The Clones of Mawcett

by DePrima, Thomas

  "No ma'am, honest; I haven't had a direct problem with her. She just, I don't know, makes me feel— uneasy. I guess it might be the way she always talks down to everyone when the Captain isn't around. I've worked for you in the past and I've always felt honored to be under your command. Also, you've had several ship commands, so I know that you know what you're doing."

  Kerrey hadn't directly said that he felt Commander LaSalle didn't know what she was doing, but it seemed the implication was there. Jenetta would never ask him to clarify the ambiguity because it might put both of them on the spot; him for criticizing a superior officer, if that's what he intended, and her for hearing it and not reporting him for insubordination. He'd been careful while relating the situation with Commander Ashe not to make any direct, personal observations about the Commander's abilities.

  "Okay, Don," Jenetta said smiling, "welcome to my watch. I guess that we'll be spending a lot of nights together. Just you— and me— and ten other crewmembers."

  As was her habit, Jenetta arrived on the bridge ten minutes before her watch was due to start. She immediately noticed how deathly quiet it appeared. The dozen crewmembers there were performing their duties in absolute silence. Near the very end of the watch, whether in port or when traveling FTL, crewmembers frequently talk openly, albeit in lowered tone, as they discuss plans for their off duty time. LaSalle, sitting in the command chair, motioned Jenetta over to her side. She approached and came to attention.

  "At ease, Commander. Take a seat," LaSalle said indicating the first officer's chair.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Jenetta said as she climbed into the chair.

  "I expected you to be early, based on what I read in your file," LaSalle said, as she leaned over towards Jenetta and lowered her voice so that only Jenetta could hear. "You've impressed a great many people in a very short period of time, and you've already earned more medals than most officers will earn during an entire lifetime of military service; and the right medals at that."

  Jenetta grinned and replied equally sotto voce, "I guess that it's just been a matter of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or something like that."

  LaSalle didn't smile or even grin. "I've also been told by the Captain that we have you to thank for setting up such a well organized command and reporting infrastructure on this ship."

  "I just got people doing what they were trained to do anyway."

  "Yes, I know that, even if the captain doesn't. You may have been the commanding officer of a heavy cruiser for the past year, but I want you to know that you're just the second officer here. Those two pips on your collar and a chest full of ribbons don't entitle you to any special privileges."

  Jenetta was completely taken aback by the statement, but didn't let the surprise she was feeling show on her face. "I realize that, ma'am," she responded, now acutely aware that the affable attitude displayed by LaSalle earlier, in front of the Captain, had completely evaporated.

  "Make sure that you remember it. I'm the executive officer here and you no longer report directly to the Captain. Observe the proper chain of command at all times and we'll get along."

  "Yes ma'am."

  LaSalle straightened back up and raised her voice to a normal level, then briefed Jenetta on the status of the ship, before saying, "I'm sure that you'll be anxious to get some rest after your duty shift, but the Captain wants all command officers not on watch to be at the forward cargo bay at 0930 hours, in full military dress, for the launching ceremony."

  "Yes ma'am."

  "Is there anything else that you need to know before assuming command of the bridge for your first duty shift?"

  "No ma'am. I know what's required of me."

  "Then you have the bridge, Commander. Goodnight."

  "I have the bridge, ma'am. Goodnight."

  As LaSalle climbed down from the command chair, Jenetta recalled the words of Lieutenant Kerrey in the mess hall earlier. LaSalle's statement of the obvious, presented in a manner that seemed antagonistic and even threatening, had made her feel extremely uncomfortable. She hoped that things would be less strained once they got to know each other, but in her heart she knew different. LaSalle seemed like the sort of senior officer that you occasionally encounter in the service; one who is insecure in their position and greatly fears that a subordinate might outshine them.

