The Sublime Seven

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

“Whatever they are, I want my next life to take place in a time when humanity has evolved a bit further in terms of gender equality. I’ve done four of my Sublime Seven so far, and looking back on them, I recognize a pervasive disparity in that regard.”

  “As with all areas of enlightenment, these things take time,” Sarah replied.

  “I understand. I have some ideas of my own, too.”

  Chapter 5 – Responsibility and Accountability with a Moral Restraint Rider

  Mars Southern Pole Colony (United Nations jurisdiction) – 2157 CE

  Jaeda sipped the last dregs of her coffee. It had been cold an hour ago, and now it was practically java slush. Even with the base’s advanced climate control system, nothing stayed warm for long here, including human bodies. She shivered as she sat in the small combination work office and sleeping quarters, peering at the IT screen on her desk. It was archaic, one of the reasons she loved it. Everyone else had long ago switched to AVR implants, or at least headsets, which connected them effortlessly to the HIVE and to each other. The problem with the AVRs, however, was twofold: first, the privacy setting was easily hacked, and second, there was too damn much thought-noise. All those colonists, both enlisted and civilian, and all their brain activity while on the HIVE created a kind of ambient background hum that was annoying as hell.

  They said she was imagining that hum, but she knew better.

  Mars should be quiet, but it wasn’t. Jaeda knew exactly how loud an overpopulated planet could be. She had been born on Earth with its eleven billion souls, all of whom lived on the thirteen percent of the planet’s remaining habitable land surface. From a young age, she knew what her future would look like. She had been genetically engineered for it. Jaeda could tolerate increased radiation and low gravity better than the Norms on Earth. She had spent much of her childhood in a pressurized dome in Colorado to prepare for an off-world career – and also because of the frequent air-quality alerts.

  Before arriving at the MSPC, she expected to be more at ease in its artificial atmosphere than she had ever felt in any forest or on any mountain or seashore. Some might consider that a sad thing, but not Jaeda. What was disappointing was the noise. Through all the years of training, she had looked forward to the peacefulness of Mars. But after landing on the red planet, she realized she would have to venture outside the biosphere without a suit to find the anticipated silence.

  But if she did that, she would be dead within three minutes.

  Her fingers tapped mid-air at the v-board, which was connected to the IT screen, which was connected to the HIVE, otherwise known as the High-Functioning Integrated Virtual Ethernet. Besides her, the only people who used the virtual keyboards were the old guys in Command. And the Colonel, of course. It didn’t get more old-school than him.

  The thought made her smile. Then she turned her attention back to the newest requisition order from the colonists in Omega pod. Those Meggies were a tush-twinge.

  A sharp rapping at her office door made the v-board disappear under her fingertips. That happened when her concentration wavered.

  “JD, the big guy wants you. In his quarters, not COM,” a young male voice said through the speaker.

  “What? Why?” she said, pressing a fingerprint against a button on the side of her desk. Her office door slid open with a whoosh. Bonzo stood in the opening, looking annoyed and exasperated as only the young and deeply impatient could. At forty-three, Jaeda was old-school herself.

  “I didn’t ask him. I like my head attached to the rest of my body.”

  If she hadn’t been anxious about the summons, she would have laughed. Bonzo was a favorite among the grunts. He was one of the CRISPR-4 kids who had arrived two years ago. The latest batch was impressive, too. They could endure more than three Sieverts of radiation without batting an eyelash...or losing any eyelashes sixty days later.

  “Damn,” she mumbled, rolling her chair back. She took a quick pee in the tiny attached latrine, checked her reflection in the mirror above the sink – tired, but her dark curls were still neatly tucked under her cap – and stepped into the corridor.

  “S’up, JD,” said another of the CRISPR-4 kids, brushing past her in the busy hallway. The short, stocky young woman had won first place in the base’s annual weight-lifting competition, ousting the previous three-time champion and propelling her to instant celebrity. Jaeda liked her. Her arrogance rivaled her intellect, plus she was a muscled-up bad-ass. It was always good to possess the second and the third qualities – if you also possessed the first.

  “Hey, Shroom. You hear anything come down the PVC?”

  The woman stopped and turned, tilting her head. “Why would I hear anything that you hadn’t?”

  “Because you’re plugged in. You know what I mean.”

  An impish grin appeared on the young face. “Girl, you gotta get an upgrade. You’re in dinosaur territory.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But to answer your question, I haven’t heard a whisper. The usual shite from the Meggies, but nothing to be worried about.”

  “What shite?” Jaeda asked, concerned now.

  “That you’re a vindictive bitch who denies some of their requisitions based on their pod address.”

  Jaeda nodded, somewhat relieved. This was data-mold.

  “Thanks, Shroom.”

  “Catch you later, Dark Lady,” said the young woman with another grin before disappearing around the corner. Jaeda had a second nickname other than JD. She had never been able to determine who coined Dark Lady, but assumed it had something to do with her skin color. What else could it be?

  The notion made her smile. If anyone thought they could get a rise with a stupid nickname, they had another think coming.

