as she was saying this four assistants walked out from opposite sides of the stage, each tossed four round fruit about the size of Earth lemons into the air and then stepped back very quickly. Instantly Jenira became a blur of motion, as she drew her swords, the light flashing off her blades as they whirled through the air slicing the fruits. Before the fruits had made it half way to the floor, she had sliced every one of them perfectly in two pieces. There was a gasp from the audience, as everyone was shocked by the speed and accuracy displayed, and they cheered and shouted. Next Jenira removed her two swords and took up training swords that had dull edges. Her four assistants came out attacking her from four different directions at the same time. Once again, Jenira’s swords were a blur of motion as she disarmed two of her combatants simultaneously and within less than three seconds, she delivered what would have been fatal strokes to the other two attackers before swinging her mock swords back, catching the two she had just disarmed while they tried to regain their balance.