  Lieutenant Kerrey and half a dozen other crewmembers arrived a few minutes before the watch began. As chronometers throughout the ship faintly rang eight times to signal the end of the watch, third watch crewmembers relieved their counterparts, and assumed their duties. Jenetta knew all but two of the third watch bridge crew, and suspected that the other eight must also have requested third watch duty because, like Kerrey, most had sufficient seniority to get an earlier watch. Since there was little to do while docked in spaceport, Jenetta permitted light conversation on the bridge. As long as crewmembers stayed fully alert to their duties and responsibilities, she would allow the blithe discussions and light banter that helped pass the night while the ship was in a safe port.

  * * *

  Jenetta hurried to the officer's mess after her watch so that she'd have adequate time to enjoy her full breakfast and still have time to wash and change into her dress uniform before she had to leave for the forward cargo bay.

  Her stomach sated temporarily, she frowned at the reflection in her bedroom mirror as she finished dressing. She disliked wearing the peaked cap that was a required part of the officer's official dress uniform. She would normally carry it under her arm or in her hand until she absolutely had to put it on. She also disliked wearing her medals. They seemed a bit too ostentatious to suit her, especially the Medal of Honor. She would have much preferred just to wear the medal ribbons, but the regs required her to wear the medals on this occasion.

  The Captain, looking resplendent in his dress uniform, was already at the bay when she arrived. The handsome, almost six-foot tall, officer had a fit body that showed he was dedicated to a strong regimen of exercise. His hair was still a dark brown, with just a touch of grey at the temples, and his dark-grey eyes were clear and strong. Now in his early sixties, Gavin was approaching the mandatory retirement age for space duty. In a few years he would either have to accept a posting on shore or retire from the service, as Jenetta's father had done two years earlier.

  They talked as they waited, with most of the discussion centering on Jenetta's experiences as captain of the Song. But they also talked about the launching ceremony and keeping the Galactic Alliance delegation occupied and entertained while they were on board, a chore that Jenetta wished with all her heart she could avoid. Politics and diplomacy were subjects that she preferred to keep firmly at arm's length.

  LaSalle arrived after Gavin had engaged Jenetta in conversation so she couldn't accuse Jenetta of seeking the captain's ear, and she couldn't think of a valid excuse for interrupting the discussion.

  At 0950, Jenetta disembarked with the captain and most of the senior officers, to attend a ceremony that would take place in the docking ring between the two adjacent docking piers where the Prometheus and Chiron were currently moored. A red ribbon was stretched across the entrance to the pier that led out to each ship's forward airlock once the ship's command officers had passed through.

  For an hour, Galactic Alliance politicians and Space Command Admirals made speeches about the two new ships and how important they were to the safety and security of the citizenry. Jenetta was praised repeatedly in the speeches for having brought them back after they had been stolen from the Mars shipyard by Raiders just hours before the first Space Command personnel were to report aboard. Jenetta saw LaSalle grimace each time Jenetta's name was mentioned. It was with great relief that Jenetta watched Admiral Moore's wife finally cut the wide red ribbon at the Prometheus' docking pier entrance, while the wife of Dennis Santora, the new Galactic Alliance Council chairman, simultaneously cut the ribbon at the entrance to Chiron's docking pier.

  At the conclusion of the cer
emony, the Space Command officers moved back inside their respective ships. While most of the officers immediately left to pursue whatever interests or duties awaited them, Jenetta stood by at the airlock entrance with Gavin and LaSalle, ready to greet the Galactic Alliance delegation that would travel aboard the Prometheus to Nordakia. Senators Oliver Krott, Justine Gordal, Alan Phalle, Regina Nieto, and Cari Rawald would represent their planets and the Galactic Alliance Council at the unprecedented awards ceremony. The GA was still more than three-quarters composed of member planets with Terran ancestry, and the delegation had been selected from the most senior members, so all the delegates were human.

