Participant Species: Asher in Ordered Space Volume I

by John M. D. Hooper

  “That’s how I joined Hokozana, actually,” the Intel man continued. “We were found—those of us who managed to escape the planet in our tiny fleet of system ships—by a Hokozana battlecruiser that had come to deal with the problem. We were rescued, and eventually those of us who tested well were given the opportunity to swear our Loyalty Oaths. The rest were resettled in a little colony on Kowloon Er. My family were not among them.”

  “I see,” said Asher, “and I am sorry for your loss, for whatever that’s worth.”

  Jaydrupar smiled. “Believe me, I’m not looking for sympathy, but I accept your condolences in the spirit in which they were given.”

  “So is this why some people, like Namen Ravkar, are so sure you are obsessed with the Ferethers to the point of being a bit mad?”

  “Does she think that I have it in for all aliens, do you mean?” Jaydrupar spread his hands wide in an exaggerated shrug, although it made him wince in pain. “Who can say? Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I am too suspicious of other species because of what happened to my world. That doesn’t change the facts, though, and the facts are that the Ferethers are behaving very oddly and have, in the hyperdrive, a technology that has the potential to be a great threat to us. We would be fools to close our eyes to the risks.”

  Asher nodded and shrugged at that, as he felt that this was territory they had covered more than once. The conversation seemed to die as Jaydrupar lay back in his bed. Maybe he was still thinking of Madras II and the family he had lost. Asher took the opportunity to make his exit. As he left, he said, “Perhaps Ravkar would say that we would be equally foolish to close our minds to the opportunities.”

  In the spiral passageway outside the med bays, a crowd was streaming upspin, following the spiral up toward the outer shell of the ship. “What’s going on?” asked Asher, once he had caught the eye of a one-bar in a Security uniform.

  “It’s going in,” the woman said. “The Martins.” She went on up the spiral. Asher followed.

  The spiral was the main up-down passage for the main torus of the ship. It debouched onto a high-grav concourse with an enormous viewing panel towering over the heads of the crowd that had gathered. The screen was focused on the gray-blue hulk that was the center of the Jaden Martins debris field. Small sparks were flickering and dying at the leading edge of the field as pieces of the ship entered the atmosphere of Bernabeu and became flashing meteors. The crowd held their breath when a large meteor flared to life just in front of the hulk, and gasped when the leading edge of the ship started to turn orange. The orange spread and brightened, creating a plume that trailed behind the hulk. The view zoomed out, showing a bright trail that grew and grew until it stretched for what must have been hundreds of kilometers across the soft blue surface of the gas giant. At the head of the trail, the meteor that had been the Jaden Martins shone as bright as a small star, then abruptly winked out. All that was left of the frigate was a dusty smear on the planet. Asher watched until that, too, had faded.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The LongRanger was the first to spot the returning ships. Lamia was a big target, and was broadcasting on all bands to any friendlies at the jumpgate. With her were the light cruiser Badger and the frigate De Witt. The battle at Zvezda One had gone as well as could be hoped. The DiJeRiCo fleet had taken heavy losses, but had given almost as good as they got. In the end, though, Hokozana’s superior numbers and firepower had swung the engagement. The DiJeRiCo light cruiser Phantom, destroyer Shark, and bombardment ship Nautilus, the remnants of the battle fleet, had signed a surrender contract at just about the time that the DiJeRiCo missile had detonated between Cormorant and Jaden Martins. After a few hours of mopping up, Lamia and her companion ships had detached from Cierren Cythra orbit to make sure all was well at the jumpgate. The rest of the Hokozana battle fleet—what was left of it, anyway—remained in orbit near Zvezda One while the higher-ups settled on the next move.

  Admiral Vorthree was apparently less democratic that Captain Echo Hawk, so Asher found himself left out of the conferences that must have been going on aboard Lamia and Cormorant. He took the chance to catch up on his sleep as soon as the hotbunk was empty. He noticed that Kaz, too, had crashed in one of the beds. They had been awake for only about fourteen hours, but it had been a rough shift. Asher ached all over from pushing the stretchers laden with injured operatives. He was glad of a relatively soft place to rest. He left an alert for his neural net to wake him for any priority messages or fleet-wide status updates, and settled in.

  He wasn’t awoken by his net, but by a hand on his shoulder gently shaking him. He opened his eyes to find Lori standing over him. She smiled gently when she realized he was up. “Sorry, Asher. But I only just got free. Want to take a walk?”

  Asher stood, running a hand through his hair. “Fresh as a daisy,” he said. His net told him he had slept four hours. “Where did you want to go?”

  “I was thinking the ag decks. They tell me the Cormorant uses an innovative hydro system.”

  Asher, hoping she didn’t really just want to talk about hydro systems, agreed.

  They walked in surprisingly comfortable silence for a while. The main spiral in the supply torus, the rearmost of the ship’s three tori, wound up more steeply than the one in the main torus. The ship’s ag area took up the three outermost decks of the torus. The long thin grow tubes were stacked ten high. From each, leaves sprung up or hung down in a riot of greens, yellows, and browns. Asher saw maize, wheat, trailing beans, and even large tubes which somehow supported the weight of melons.