  When she arrived at the Colonel’s door, she took a deep breath, rapped twice, then stepped through the opening after it swished aside. She hadn’t even identified herself through the speaker – a bad sign. Curious and alarming that he had sent the summons via human messenger, too.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Yes, Captain. Come in, sit down.” If rocks crashing down a cliff could talk, they would sound like Colonel Khandar, known to the young enlisted as ‘the Kraken.’ When she heard the term three years ago, a HIVE search had revealed its meaning and origins. She’d laughed her ass off for the next hour. A menacing, multi-limbed monster summoned for the purpose of teaching painful lessons about respect to unsuspecting victims was just about perfect for the Colonel.

  He swatted away the HIVE’s v-screen and pivoted in his chair to face her. Her heart sank. She had seen him wear that expression only one other time in her life: when he had received the Deep Space Network transmission about her parents’ accident. Despite having just emptied her bladder, she felt the need to urinate again.

  “Go on. Sit down,” he said again, gesturing toward the only empty chair in the small room, then pressing his fingertip against a hidden panel. The door closed.

  She sat on the metal chair, ramrod straight, resisting the urge to cross her legs.

  A restless hand raked through hair that was more salt than pepper these days. Golden eyes bored into her, seemingly taking her measure before the brain that controlled them decided what to say. Or what not to say.

  Something in those eyes shifted, telling her he had made up his mind. With another tap on the panel, the room began to buzz. If she had still been on Earth, she might have expected a swarm of honeybees to emerge through the vents – not that she had ever seen an actual honeybee swarm, just the old vids.

  Shite. He turned on the hack block.

  Nobody anywhere outside that room, whether through the HIVE, augmented ears, or any kind of remote listening device, would be able to hear whatever terrible thing he was about to tell her. The hack block was completely impenetrable.

  “We got a message through the DSN yesterday,” he said. Instead of continuing, he closed his eyes.

  It was a relief to no longer be the focus of that intense gaze. S
he waited, stomach churning. The announcement would be world-altering. She sensed it just as she sensed the thought-noise on the HIVE, the noise people said she imagined.

  “We made contact,” he said.

  “Contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, you mean...contact?”

  He frowned, gave her a scathing look, and then said, “Yes, Captain. Alien contact.”

  “Feck,” she whispered, then, “Sorry, sir.”

  He waved a dismissive hand in her direction.

  “There’s more, though. Right?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. A lot more and all bad. They exploited the DSN. Hijacked our own damn interplanetary communication network to tell us they’re coming.”

  The two words sent a frisson of dread throughout her body.

  They’re coming.

  She swallowed. “I’m guessing the tone wasn’t friendly?”

  “You could say that. They used mathematics to communicate. We always knew math was our best chance for inter-species dialogue. The brains at NASA decoded it pretty quickly.” He rubbed at the ashen crescent-moon patches under his eyes. “I’ll paraphrase for your benefit. They intend to take over our home planet, but before doing so, they’re making a stop here.”

  “What do they want from us?” Her mouth was so dry she could barely get the words out.

  “That part isn’t completely clear. The thrust of their communique implied displeasure at how humans have been running things in our miniscule corner of the universe for the last millennia. The astrobiologists at NASA are divided in their interpretation of the alien intent. The optimists believe they’re coming to teach us how to be better planetary caretakers. The pessimists think they’re disgusted with our ‘raping of the cosmos.’ That one came from Dr. Muehler, not surprisingly. And that they plan to eliminate the humans, thereby allowing the two planets and one moon which we currently occupy to eventually return to their natural, human-free state.”

  “If they meant us harm, why would they notify us ahead of time? Wouldn’t they just show up and kill us?”

  “That was Dr. Nguyen’s argument. Muehler shot it down fast. She said the aliens probably don’t need the element of surprise to overpower us. The fact that they have the ability to travel to our solar system from a world possibly light years away indicates a level of technology we couldn’t begin to withstand. In other words, they don’t need to use stealth because they’re not afraid of us.”

  “But why bother telling us at all?”

  “Dr. Muehler had an answer for that as well. She believes these aliens possess some kind of ethical directive which dictates they give us advance warning. A handful of scientists interpreted an ambiguous fragment of the communication that way.”

  “They’re giving us time to prepare for our demise?”

  “That’s become the popular consensus on Earth.”

  She nodded, finally crossing her legs, hoping her bladder would hold out for a few more minutes. “What’s the timeframe?”

  Khandar arched a shaggy eyebrow, leaned back against his chair, and said, “Two months.”

  “What’s our plan?”

  “That’s where you come in, Captain.”

  ***

  The plan involved fast-tracking the Subterranean Biosphere that had been under construction for the past decade. The facility was largely ready for habitation but not yet outfitted, nor would it ever be adequate to house, feed, hydrate, and oxygenate a thousand colonists and military personnel.

  In other words, not everyone would get to hide in the bunker when the aliens arrived.

  A week of sixteen-hour work days had passed since Jaeda’s conversation with Khandar. Not only was she charged with managing the logistics of servicing the three hundred souls who would fit into the SB, she had to do it all covertly.

  The Colonel had sworn her to secrecy, of course. The last thing anyone wanted was panic, or worse, anarchy. Life in a hermetically sealed habitat on a planet hostile to human life was fragile at best, and deadly at worst.