  With their large retinue of reporters trailing, the committee officials finally boarded. In the forward cargo bay, Jenetta was posed for pictures with the Captain and the delegates. Reporters were then permitted to ask Jenetta questions for fifteen minutes before being herded gently from the ship by an SC PR person, ably assisted by a squad of Space Marines. As Gavin and LaSalle escorted the delegates to their assigned quarters on the VIP deck, Jenetta breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  Jenetta had just taken her first steps to leave the cargo bay when an SC officer standing outside the ship requested to come aboard. Although she couldn't see the officer from where she was standing, Jenetta immediately nodded to the officer of the deck. She'd recognized the voice as belonging to Commander Kanes of Space Command Intelligence. As she moved to greet the five-foot eleven-inch SCI officer, she saw that each shoulder now sported four wide gold bars, instead of the three he had worn previously.

  "Welcome aboard, Captain Kanes. Congratulations on your promotion, sir. I hadn't heard."

  "Thank you, Jen," he said, fixing his piercing steel-grey eyes on her. "It only became official at the beginning of the month."

  "Will you be accompanying us to Nordakia, sir?"

  "Yes, and then on to Higgins Space Port at Vinnia."

  "To clean out your desk, sir?"

  "No, I'll be staying on at Higgins."

  "Oh, I would have thought that the promotion would bring you back to SCI on Earth."

  "I've been appointed Head of Intelligence for that entire deca-sector now. My position gives me certain latitudes and I've decided to make Higgins my base of operations. It will be easier to control things if I'm out where the action is."

  "I see."

  "There's still a job open for you if you want it. I need all the good people that I can get."

  Jenetta smiled. "Thank you, sir, but I'm happy just being the second officer aboard the Prometheus."

  "Okay, Jen, but the offer remains open."

  "Thank you, sir. Shall I escort you to your quarters, or would you prefer to see the Captain first."

  "Captain Gavin has been notified that I'm coming aboard. I'll go to my quarters now and see him later."

  "Very good, Captain."

  Jenetta escorted Kanes to the deck reserved for special visitors, and, after arranging for a VIP suite, took a few minutes to inform him of the gift she'd received from the Raider commandant, Mikel Arneu. After promising to bring the cases to his suite when a time could be arranged, so that he might examine them, she walked to her own quarters and prepared for bed. Kanes' offer of a job was probably the sixth time that he had asked her to join his unit. He'd been after her ever since she'd been court-martialed for detonating the bomb that destroyed a Raider base and killed more than eighteen thousand Raiders. When she later killed an armed assassin with a single kick to the head, he stepped up his efforts to recruit her, but her heart still belonged to Prometheus. In her mind, he was the best ship in the fleet, and she couldn't imagine leaving to accept a post anywhere else.

  The nearly two-kilometer long battleship backed silently away from the spaceport dock and departed for Nordakia while Jenetta was still deeply cocooned in slumber. They were already trillions of kilometers away from Earth by the time she awoke, showered, and prepared herself to attend dinner on the VIP deck with the delegation. Captains Gavin and Kanes were regaling the delegates with stories from their years in the service, when she arrived. Gavin interrupted his current tale to greet Jenetta and again introduce her to the Council members. She smiled and shook each representative's hand once more.

  The delegation of three male and two female Galactic Alliance Senators seemed intent on hearing every detail of the adventure for which Jenetta was being awarded the medal by the Nordakian government, so she was the center of conversation on this first night out. She was kept busy answering questions until it was time for her to leave for her 2400 duty shift. One of the delegates, Justine Gordal, even asked the Captain if she might be allowed to stay longer, but Gavin responded that they had months to hear about her adventures and that Jenetta was needed on the bridge to command the watch for the next eight hours. Jenetta was grateful that she could finally get away from the questions for a while.

