by C. G. Mosley
“Well,” Malcolm began. “I want you to know we have a brain, heart, lungs, cardiovascular system, and so on, exactly like all of yours,” he said, seemingly taking a quick moment to make eye contact with every Earthling in the room.
“As far as why we’ve been separated by millions of meters of intergalactic space between our worlds…I have no idea how to explain that,” he admitted. “I think now would probably be a good time to tell you that there are other planets in our galaxy with other human races too. Humans seem to inhabit this entire galaxy, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also tell you that there are other entirely different races of aliens found in other galaxies. Some are not friendly either.”
Colonel Madigan stroked his chin as he listened intently. “Captain Steiger, these revelations you’re giving us…they’re a huge part of why Earth’s leaders were somewhat reluctant to help you with your er…problem.”
Malcolm looked over at the colonel, confused. “I don’t understand,” he said, as he then turned his glance back toward General Hightower.
Hightower sighed and placed his hands in his uniform’s jacket pockets. “What the colonel is trying to say,” he said, “is that the only way you could possibly know these incredible things you’re telling us about other races of humans—and even other races of aliens in different galaxies—would have to be because the Kaloians are so technologically advanced that you have the capabilities to explore every sector of our galaxy and beyond. Any race of people with that much of a technological advantage would have to most certainly have the wherewithal to deal with threats to their way of life. It’s just hard for us to fathom that we could be of much help to you.”
Malcolm’s eyes widened slightly, and he bowed his head. He seemed to have expected the conversation to take a turn in this direction.
“What you say is true,” he said, still looking downward at the table top. “As I’ve told Commander Stellick, though we have a clear technological advantage, it means nothing if we don’t have the manpower to use it. I’m simply proposing an alliance between the people of Kalo and the people of Earth. An alliance to deal with a scourge that is destroying my home world, and will no doubt one day become a threat to your home world as well.”
Malcolm paused and looked up again. He scanned the environment, making eye contact with nearly every Earthling in the room. “Kalo is at your mercy. I’m begging for your help. I need it so badly that I’m willing to bend the original terms I laid out for Commander Stellick. I understand your cautious nature and if you want us to construct the gate so that you can cross over and see for yourself before committing, then we are prepared to help update your ships with the technology you’ll need to do it.”
“All we really need is some assistance with our propulsion system,” Hightower replied. “We have a ship—a large ship that is suitable for just such an expedition. However, it is not capable of travelling at light speed as your ship the Pinnacle is able to do. We want to know if it’s possible to get our ship that fast. We’re not even sure how the skin on her hull would hold up to speeds like that.”
Malcolm smiled and evidently had good news. “General, not only am I confident that we can get your ship up to light speed, I’m also confident that if the hull isn’t already strong enough—and it probably is—that we’ll be able to make relatively easy modifications to get it there.”
“Modifications?” Colonel Madigan asked, cocking his head slightly.
“Yes, we have a material—what you call paint—that can be applied to the exterior of your ship. Once it hardens, handling light speed will be no problem at all.”
“Very well,” Hightower answered. “How long do you think the modifications would take?”
“That depends on how much you’re willing to assist us,” Malcolm replied. “And of course, we know nothing about the size of your ship.”
“You’ll get all the help you need to make this happen as quickly as possible…and our ship is slightly smaller than the Pinnacle,” Hightower said.
Malcolm nodded and looked over to the Kaloian next to him with the shoulder length brown hair. “Tago, what do you think?” he asked him.
Tago took a deep breath and seemed to clench his teeth as he pondered the question. After a moment, he said, “Under those circumstances I would say an Earth month would probably be sufficient.”
“A month? That fast?” Colonel Madigan asked, surprised.
Malcolm smiled. “Colonel, we have tools that you do not yet have. You supply manpower to assist, and we will get your ship ready.”
Madigan looked at the general, and then they both looked to Roger. Roger shrugged. “A month is plenty of time for us to put together our crew,” he said.
General Hightower nodded slightly and then said, “Captain Steiger, let’s plan on five weeks. That’ll give you a week to construct the gate, and a month to make sure our ship is ready to go. We can always adjust to add more time if we feel that we need it.”
“No,” Malcolm said. “The sooner we get back to my home world, the sooner you will see that we are in dire need of your help. Then hopefully you’ll provide it.”
Hightower locked eyes with Malcolm and then walked around the table to where he was. When he stood before him, he held out a hand. “You can trust us,” he said.
Malcolm slowly looked down at the general’s outstretched hand. After a moment, he smiled and shook it. “You can trust us too,” he said kindly.
Chapter 10
“Commander, do I have permission to speak freely?” Sabre asked.
They were standing in the hangar among the fleet of Comet fighters. There was no one else within earshot.
“Of course, Christian, speak your mind,” Roger urged, and he crossed his arms, ready to listen.
Sabre shifted his feet and looked at the Comet fighter nearest him. “You know that my answer is yes, but why the delay?”
Roger resisted the urge to snap at the cocky pilot. “You were sick when I began putting my roster together, I had to make sure you were well.”
