by Ivan Ertlov
The two gas giants are there as expected; in front of them lies the actual destination of their journey, Trubul-2, but another, a fourth satellite, orbits the inconspicuous sun granting the system energy and life.
A metal dwarf, one of the strangest phenomena of the cosmos, circles the star, disrupting the gravitational processes.
Barely three hundred kilometres in diameter, too far away to scan its composition - it is at the opposite orbital position, the sun between it and Yrsha.
And that is their luck, the only reason why they were able to jump so close to Trubul-2 in the first place. Because it is the dwarf that emits the distortion, it perverts the space-time here.
Luck?
That remains to be seen.
They accelerate towards the planet in silent agreement, flying over the data collected and processed by Yrsha's sophisticated sensors.
A gigantic ocean, sparse but still filled with life, three continents - two of them polar, however - largely ice-covered blocks with no recognisable vegetation.
On the other hand, the third stretches across the equator and is home to deserts and forests, steppes, and mountain landscapes.
And civilisation!
The data shows a large city built directly on the sea, tens of thousands of square kilometres of agricultural land, and infrastructure in between.
Tidal power plants that supply energy.
But no discernible heavy industry, no mining, no telltale markers of degradation products in the atmosphere.
They are not supposed to have space travel, yet a squadron of fighters ascends and leaves orbit, throws itself at the invaders.
Frank activates the friend-foe identification, makes it clear that Yrsha is a registered Protectorate ship.
No reaction.
Dilara curses and sends the first radio message, full bandwidth, all frequencies.
"This is Dilara Kreethan, astrotelepath of the prospector ship Yrsha. We do not come with hostile intent. I repeat, we do not come with hostile intent."
That is perhaps not strictly speaking a lie, but at least an uncertainty.
It doesn't matter.
The answer comes in the form of a change of formation - the hunters, twelve in number, fan-out, begin to cut them off.
The first details are visible: the overlapping armour of dark and light brown segments, the aggressive triangular shape from the front, with the flattened, pointed wings.
Hanging from these are weapon shafts that leave no doubt about the nature of the construction and its purpose.
Frank grits his teeth and accelerates.
Yrsha is the fastest and most agile ship of its size, probably the most dangerous fighter in the Protectorate, despite its civilian use.
But her skills pale in the face of these opponents.
They effortlessly accelerate to thirty per cent the speed of light within a few minutes, maintain this almost relativistic speed, and even fly space combat manoeuvres.
Frank sweats, swallows and curses.
"Shit - did you see that?! Dila, are those the ships you encountered back then?"
"Yes! No! I don't know - they look similar, but they're faster, more agile, just more developed!"
Troshk makes one last attempt, throws all his authority into the balance.
"This is Stormcommander Troshk, former commander of the Protectorate's Fourth Infantry Regiment, two-time recipient of the Council's Sash of Honour. Stand down! I repeat, stand down and establish radio contact!"
The answer comes as a volley of high-energy laser fire.
No warning shot, no light beam set before the bow - but full enemy fire, aimed at Yrsha's bridge.
Frank yanks the ship downwards, instinctively dodges.
Two beams hit Yrsha in the back, sending a wave of divided pain through the triad.
Not dangerous, but not harmless either.
The armour holds, emits most of the energy, takes minimal damage.
But Frank has been warned, and with a squeezed breath, he turns Yrsha into a side loop, making her rotate on her own axis - and pulls the ship up again.
The opponents must adjust their speed, slow down to the intruders' pace, to transition into the dogfight.
One, maybe two seconds, Yrsha is more agile, throwing herself between them like a Toronk on the artificial fertiliser.
Their ships may be superior, but their pilots are not.
Nor their weapons.
Dilara knows no mercy.
Plasma fire is thrown at the enemies, slower than lasers, suboptimal for agile, nimble opponents - but infinitely more effective.
One of the opponents gets a full broadside, the outer tip of the left wing melts, the fighter goes into a spin.
A second is hit in the tail, a secondary explosion rips chunks out of the structure - and he veers off, takes to his heels.
He's escaping!
Frank realises what this means - at the very moment when Yrsha takes a direct hit in the stomach.
It goes to the substance; the armour loses its first integrity.
He reaches deep into the haptic controls, draws an erratic loop, slides back and forth between the lasers greedily groping for them - and activates the radio one last time.
Because a fleeing opponent reacts rationally.
Reason.
And reason means hope!
"This is Frank Gazer, commander of the Stargazer Prospectorate! Cease your fire! I ..."
Hectically he searches in his mind for the right words, for an approach, a lever for a conversation, looks around desperately, and ...
"... I have a lawyer on board, and I will not hesitate to use him!"
Dazed looks, a horrified snort, a nervous click - and the miracle happens.
The remaining fighters sit down at their side with elegant sweeps, more escort than a threat, and the sound foils on the bridge come to life.
No picture, audio-only, but that doesn't matter.
Because the weapons are silent when pilots talk to each other. Albeit for different reasons than suspected.