  The ship would be underway for four months during this trip to Nordakia, although it could arrive sooner if necessary. Jenetta would learn, in a senior level staff meeting the next day, that the ship's temporal field generator had been modified while the ship was in spacedock at Mars. It was now capable of achieving Light-412, although Light-375 remained the officially listed top speed. At Light-375, it was already one of the two fastest ships in the fleet, and the known galaxy. Only Prometheus' brother ship, the Chiron, would be able to match his speed once the current retrofit work was complete. Most of the engineers at the shipyard didn't yet know that the generator could be enhanced to get ten percent more speed than its rating. All of this was top secret and the officers would be instructed to keep it that way.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  ~ June 13th, 2269 ~

  On Mawcett, the eleven archeologists paralyzed by the beam in the newly discovered underground facility, had fully recovered. Keewatin, the site's chief laborer supervisor, had cautiously entered the facility after a general alarm was raised in the camp by the laborers who'd witnessed the event. He'd found the eleven scientists on the floor, unconscious, in the center of the circular chamber. There was no sign of the reported transparent wall, nor any indication of lingering gas, but the crushed body of the laborer who'd rushed to aid the scientists was there. He'd tried to leap off, back the way he'd come, but the wall rose too swiftly. He was dead.

  'Oh-gee' stretchers were sent for, so that the bodies of the comatose victims and the dead laborer could be brought to the surface. The scientists were conveyed to the first aid shelter, where eleven cots had been hastily erected in the too-small space, while the body of the laborer was temporarily interred in a quickly emptied food freezer.

  No medical doctors were in residence at the camp, but a woman trained in emergency medical treatment monitored the condition of the scientists carefully. Their vital signs slowly returned to normal. After several hours they simply appeared to be sleeping. One by one, they awoke, claiming to have no memory of the event. By lunchtime all averred to feel fine, with no apparent residual effects from the experience. They were escorted to their usual tables in the mess shelter so their bodies could be provided with the sustenance they had missed while unconscious.

  "I have absolutely no memory of being paralyzed, or anything else," Doctor Peterson announced to the others.

  "Nor I," Doctor Ramilo responded, "but we must accept that it happened, since everyone in the camp was witness to our being removed from the underground complex. I'd remember coming up here if I'd been conscious."

  "It must have happened as Keewatin says," Doctor Huften said. "We certainly can't deny that one of our laborers was killed trying to help us; poor man. But what was the purpose of the paralyzing beam? And perhaps even more importantly, what was in the gas that reportedly filled the enclosure? Did we inhale it, or was the purpose of the paralyzing beam to insure that we didn't inhale? If so, was it merely intended to coat our bodies?"

  "The beam may have been intended to prevent exactly what happened to our laborer," Doctor Vlashsku said. "By paralyzi
ng victims at the onset, they're prevented from panicking and trying to get out while the wall is rising. It's unfortunate that our man was outside the wall's perimeter when the process began. We must go back down there as soon as possible, but this time we'll avoid the center of the room. We must determine the purpose of the complex, and what has been done to us."

  Mixed feeling regarding a next visit underground kept the scientists on the surface until the following day. They spent most of the afternoon speculating on possibilities, but in the absence of empirical information, no conclusions could be reached.

  As before, Doctor Peterson led the way into the below-ground complex. The air quality measurement instruments provided better readings below surface than on the pollution-free planet above, owing mostly to the almost complete absence of plant pollens in the facility. An unseen air filtration system had to be hard at work.

  Before entering the circular chamber, Doctor Peterson forewarned the others by saying, "We now know, for a fact, that this complex has a functioning energy source and is able to respond to some kind of stimuli. I caution you against touching anything. We are down here to observe only, until we know what we're up against. Touch nothing! Nor should you wave your light torches around, as Anthony did yesterday, because the light may trigger sensors in the room. Also, do not congregate in groups like before. Don't even lean against the walls. And above all, don't stand where the wall is reputed to have risen up from the floor."

  "I resent your implication that my light torch caused the problem," Doctor Ramilo said furiously. "There's absolutely no proof that I am responsible for what happened to us."

  "Oh, Anthony," Doctor Huften said, "calm down. It was only speculation that your torch may have activated a light sensor. You're not being indicted. Edward is only warning us to be careful, and not take the chance that a torch could have caused the problem."