  Much of the complicated business of keeping everyone safe – from radiation, structural breaches, starvation, and dehydration – fell to her as quartermaster, an archaic title still in use in the modern military of the twenty-second century. Provisioning an army in the wilderness of the Louisiana swamps or the Siberian tundra would have been demanding. Provisioning an army plus civilians on a planet with a gravitational field strength less than half that of Earth’s, with a median temperature of −55°C, and a thin, unbreathable atmosphere inadequate to protect against a constant barrage of cosmic radiation and solar wind, was a colossal task.

  But she did it, and she did it well. It satisfied her deep-seated need to minister. As a child, she had fussed over a multitude of dolls, moving on to animals during her teen years. When she had taken the aptitude test to determine her future career, nobody was surprised by the result, including herself. Despite the physical, emotional, and intellectual challenges of living on Mars – and the noise – she loved every minute of the life she spent taking care of the needs of others.

  Until now.

  Entwined with the extra work was the burden to her conscience. She wasn’t told whose names were on The List other than her own. She assumed the officers had made the cut, as well as the medical and science people, both military and civilian. Khandar would have selected those with the most experience, knowledge, and skill sets. During the past week, she had exchanged more than a few speculative looks with people: Are you one of the lucky ones, too?

  When she thought about the hundreds who would be staying topside, it made breathing difficult. The evacuation plan for those on the list was diabolical in its simplicity. There would be a non-emergency drill to analyze the orderly process of getting from the base to the SB. Not everyone would participate, and since people hated drills of any kind, they would feel relieved when the alert went out and they hadn’t been chosen. They would eat their dinners, play ping-pong or poker, read or nap, delighted to be exempt from another tedious drill.

  When the aliens showed up, the blissfully unaware folks would be easy targets, while the lucky ones hunkered below, watching annihilation on the monitors.

  Every time she imagined the scenario, her stomach hurt.

  “JD, got a sec?” Shroom stood in the doorway of her quarters.

  Jaeda had been leaving it open as a way of appearing more approachable and less sneaky. Her guilt felt palpable to her; she imagined the word betrayer tattooed on her forehead. The open door and the excessive smiling was overcompensation, but she didn’t know how else to behave. She had never intentionally deceived anyone in her life until now.

  “Sure. What’s on your mind?” she said, rearranging her face to appear friendly and candid.

  “See? That right there. That’s what’s on my mind,” the short woman replied with a frown. “Permission to speak frankly, ma’am?”

  “Permission granted, Corporal Eckland,” she said, crossing her arms against her chest.

  “You are acting like a crazy person, and you’re creeping me out.”

  “Perhaps that’s a bit too frank.”

  “Sorry, but I had to tell you. I don’t think everyone has noticed, but I have. I’m a CRISPR-4, as you know, but I’m also a Psi. I assume you’re aware of us?”

  “I’ve heard about the program, but my security clearance doesn’t give me access to certain sections of personnel files. I wouldn’t know who was and who wasn’t.”

  “Honestly, this may have nothing to do with my Psi, since I’m also really good at reading body language.”

  Jaeda didn’t respond. There hadn’t been a question yet. She hoped her expression now was one of mild interest and nothing more.

  “For the two years I’ve been here, you have been up-front and open, tough but fair – never mind what the Meggies say – and tuned in to not only what people need but what they want. And what will make them happy. Not all QMs are like that, you know. It’s what makes you exceptional.
”

  “Thank you, Corporal. I try.”

  “That’s just it. You’re no longer trying. It’s like you’ve cut yourself off from everyone.”

  “Cut myself off? I’m sitting right here with my door open.”

  “Right. Why did you start doing that? We know you hate the clamor. By the way, since we’re being frank, I hear the thought-noise on the HIVE too. The implant was mandatory for my generation, so sometimes I just pop out the Li-air battery so I don’t have to hear it, and pretend I’m still connected.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s against protocol.”

  “It is. I don’t care. It’s more important to keep my sanity.”

  “That I understand. Not sure about the rest, though.” She was finding it increasingly difficult to return the young woman’s steady gaze.

  “You know why people call you Dark Lady?”

  Jaeda snorted. “I figured it had something to do with my pigmentation. Racism is mostly dead in the twenty-second century, but not entirely.”

  “Please. You older peeps are the only ones who carry that stigma.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “They call you Dark Lady because even though you’re too old to have the Psi upgrade, people think you’re telepathic or empathic. Maybe both. Remember the gypsies? The wandering Romani tribes of Eastern Europe? There was some lame song a million years ago about one of them who could read minds, or tell fortunes, or some such crap.”

  Jaeda’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s not a psychic bone in my body.”

  “Then why do you hear the thought-noise?”

  She had no answer. She had always figured it was some kind of side effect of the system, despite the techies’ denials.

  “You hear it on a psychic level, just like I do.”

  “But I’m not a Psi.”

  “I know, trust me. You’re much too old.”

  “You mentioned that already.”

  “The thought-noise doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that you possess some kind of innate telepathic ability, and because I do as well, even though mine was genetically engineered, I pick up on your vibes.”