  “The air always feels cleaner on an ag deck, doesn’t it?” Lori asked. It was just about the first thing she’d said since they left the hotbunk, beyond a few pleasantries.

  Asher breathed in through his nose. There was something to what she said. Recyclers were efficient and all, but they didn’t seem to get the air as crisp as plants could. “I guess we’re nearer the source,” he said, reaching out to touch a waxy leaf.

  “Still, nothing could be better than being planetside, right? Even somewhere like Cierren Cythra.”

  Asher thought about that a bit. “I liked the air on Cierren Cythra. A bit thin, maybe, but it sure had a bracing bite to it.”

  “Well, that’s good then. Because we’re going back.”

  So that was why she had awoken him. Asher had had a vague hope that she wanted to discuss something a bit more personal, but it was apparently just business. “Are we?” He was checking his net as he asked the question, and he saw that he had a pending message from Marcolis. Well, he could guess what that was about. Indeed, he, Kaz, and Lori were scheduled to head back to Cierren Cythra in a couple hours’ time. Also attached to the mission, to Asher’s dismay, was Dr. Maxim Asher.

  His face must have reflected his consternation, because Lori said, “You can work with him,can’t you?”

  Asher didn’t really know how to answer that. He had, of course, accompanied his father on many hundreds of groundside missions as a kid, but never as a Hokozana operative in his own right. His father had his Star Cluster now, as well, so he would far outrank anyone else on the mission. In fact, he was one of the four highest-ranked operatives in the entirety of Bright-Dim at this point. “Well,” he said, “I guess I won’t have much choice, will I? It might help to know what we’re meant to accomplish. Marcolis’ message isn’t very detailed.”

  Lori slumped into a plasteel bench that was built out of a wall at the edge of the ag deck. “Honestly, I only half get it, myself. Apparently the Cythrans may not be Ferethers after all, or not in the typical sense, anyway.”

  “And what’s a typical Ferether, at this point?”

  “That’s just it. We don’t really know. All we know is that the Cythrans have several important differences from the Ferether Jaydrupar captured a year ago. Your father is pretty convinced that the differences are intentional, that the Cythrans were engineered from Ferethers by changing what I guess we’re calling their ‘genes.’”

 
Asher sat down beside her. “Didn’t we kind of suspect that, though? I remember that someone—probably Jaydrupar—mentioned the possibility that the Cythrans were bioengineered. Besides, wouldn’t they have to engineer them so the Ferethers could survive on Cierren Cythra? There’s no reason to suppose the place is anything like their homeworld, after all.”

  “That’s where it gets weird.” Asher rolled his eyes theatrically. Lori smiled and held up a pacifying hand. “Even weirder, I mean. Your father thinks that the Cythrans are super-Ferethers, the ultimate version, if you will.”

  “So?”

  “So, we’re wondering if they’re not a trap for us, at all. What if they’re a trap for the Ferethers?”

  It took a moment for Asher to wrap his mind around this idea. “So what we’re saying is, someone got a hold of some Ferether DNA, or whatever building block they have, and used it to make a race of super-Ferethers. Then, the regular Ferethers were meant to find them and...and what, exactly?”

  “Genetic warfare on a millennial timeline. Create a superior race engineered to destroy the original. We think the Cythrans are a weapon, just not one meant for us. We have to go back down there to see what we can learn. No pussyfooting around in the woods this time—we’re going straight into Marateen. Your father will collect samples of blood, or whatever fluid it is he needs, and use them to create a profile of the species. I’m supposed to figure out how much the Cythrans know about their genetic past. Do they know they’re an invented race? Have they been deceiving us, or are they in the dark? That kind of thing.”

  “And me and Kaz are the muscle, in case they get rowdy. We’re good at that.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Asher. Or Kaz for that matter. You’re a lot more than just muscle. His fixers, Marcolis calls you two. Did you know that?”

  “No,” said Asher. “Maybe I should be looking for a raise.”

  Lori laughed a little. “By the end of this mess, you’ll deserve one, and a promotion.”

  “Well,” said Asher as he stood up. “I guess we should go get geared up. Kaz and I will probably have to visit the armory.”

  “I suppose,” said Lori. “I’m going to get a quick list of downloads together before we go.”

  They walked back through the portal to the spiral, which led down into the lower decks of the torus. When they reached a mag-lev corridor, Lori said, “I should go. My quarters are in the main torus, now.”

  “All right,” said Asher. “Meet you at...” He checked his net, “Slipstream in one hour.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said as the mag-lev portal opened. “Oh, and Asher?”

  “Yeah?”

  Lori leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek, “Maybe when this is over you might take me out for a real-food dinner?” She stepped back through the portal into the mag-lev pod. As she raised her hand to wave goodbye, the pod was whisked away down the corridor, leaving Asher staring at a blank wall. He put his hand to his cheek, smiled, and turned to head for the armory.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Slipstream was en-route for five hours back to Cierren Cythra. Asher took the chance to catch up on his sleep, as did the other three members of the expedition. The shuttle was spacious, next to the cramped crash-pod on the lost Komaru, so they each got to stretch out over two—or in Kaz’s case, three—comfortable crash seats.

