by Jeff Sims
Fruid’la continued counting as they made the relatively short ride around the parking lot. He stopped when we suspected that he counted the same row a third time. Eventually, he gave up and simply guessed at a number.
He said, “Computer, how many battle groups are in the new fleet?”
The pilot smiled and said, “Computer, belay response. Admiral, what was your count?”
Fruid’la shrugged and admitted defeat. He said, “Counting is beneath my rank. Computer, number.”
…There are 36 completed battle groups and two partials totaling 4 ships…
Fruid’la multiplied 30 times 7 and got 210, then added 42 and arrived at 252. He then remembered that there were 4 additional ships in the parking lot. He added those and finished with 256. He smiled when he thought about that number.
Further, there was one massive supply and repair ship for every 2 battle groups. Fruid’la checked and verified that there were 22 supply ships floating at the end of one row. He hadn’t counted them in the total because although lightly armed, they truly weren’t warships.
Fruid’la silently repeated the number 256. There were 256 brand new warships patiently waiting in this secret location. If their spies’ information was correct, the Alliance only had 280. This new fleet was nearly the same size as the entire Alliance Navy and it still wasn’t complete.
Another 7 battle groups were still under construction at various locations throughout the Hiriculan Empire. When complete, there would be a single fleet containing an unheard of 44 battle groups and totaling 308 warships.
He changed his mind and added the 22 supply ships to make 330 total ships in his new fleet. Fruid’la’s fleet!
Fruid’la smiled at the thought. According to the High Council’s master plan, just under a year from now he would be in command the largest fleet ever assembled. He would take the fleet directly to Conron. Once Conron surrendered, he would go to Advranki Prime. Once the Advranki surrendered, he would proceed to Altian 1-3 and repeat.
The pilot interrupted Fruid’la’s musings. He said, “We have completed the circle. Are you ready to jump back?”
Fruid’la, still lost in thought, waved dismissively to the pilot to proceed. He was still thinking about the number 330 when he realized what was wrong. He had forgotten to count the brand new command carrier starting construction. Therefore, when complete, the new fleet will equal 331 warships!
When Fruid’la conquered the galaxy, he wanted to do it in style.
…………………
Prued’mo was having a bad day. Actually, she was having a bad week. Really, she was having a bad month. Honestly, the entire year hadn’t been that great. Further, her prospects for the next one wasn’t that great either.
“Next patient,” Prued’mo sighed loudly as she said it. The whine and disgust in her voice had been a little too audible, so she yawned loudly to try to cover it. She looked around. None of the other staff seemed to have noticed the slip.
Good, she thought. The last thing she needed was to be reported for having a bad attitude. Her job was bad enough as it was; she certainly didn’t want to waste her precious free time with remedial counseling and a diversity training refresher.
Prued’mo counseled herself as she waited for them to bring in the next baby. It wasn’t that the job was bad or unnecessary, it was just that she was tired or doing it. No, she corrected herself, this was a bad job. Either way, she had now lived on Neto for 4 years and had performed the same operation at least a three dozen times a day, every day.
This must be my millionth operation, she thought.
Despite her exaggeration, she wasn’t terribly far from the truth. She would have been both surprised and repulsed to learn that the baby being pushed to her table in an electro cart was exactly her 50,000th operation.
The milestone aside, this operation went just like 49,999 or any of the other ones before it. She sprayed some combination antiseptic and numbing agent on the baby’s lower set of arms. She grabbed her laser scalpel, verified it had an adequate charge, and started the operation.
She deftly cut the left limb off, rotated the cart 180 degrees, and cut the right one off. She visually verified that the laser scalpel had cauterized both wounds. She then sprayed a congealing agent on both affected areas. The agent would reduce the swelling and help to reduce scarring.
The operation had been so quick that the baby didn’t have time to react. However, a moment later the pain registered in the baby’s brain and it started crying. Prued’mo cringed. Lately, she had been hearing those cries in her sleep.
A nurse came and pushed the electro cart away. Prued’mo took a step away from the operating table to clear her mind. She took a long drink from a bottle of water and said, “Next patient.”
…………………
Prued’mo, done for the day, walked out of the Neto hospital number 470 and returned to her apartment. She didn’t look at any of the Neto walking down the street, nor did any of them acknowledge her.
It wasn’t that she was above speaking to them or that they were particularly mad at her; the two centuries that the Hiruclans had spent on Neto just hadn’t been that civil. She didn’t have any Neto friends and didn’t know of any Hiriculan that did. Outside of organized political events, the two races had very little to do with each other on a personal level.
Prued’mo started thinking about the history of the ‘help’ that Hiricula had given to Neto. When Hiricula discovered Neto 210 years ago, they found a race with significant issues. The worst issue was starvation due to overpopulation.
Simply put; the Neto had made some strides in improving health care. As a result, their average life span had increased from 45 to 65. However, the birth rate didn’t slow to accommodate the increased life span. As a result, the race was nearing or perhaps just beyond what their planet could handle.