Sabre shook his head and smirked. “Commander Stellick, you’ve been putting the crew together for almost a month. The mumps is not a serious illness.”
“Every illness is serious when you’re a pilot,” Roger scolded. “I will not allow one pilot to leave the ground if I don’t feel they are one hundred percent.”
There was a long awkward silence. Sabre kept looking back and forth between Roger and the nearby Comet. He seemed to be having a debate within himself on whether to continue the conversation.
“Commander, I have a hard time believing that your decision to wait so long to ask me was based solely on my health,” he said finally.
Roger took a step forward. “You need to tread lightly, pilot,” he growled.
Sabre took a step back and shook his head. “I’m sorry sir,” he grumbled. “I thought I had permission to speak freely.”
“You do,” Roger snapped. “And I have the freedom to keep you off the roster if I feel your insubordination will be a problem.”
“I’m not trying to be insubordinate,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense. I’m one of the best pilots in S.A.M.A. and am more than qualified for this mission. Logically, it seems that I’d have been the first man on your roster and not the thirty-eighth.”
“Well you’re on it now,” Roger said, turning away from him. “Keep your nose clean for the next week and you can stay on it.”
Roger then walked away, leaving Sabre alone. The disgruntled pilot stood in silence for almost a solid minute before finally punching the Comet fighter he’d been standing next to out of frustration.
“What’s wrong?” Lauren asked, as she approached him from behind. Her hair was in a pony tail and she was wearing a jogging suit. In her hands were two coffees.
Sabre spun on his heel to discover that she’d entered the hangar from the doorway on the opposite side of the building.
“Nothing,” he said, still sounding disgusted.
“It doesn’t sound or look like nothing,” she replied, as she glanced over at the Comet he’d just struck.
“I think your brother is talking about me,” he grumbled.
Lauren was taken aback. “What? Talking about you to whom?”
“Commander Stellick,” he answered. He walked over to the Comet and leaned his back against it. “Stellick just told me I’ve been added to the roster of pilots—finally.”
Lauren’s face brightened at the revelation. “Well that’s great,” she said excitedly. “That’s the news you’ve been waiting on.”
“Yes, but I can’t figure out why it took him so long,” he said. “I think your brother has been bad-mouthing me to him.”
Lauren shook her head. “Charlie barely has any contact with the Commander,” she said.
“Well then maybe he’s been talking about me to Tim, and Tim’s been telling Stellick,” he countered.
“You sound paranoid,” she said, handing over one of the coffees. “It doesn’t matter, you’re on the ship…and I’m on the ship. This is great! It’s what we wanted.”
Sabre rolled his eyes and took the cup. “Yeah, I’m glad you’re on the ship Lauren, but can you not see why it’s a little demeaning that a fitness manager was chosen before the best pilot in three colonies and Earth combined?”
Lauren suddenly appeared hurt. “I’m sorry, you don’t think my job is important?”
Sabre sipped his coffee and then walked over to Lauren, putting an arm around her. “That’s not what I meant, I’m sorry.”
She drank her coffee and refused to look up at him.
“Would you ask him for me?” he asked suddenly.
Lauren pulled away and turned to face him. “Ask who what?”
“Charlie,” Sabre replied. “Would you ask him if he’s said anything about me?”
Lauren’s eyes narrowed, and she was clearly agitated. “No, I will not,” she said. “You’re acting like a child about this.”
Sabre’s jaw dropped, and he shook his head. “I’m the one acting childish? You’re the one allowing your little brother to play a role in your love life.”
He watched as the color in her cheeks turned a dark pink. There was a storm brewing behind her eyes that he was now very aware that he had caused. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out as he immediately regretted what he had said.
Lauren blinked a couple of times and then slowly turned her head away from him. “We will talk later,” she said, and then she stormed off without saying another word.
***
“This is everyone,” Roger said as he handed over a file to General Harry Hightower.
The general opened it, took a seat behind his desk and scanned through the paperwork. It seemed that his eyes had finally healed fully and the need for eye drops no longer existed. His vision was the best it had been since he had been a young boy.
“Very good,” Hightower said as he glanced over the final pilot’s sheet. “Allow Colonel Madigan and myself to look over these this afternoon. I’m good with your decisions, but I need to make sure he has no objections. I’ll let you know for sure in the morning.”
“Thank you General,” he replied with a salute. Roger was seated in one of the two cushy leather chairs on the opposite side of the desk. After Hightower saluted him back, he asked, “What’s our progress on the ship?”
The question seemed to perk Hightower up. “Very well, actually,” he said. “Captain Steiger and his crew have been a tremendous help. It seems that a lot of the original engine design was similar to what is on the Pinnacle, with a few major exceptions. Merrill tells me the engines should be ready to go by the end of the week. The coating on the hull has been completed already. If anything, we should finish ahead of schedule. It’s all been very positive.”
It was all good news and Roger was happy to hear it. It seemed that the general’s mood had been much better the past few days, no doubt because of the reduced stress he’d been under.