  Asher and his father had greeted each other cordially and managed to hold civilized conversation so far, even if it was mostly small talk. Asher had apologized for the somewhat cold greeting he had offered when his father boarded the Cormorant. His apology had been accepted in good grace. It was nothing earth-shattering, but it was a small breakthrough in their relationship nonetheless. They avoided—conspicuously avoided, to Asher’s mind—talking about his mother. Asher didn’t ask after Donna whatever-her-name-was, the ridiculously young girlfriend his father had been with the last time they met, about a year ago. Maxim made no mention of ranks or of Asher’s demotion, even though he had surely accessed the file on the Jaga mess, during which a moment of insubordination had cost Asher his third bar.

  Asher didn’t wake again until the shuttle went in-atmo above the planet. Unlike his ride down in the Sissilbeni, this one was quick—no more than a few minutes. Unlike the ride in the Komaru, it was also comfortable. They had a textbook touchdown at the Marateen spaceport.

  The town seemed to be just the same. It appeared that the war that had unfolded in space had had little to no effect on the Cythrans. The place was still dusty and seemingly semi-deserted, with only an occasional fast-moving groundcar or ambling male Cytrhan on some errand breaking the gray tranquility of the remaining minutes of Dim-day. “Almost night again,” said Kaz. “Seems like I’m always on this damn planet at night.”

  “Feels like we just left it last night, actually,” said Asher.

  “That was three nights ago now, local time,” said Maxim in what Asher thought of as his lecturer’s voice. He shouldered his pack and started to walk westward across the tarmac. “Three nights that have changed everything for the Cythrans.”

  Lori followed him. “It’s not like they’ll mind,” she said, with a shrug. “In fact they are probably thriving on all the new information. Who knows what new tech they’ve assimilated from DiJeRiCo over these past days.”

  “Is it really as quick as that?” said Maxim. “I mean, I know it is, but it still seems hard to believe. There’s nothing like it anywhere in Ordered Space.”

  “Company,” said Kaz.

  A group of four Cythrans had emerged from some alley in the general direction of the customs office and were clearly on their way to meet the Hokozana operatives. Judging by their size, they were all females. All four were wearing the weird purple tube-sock clothing that Wadameetra had worn during the trip to Long House. A slightly unsettling implication occurred to Asher. He glanced at his three companions, all wearing variations of Hokozana blue. “Are they wearing uniforms now?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Fascinating,” said Lori.

  “And maybe a little creepy,” said Kaz.

  As the four Cythrans approached, Asher’s neural net identified the rightmost one as Qwadaleemia and one of the two in the center as Wadameetra. Asher was thankful for the help, as he realized that a few days had been enough to almost completely forget how to recognize the subtle differences in body shape and facial tendrils that distinguished one Cythran from another. His net identified the other two members of this greeting committee as Cythrans whom he had seen but not been introduced to in the courtyard of Qwadaleemia’s creche.

  The four Cythrans and the four humans met in the middle of the tarmac just as Dim set behind the low buildings of western Marateen. The night stole rapidly across the spaceport. “Lori,” said Qwadaleemia, “It is good to see you. These are my creche-mates, Faraneeta and Garueeria.” She indicated the two strange Cythrans. “You remember Wadameetra.”

  Asher didn’t really need his neural net to tell him something was off. Qwadaleemia’s body language, alien though it might be to him, was very different than it had been on their previous meeting. Then, she had use large tendril gestures and animated movements that had readily conveyed enthusiasm and openness, even across the cultural and biological barriers that separated the two species. Now, her movements were stiff and her gestures restrained. Asher was unsurprised when his neural net interpreted this as coldness or formality. He saw immediately that Lori and Kaz had picked up on the change as well, assisted as they were by their own nets. Only his father seemed not yet to have grasped that there was something off about the encounter. Of course, Miraneeria was the only live Cythran Maxim had encountered, so his net still had little basis for making such comparisons.

  “Qwadie,” Lori was saying, “it is good to see you, too, although we wish it might have been under less —stressful?—circumstances. May I present Dr. Maxim Asher, a prominent exobiologist.” Apparently realizing that the job title might not translate well,
she explained, “A scientist who studies the biology of non-human species.”

  Qwadaleemia looked Maxim up and down, as did her creche mates. One of the newcomers, Garueeria, said, “And have you brought him here to study us? To poke and probe at us like the ones in the green-and-gold coats did?” The tone was confrontational, with all her tendrils working feverishly to convey something. Distress? Anger? Asher wasn’t quite sure. It was beyond his neural net’s experience of the Marateen Cythrans, who had always come across as placid and serene. He glanced around, and saw that his companions were equally disconcerted. Lori even seemed to be slightly alarmed. They had certainly made a good start to the mission, Asher thought, by plunging directly into an angry confrontation with the very Cythrans who had previously been their closest friends on the planet.