There had already been one major war over natural resources and it appeared that there was going to be another. The Hiriculans solved the problem for them. They showed the Neto how to grow more crops and how to gain higher yields from those crops. They sent nutritionists to tailor the Neto’s foods so that they could eat less food overall, but gain far more nutrition. They also showed them how to eat a well-balanced diet.
The Hiriculans saved the Neto through unselfish acts of kindness. Or, at least that is what the history books say – well, after the Hiriculans rewrote them.
The true history was slightly different. The Hiriculans did the aforementioned things, but that wasn’t all. They euthanized the weak, the old, the lame, the mentally deficient, and the chronically ill.
They gave everyone a blood test and gently, but thoroughly, expunged several recessive genes that could cause mental or physical defects from the population. Entire families and blood lines were eradicated.
The population under control, the Hiriculans helped the Neto establish birth control policies to keep their population from exploding again. However, over the next several years the Hiririculans could not understand the Neto’s lack of technological advancement. Even when they were handed new technologically, they were extremely slow to understand or adopt it.
Frustrated, they performed numerous studies on the Neto, both in microbiology and sociology. They identified that some Neto were simply more intelligent than others. So, they implemented a planet-wide selective-breeding program.
Males and females that had the opportunity to produce intelligent off-spring were forced to breed with each other. The Hiriculans didn’t care if the male or female were already married. Nor did they bother to artificially inseminate the female in these instances. The simple rule was – you can marry whomever you want, but you will breed with whomever we tell you to.
Several thousand Netos protested the new directive. The Hiriculans ended the protest by executing all of the protest leaders. The Netos responded by killing several Hiriculans. The Hiriculan Navy brutally responded. After that, well, after that the Netos never attempted armed conflict agai
nst the Hiriculans again.
A few years later, one researcher believed that the reason the Neto were failing to embrace technological change at an acceptable rate was due to their second set of arms. He hypothesized that the Neto were subconsciously spending too much brainpower controlling the extra set of limbs and didn’t have enough left over to devote to more important things.
He supported theory by pointing out that all other intelligent races only had one set of arms. He also compared the Neto to several animals such as birds. He argued that the reason there are no intelligent species descended from an avian is that birds spend too much brainpower flapping their wings.
The theory was approved by the High Council at the time and the researcher was given approval to perform a study. He took many Netos from all age groups and cut off their lower set of arms. It drove all of them crazy.
Not to be deterred, the biologist reasoned that the study failed because he used subjects that had already learned to use the extra set of limbs. He started over, this time on babies. He carefully monitored the 4 limbed subjects. After a decade, he conclusively showed that his test subjects were smarter and more technologically adept than the rest of the 6-limbed population.
The research was shoddy. For instance, the doctor had chosen babies from the smartest parents for the experiment. Further, they had been separated from other Neto in school and given a special education that focused on math and science.
However, it really didn’t matter that there were holes in the theory. The biologist published his findings and the Hiriculan High Council generally approved it as fact. The High Council decreed that all Neto babies were to have their lower set of arms removed from then on.
Once adopted, the policy became impossible to stop. Therefore, eighty years later there was no longer a living Neto with 4 arms.
Further, the policy seemed to be working as the Neto slowly, but surely, began to understand and use technology. No one was really sure whether the mental increase was due to selective breeding, DNA tampering by removing bad genes, better education, or fewer limbs.
Lately though, things had gotten worse politically. The Hiriculan Navy was heavily recruiting for crewmembers and pilots. They offered a nice incentive package and choice of ship type. She had heard that in total they were trying to enlist up to 25,000 Neto.
She sarcastically laughed at her use of the word try. If they didn’t get 25,000 volunteers, then they would conscript the remainder. And the Neto couldn’t stop them.
Prued’mo stopped thinking about the past history and focused on the present. Presently, she was sick of her job, sick of the planet Neto, and sick of surgery. And she had almost a decade left to go to repay her debt.
Prued’mo’s parents hadn’t been of particularly high status. However, she had shown exceptional aptitude in biology and wanted to pursue a career in medicine. The Hiriculan government agreed to pay her tuition in exchange for 12 years of service on Neto.
She had envisioned trekking through mountains and treating hard to reach villagers. She had pictured herself solving mysteries and healing people. Perhaps she would be on an ambulance crew and fly to the scene of an accident. Never though, had she envisioned herself amputating newborn babies for a living.
And to make matters worse, a baby Hiriculan had been born in her hospital earlier that week. Despite her specialization in child delivery and early infant surgery, she hadn’t been assigned to deliver it or allowed to correct a minor birth defect on one of its toes.
Sometime during the night she made a decision. She wasn’t going to go to work tomorrow, or ever again for that matter. She contacted the hospital and told them she was taking an overdue vacation.
That decision lasted about 3 minutes. She realized that she had left something important at the hospital. So, Prued’mo returned to the hospital, collected several items, and left. Now she declared that she was never returning to the hospital.
She packed her bags. However, she was forced to leave many items that she had accumulated over the last 4 years there. She was supposed to be on a vacation; it would look suspicious if she cleaned out her apartment.