“And how do you feel about the Kaloians now?” Roger asked.
General Hightower cocked his head to the side and allowed a sideways smile to part his lips. “I’d say I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “As I said, Captain Steiger has been very helpful. He’s gotten his hands dirty and has been involved in the manual work. I finally got comfortable enough to sign off on allowing him a temporary living quarters on the lunar colony. Everyone I’ve spoken to about him have had nothing but good things to say about the man.”
Roger smiled. “I’m glad to hear that sir.”
“Yeah, me too,” Hightower replied. “I hope you understood my position and the reason why I had to be the most skeptical person on Titan when the Pinnacle first arrived.”
Roger chuckled. “Yeah, I do, but I think Colonel Madigan may have had you beat on that.”
Hightower nodded slightly. “Yes, Merrill is very opinionated, but make no mistake, he has no problem telling me when I’m wrong.”
This surprised Roger. “Really?”
“Sure,” the general said. “I put more trust in Merrill Madigan than any other man I’ve ever served with. I know that there are never hidden agendas. What you see is what you get with him. It’s hard to find that in people these days.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” Roger admitted. “The colonel and I are not always on the best of terms, but I certainly respect him.”
“And he respects you,” Hightower said, pointing toward Roger’s chest.
Roger’s smile remained but he said nothing. His relationship with Madigan had been very rocky and he wasn’t sure if he believed the man respected him or not.
“We’ve had Tim Reed involved in the work on the SC Titan also,” Hightower continued. “I had a conversation with him yesterday and he seems to have a very good understanding on the changes that have been made to get the Titan’s engines to lightspeed. In fact, he understands it so well that he believes we can transfer the same technology over to our fighters—at least eventually.”
“Wow, a Comet fighter at lightspeed?” Roger said, seemingly thinking aloud. “That’s amazing although I could never see us using that during a dogfight.”
Hightower shook his head. “No, of course not,” he said dismissively. “But now that it seems our footprint on the expanse of space is widening significantly, travelling great distances in a relatively short amount of time will be an eventual necessity to our species survival.”
“So, what are the odds of us actually helping the Kaloians if we get over there and find out that everything Captain Steiger has told us is the truth?” Roger asked.
“I’d say the odds are much better than they were three weeks ago,” Hightower replied. “President Callahan seems to be really impressed with them and of course President Hiro is pleased with anyone that helps get the Titan built.”
“Yeah, I sort of got the feeling that the Titan is a passion project of his when I saw all the pictures of his involvement in the file you gave me,” Roger said.
“It should be,” Hightower said as he leaned back in his chair. “He helped design it.”
Roger sat up straight in his chair. “Excuse me?” he asked, wearing a look of shock on his face.
“Now you didn’t hear that from me,” the general said sternly. “That’s top-secret information and Hiro is terrified that if the public really found out how much he was involved, they’d politicize it and turn it into a controversy.”
Roger stared at him, confused. “Why would it be a controversy?” he asked. “Is he making money off the project?”
“Some,” Hightower said. “But not nearly as much as people would think. I think the biggest issue would be how some of the general public would respond to the world’s government using tax dollars to build a star ship in secret.”
“Well I think they’d have a valid reason to be concerned,” Roger said.
“I do too,” Hightower agreed. “Which is why this new discovery of life outside our own solar system could not have come at
a better time for President Hiro. It justifies his entire reasoning for the project and the need for such a ship.”
“He wanted us to go looking for alien life,” Roger said as he began to fully understand.
Hightower nodded. “Yes, he strongly believed that we needed to find alien life before it found us first. He felt that if we had the opportunity to observe other life forms maybe we would be able to prepare for a possible attack in the future.” The general paused and shifted in his chair. It squeaked in protest. “I guess what he never expected was that someone out there was already watching us.”
“We were lucky that the aliens that have been watching us were not only friendly, but human,” Roger said.
“Do you believe that?” Hightower asked.
“Believe what?”
“That they’re human.”
Roger shrugged. “Sir, you’ve seen the same reports I’ve seen. The medical team that examined Captain Steiger documented that his anatomy is almost exactly the same as ours.”
Hightower held up a finger. “That’s right,” he said. “They said almost.”
“Their muscle mass is different than ours, but they chalked that up to all the time they’ve spent in space,” Roger countered. “The only other difference is with their cardiovascular system and it’s very slight. The makeup of their internal organs—including their brain—is identical to our own.”
Hightower smiled and seemed to be enjoying the conversation. “Any slight or minor difference is still a difference, Roger,” he said.
“Well, I think it’s enough to classify them as humans,” he replied. “Same as us.”
“It seems ironic to me that though they seem to be more intelligent than us, we are physically stronger,” the general said thoughtfully.
“Again, they think it’s because—”
“I know, I know,” Hightower replied. “Their time in space…”
Roger nodded. “I’m willing to wager that if we met other Kaloians that have kept their feet on the ground that their muscle mass would be more comparable to ours.”