"Gazer? Frank Gazer? You're human?"
The way the question is posed leaves no doubt about which answer is the right one. The fact that it is also true counts as a bonus.
"Yes! Hell yes! I'm human, purebred, twenty-three chromosome pairs, no NHS! The full works!"
Frank takes a breath and looks around.
It does not escape him at all how uncomfortable his friends feel about the situation, how much the resonating undertone has put them in a kind of vague state of alarm.
But relief still prevails that the struggle is at least temporarily at rest.
An anxious silence settles over the bridge as one moment after another passes, the tension rises - and finally, the relieving news comes.
"All right, please deactivate your weapon systems and follow us."
*
Their escort brought them in low, hovering only a few hundred metres above the planet's surface, at a leisurely pace towards the capital.
Capital?
It was the only real city on the planet, apart from a few small settlements nestled between monotonous fields of wheat, maize and hemp on those roads that all led to the centre. A thoroughly impressive port city built next to the beach of the seemingly endless ocean. It may not have been a metropolis of millions - but it was certainly on the verge of becoming one.
Their pace slowed further as they reached the spaceport, which - obeying all reasonable urban planning rules[4] - had been set up in a suburb, an outlying district. A control tower, a loading station, several hangars with maintenance crews who began to take care of the shot fighters.
The rest landed in rows on the southern edge of the generously dimensioned airfield, apart from those two companions who now asked them to touch down between them.
Did they have a choice?
Hardly. Besides the laser guns of the menacingly insectoid fighter planes, the entire ground-space defence of the local forces was undoubtedly alig
ned, and they could already make out frantic movements on the ground. Moreover, hundreds of security forces were moving into position to welcome the unexpected guests.
With appropriate caution.
"Frank Gazer, you and your crew will now leave your ship. We await you unarmed."
"Unarmed? Seriously? You want me to shave and marinate in herb oil while I'm at it?"
Frank could not blame Troshk at all for his displeasure, but on the other hand - they were here to look for missing miners, not to start a war. In which they would have no chance anyway.
Bettsy clicked reassuringly to her sandpit companion.
"I don't think we're dealing with creature tasters. Besides, if I don't make a huge miscalculation, hundreds of soldiers are on the airfield. What good would a weapon do you there?"
"Enough if it's a launcher with nuclear grenades. But okay, I understand, we have to exercise restraint."
Dilara jumped up and shook her head violently.
"I'd rather go out naked than without my sickle blades!"
I would love to see that. Yes, please, go out naked.
Frank did not say this aloud; of course, no, he even dared to think it only when he was sure that the triad had dissolved.
"Don't worry, Dila, they are not weapons but religious symbols. Identity-building trinkets, nothing else."
Which cut through coltan armour like a laser scalpel through a durash.
He kept this to himself as well, not letting on how glad he was that at least the former Raging Beauty would not step out into the open completely defenceless.
*
They were wrong about one thing: it was not a hundred soldiers who were waiting for them. At least not exclusively soldiers. In fact, the grim-faced men and women in their uniforms, whose mixture of black and red accents triggered a vague unease in Frank, made up only a minority.
A minority armed with dangerously modern-looking assault laser carbines lined up in disciplined formation to their left.
Opposite them was a threefold outnumbering of considerably less tightly organised civilian security forces. Uniforms in friendly light blue, some also stuffed with neat hip gold, ended in comfortable shoes; instead of assault rifles, they obviously carried batons and electric rods, simple stunners. Only the superiors in the front row seemed to have lethal firearms.
A small consolation, if it was one at all - against this superior force, they would not have stood a chance even if they had been well equipped.
They didn't have to.
The atmosphere was tense but not directly hostile - at least not towards Frank. He had somehow sensed this, taken the lead instinctively and according to his nominal rank. The glances directed at him promised curiosity, for the most part, tension in some, astonishment in others - probably because he was leading this motley bunch.
With Dila, who marched one step to the right behind him, contrary to normal practice, things were different. Bizarre astonishment was the best description, perhaps a little scientific curiosity - and with some of the soldiers to his left, a strange vibe Frank did not like at all.
Disgust.
However, the lion's share of negative emotions came towards Bettsy and Troshk, a feeling where one could speak of open hostility from some but at least suppressed anger and fear from others of the unwilling hosts.
Florbsh, on the other hand, was largely ignored, which was perhaps also because he slimed behind them in a deliberately slow and inconspicuous manner.
What was expected of them was obvious: to move as peacefully as possible to the end of the aisle formed by the soldiers and policemen, not to do anything stupid and certainly not to draw a concealed weapon.
The usual.
The airfield seemed miles long, perhaps just an illusion in the face of this gauntlet, but the buildings around it seemed tiny, much further away than they actually were. Still, you could make out the basic features of their architecture - and it was alien.
Bizarre.
Human.
Constructions and building methods that Frank only knew from the Terran Museum, where generous donations from the Protectorate preserved the memory of the culture of his ancestors. In addition to genetic blueprints of all life forms collected from the colonies and settlements and from the archives of earlier Terra expeditions of the Council peoples.