The following morning she headed to the spaceport. Fortunately, the spaceport was relatively small and she was easily able to locate the monitor that showed every ship’s departure date and destination. Unfortunately, there were only two destinations – Hiricula and the Spindle Station located in Influenla.
She stood there for many long minutes weighing her decision. It would be easier to book passage back to Hiricula and that was the logical destination. Further, the large population would make it easier for her to move without drawing too much attraction to herself.
Also, there were more ships departing Hiricula for destinations unknown. However, security would certainly tighter at the spaceport, making it very difficult for her to sneak on-board an out-bound ship.
There were far fewer ships bound for Influenla. Further, there were only a few thousand beings living there. She could potentially have a more difficult time staying anonymous. However, after the big battle she had heard that there was a lot of turnover at the station.
The tipping point was the scheduled departures. There was a ship leaving for Influenla in 20 minutes. Prued’mo used her communication pad to book passage to Influenla and headed to the appropriate launch pad.
Chapter 9
Disaster!
Absolute disaster!
Absolute, unmitigated disaster!
Well, there was a mitigation, but Clowy really didn’t like it.
“It’s okay,” Ella said as calmly as possible. “We’ll just go wig shopping.”
Clowy was crying unreservedly. Tears were streaming from her large gray eyes in buckets and the rain shower showed little signs of letting up. This was the latest, and by far the worst, insult in what had turned out to a rather poor start to the trio’s vacation in Solar City.
The moment they exited hyperspace in the Solaria system, Jack defrosted the two Alliance officers in the stasis tubes. The six beings then spent the remaining few hours of the flight through the solar system retelling stories about their particular role in the two battles of Influenla.
The mini-freighter Jackal landed on Solaria without incident. Despite the increase in traffic, Jack’s usual berth was waiting for him. So too was a crew to unload his cargo and take it directly to the office building. Several of the items on the ship were overdue.
Lexxi and Clowy used their celebrity status to breeze through customs and immigration. Jack, Ella, and the other two Solarians were inspected a little more closely, but nowhere near the thoroughness of a normal arrival. As a result, both Jack and Ella were able to sneak hundreds of hours of pirated human videos through the security check.
The crew said their goodbyes and split into three groups. Robert and Anna, the two military officers, went to the Solarian government building for debriefing. Ella, Clowy, and Lexxi headed to a hotel beside the spaceport.
Jack remained with the mini-freighter and watched it being unloaded. This was his third and final load from the Spindle Station in Influenla and his contract with the Hiriculan government was completed. He didn’t have any immediate plans, but he figured that the Hiriculan Ambassador Bline would be arriving soon for the celebration. With luck, the ambassador would pay handsomely for his new information.
Ella offered to have both Lexxi and Clowy stay at her family’s home. However, it was on the far eastern outskirts of Solar City – far away from the shopping malls, entertainment complexes, and vibrant night life located nearer the spaceport. Further, the spaceport was only two hovertram stops from central tram station, and more importantly Settlers’ Monument. The monument was the focal point for the up-coming celebration.
Settlers’ Monument is a tribute to the Solarians’ exodus from their home world just before it was blasted by severe radiation. It shows a picture of the transport ship they used during the evacuation and has a star chart that indicates the approximate location o
f Old Solaria*.
(*The name of the home-world was lost, so the government ceremoniously named it Old Solaria.)
In preparation for the celebration, the Solarian government constructed a new monument beside the old one. It featured full-sized statues of the 3 Advranki and 2 Altians responsible for finding Old Solaria. It also has a large monitor that cycles through the scans of the planet that the Buzzkill took during its visit to the system.
The threesome eschewed Ella’s house and checked into the Spaceport Hotel and Resort. The hotel was perfectly located in the heart of the entertainment district and only a few paces from the spaceport and hovertram station.
Clowy and Lexxi were told that their hotel rooms would be paid by the Solarian government and that they would be put in the suites located on the first floor. Ella wasn’t quite so lucky. The hotel clerk initially denied her a room because she was a Solarian. The rooms, she was politely informed, were reserved only for off-world guests.
Ella then tried to use her status as shipmate and friend of the guests of honor. However, the clerk continued to deny her a room. Ella briefly wished that the human Paul Smith was standing beside her. She doubted that she would be mistreated once he flexed his muscles.
However, Paul wasn’t there. Ella switched directions and asked for the manager. When he arrived she said, “Hello, I am Ella Birdsong. My father is the famous artist Fletcher Birdsong. If you give me a free room for the celebration, my father will paint your atrium.”
Ella’s offer was very, very good. She could immediately see that the manager found it irresistible. The cost of the an original piece of Fletcher’s work was worth 50 or perhaps even 500 times the amount of a hotel room for three weeks.
The manager wouldn’t take her word for it though. Ella had to call her father and have him personally talk to the manager. The manager wouldn’t agree to the arrangement until he received a firm commitment. Fletcher agreed to paint the atrium the following day.