And what felt like two hundred hours of holo-documentaries about the cruelty, danger and ruthlessness of humanity before its extinction.
That part at least was allowed to fall on deaf ears here - Frank saw not one representative of another species, not even a single soldier or policeman who genetically had even a chance of obtaining NHS.
They were purebred humans, all of them - and apparently self-organised.
Unguarded.
Armed!
Even he, who, as a sufferer of the Lex, always cursed not being able to gear up for battle without Troshk's benevolence, had goosebumps running down his spine. Armed humans without NHS supervision? It just felt wrong.
Unconsciously, he slowed his pace, letting Dila step to his side, as a large hovering glider came to a halt at the end of the trellis. Almost eight metres long, at least three wide, a luxurious and dignified vehicle, finished in noble black.
Wide gullwing doors swung open, a staircase silently extended from the body, forming a safe walkway from the glider hovering barely a metre above the ground. Frank and Dila were only ten, maybe fifteen steps away from it, when two policewomen pulled out of formation, telling them to stop with the flat of their hands.
A tingling tension gripped him as two bodyguards peeled out of the vehicle, carefully examined him and his crew and finally cleared the way for the delegation with a curt nod of the head.
At their head marched a woman, astonishingly young for the dignity and grandeur that surrounded her.
A woman?
No, a goddess!
As human as all the inhabitants of the planet and literally from another world. About as tall as Frank, slightly narrower shoulders, a body that combined both training and fitness and feminine round shapes[5] in perfect harmony. The fact that she wore a red floor-length dress that clung lasciviously to her curves made Frank's pulse race even higher. It revealed enough dark brown skin to arouse newness and desire but concealed enough of it to retain an air of mystery.
This was also reflected in her eyes, deep, at first sight, black mirrors of a soul that seemed infinitely older than the body. Only on closer inspection did they reveal a slight crimson glow that radiated magic and dominance.
The face, framed by long silky black hair, turned towards the unworthy visitor and his friends and revealed that Frank had been wrong, to begin with. She was, after all, a shade older than he had thought, perhaps even his vintage - only infinitely better preserved, in shape and, quite honestly, probably of higher genetic quality.
But even the best genetics didn't help against a shitty childhood on a fucked-up mining world and almost twenty years of de facto slavery afterwards.
Two figures came to her side. On her right, a rather ugly, even objectively unimpressive man of around sixty, gaunt and a featureless, pale face, but with plenty of medals on his black uniform. Probably the highest-ranking military man in the city - and thus on the planet.
To the left of the goddess, a friendly but slightly intellectually impaired, smiling, stocky guy in a checked shirt and leather trousers, a living caricature of the archetypes in the Terran Museum. His function? Unknown. Perhaps also unimportant, for it was the goddess who spoke to them and destroyed Frank's reality with a single sentence.
"Welcome to Earth, Mister Gazer."
"The only summit talks that really have any meaning are those of alpinists."
- Luis Trenker
7.
Separation of powers
"More precisely, to New Earth. Or Earth 2.0, or maybe Neoterra, because we still haven't quite agreed on that."
There was a hint of embarrassment in her voice, perhaps scratching a little at t
he aura of her dominance but at the same time making her relatable.
Human.
Dilara snapped Frank out of his languishing thoughts with an elbow jab to his side and a whispered "Teka-he Talash?" on her lips. Which, of course, she was absolutely right about, and Frank indicated a bow.
"You know my name, so you have an advantage. However, I would like to ask you to continue the conversation in Talash. My crew's English needs a lot of improvement."
The goddess smiled generously.
"As you wish, Mister Gazer, and yes, I owe you an introduction. Here you see Rear Admiral Cuck Freezemayer, the leader of our self-defence forces and head of the military-industrial complex. My colleague here is Benny Gonzales, our mayor. I am Mariella Tawambe, the First Professor."
The First Professor of what? Physics, political science, applied home economics?
That was a question Frank had to mentally put off until later - now, the diplomatic protocol needed to be upheld.
"Pleased to meet you. At my side is Dilara Kreethan, astrotelepath and co-pilot. Behind her, my weapons officer Stormcommander Troshk, and next to him Betshrachthora the Metaltaster, our mechanic. I am Frank Gazer, commander of the Yrsha and managing director of the Stargazer Prospectorate. Oh yes, and the morphically advantaged colleague at the very back is Florbsh, our accountant and lawyer."
The bodyguards, discreetly half a step in the background, flinched briefly, and a moment of horror flitted across the mayor's face as well, as the word lawyer echoed across the airfield.
That was good; some regularities seemed universal.
The Professor, however, was not so easily ruffled, and her polite smile turned into a mischievous one.
"Prospecting, that's what you claim. Interesting. So you are all civilian explorers and adventurers who accidentally jumped into our best-shielded system searching for valuable raw materials? Through a wormhole whose existence even we were unaware of?"
Freezemayer put it less diplomatically.
"You don't seriously expect us to believe that shit, do you?"
