Through Struggle, the Stars

by John Lumpkin

  The difficult step for evolution, it seemed, was creating anything more complex. On many worlds life hadn’t invented a nucleus, much less multicellular forms, even with billions of years to try.

  The result: “Terran Hestian” planets like Entente, analogous to Earth about two billion years ago. These virgin planets had given rise to a new profession: ecological designers who decided what from Earth would be imported into the new world. Their efforts were trial-and-error in many cases, for the lowest ends of the food chain often remained a mystery. The lack of some heretofore unknown bacteria or beneficial parasite could decimate an imported animal population. Critters without their natural predators often ran amok – hence the popularity of the ladybug, wasp and mantis as import insects.

  But within the 120-light-year-diameter sphere explored by humanity few planets had managed plants; fewer still had evolved anything approximating animals, and some of those were inhospitable to humans. Most of the rest were in the Chinese Ring. Even then, nothing came close to the intelligence exhibited by earth monkeys, elephants or dolphins, much less humans.

  Sure, infotainment programs did plenty of pieces postulating intelligent alien life. Now that it was confirmed that life itself was common, it seemed reasonable to expect some planet, somewhere, could evolve creatures who used tools and symbolic communication. But, after 80 years of expansion, hopes and fears had faded, and the idea of sentient aliens was again ignored. If they were out there, they were so far away as to be irrelevant.

  Theories abounded as to these unexpected blooms of life. One, panspermia, suggested that basic life had spread through this region of space on the backs of interstellar comets or some other natural vehicle. Another, parallel evolution, held that basic life was simply likely, given the right conditions. Perhaps the process was as common as stars forming.

  And there were those who believed that some intelligence had intentionally seeded these planets ages ago. To the religious, it was God, preparing planets to serve his children.

  If that was the case, Neil thought, God had worked a short shift when he prepared Entente.

  Entente had almost no axial tilt; therefore it had almost no seasons. The average temperature on the surface varied widely compared to Earth; its habitable regions were in two wide bands in the north and south hemispheres. The equatorial belt was too hot for anything but flying over, and the polar caps were covered by glaciers. But more than half of the planet’s continental landmass was in the habitable areas; when the keyhole was first opened in 2107, the United Nations assisted any of the world’s nations that wanted to create a colony here.

  The result was a world politically more like Earth than any other. Nations declared independence, annexed territory, formed alliances and fought wars. Earth’s great powers intrigued among these states from time to time, although Neil had a hard time seeing why. Entente had little in the way of special resources worth fighting over. It was land and sea.

  The dropship, descending rapidly, passed thousands of meters above a line of mountains that rose from the surface like a frozen wave. On the other side, a green carpet of Earth grasses covered the surface. They’d make it over the mountain range in a few years, and this part of the planet would look something like British Columbia.

  Five minutes later they were on the ground.

  “Textbook, eh, Neil?” Rodgers turned and smiled.

  “Yes, sir. Thanks for the ride.”

  Neil unstrapped and joined the throng climbing out of the spacecraft. A hatch opened. Sunlight poured into the interior. Despite all the routine around him, he couldn’t help feeling a thrill. I am about to step onto another world. He hoped the veteran spacehands in the dropship didn’t detect his exhilaration.

  They were in Graypen, the site of the first colony on Entente and an independent city-state, located at the geographic nexus of three of the 26 nations that controlled territory on the planet. It was a big, messy, commercial town of half a million people, located in a temperate-to-cool region of Entente’s southern hemisphere and connected to an ocean by a navigable river. “A great place for Sun Haisheng to hide,” Donovan had explained. He said he planned to look up some old contacts who could help him find the rebel leader.

  Neil walked toward Tom and Erin, angling to ride with them to the hotel.

  “Hear that?” Tom asked. His face betrayed unvarnished excitement.

  “Hear what?” said Neil. He listened for something, but heard only traffic.

  “Exactly. No vent noise. No electric hum. No rattles while the drive fires. Just regular sounds. Great to be back on a surface.”

  Entente’s gravity, though lighter than Earth’s, wore heavy after two months spent mostly weightless aboard San Jacinto. But Neil felt a rightness, too, like his body knew it had returned to conditions it had evolved for. Smells: lubricants, unprocessed but slightly polluted air, and a faint, ozone freshness, a product of either the recent storm or the spaceport’s launching lasers. Above, Beta Comae Berenices – “Beta” to the locals – was a diffuse glow through a gray layer of clouds rolling in above them. Puddles of water around the tarmac signaled recent rains and gave the spaceport a muddy, messy appearance. It was midafternoon, local time; Entente had a 28-hour day, and sunset was still some time off.

  A pair of suited men from the Chinese consulate approached, politely exchanging greetings with Lieutenant Commander Davis before shuffling off the four Chinese survivors from the colony ship. They left in a van.

  So much for them, Neil thought. He walked over to the Marine lieutenant, Maria Sanchez, who was standing by the jet’s nose wheel assembly.

  “You’re not coming with us? Tom and Doc have big plans for tonight.” San Jacinto’s personnel had little business in Graypen other than to refresh the ship’s food supply; the primary mission had been to deliver Donovan to the surface, and with that done, the three dozen officers and crew who had managed to score shore leave checked into a hotel recommended by the consulate and planned for a night on the town.

  Sanchez shook her head sadly. “Can’t, Neil. We’ve got to keep an eye on this bird in case the locals want to nose around.”

  That explained why she’d gone down in fatigues.

  “Too bad. What happens if they try?” Neil had visions of a fierce struggle as the Marines fought to protect whatever secrets the Sabre held.

  “We yell at them. Very loudly. If they still want on, we let them on, and we file a protest with their foreign ministry.”

  “Oh,” Neil said, disappointed.

  The Jacintos piled into the waiting vans, each driven by an American consular officer who briefed them on how to avoid getting thrown in jail while on the surface.

  Their hotel was a nice one, geared toward tourists from offplanet. Tom, Erin and Neil wandered the streets, noting the differences between the older prefab buildings, built from kits imported to the planet, and the newer ones made from timber actually grown here. Few of either type exceeded three stories. The city was gray and commercial; it had few parks and no statues or other artwork in its public places.

  Most of the people were from Asia and Oceania: Ethnic Thais, Filipinos, Samoans, Javanese, Singaporeans, and, of course, Chinese. Neil noted plenty of police officers, toting submachine guns in white-gloved hands as they directed traffic around the obnoxious concrete barricades that lined most of the streets.

  Neil’s first thought upon waking the next morning: Why am I not in bed?

  His second: My head hurts.

  The third: What’s that knocking noise?

  He shifted and found himself on the couch in his and Tom’s hotel room. Tom was in his own bed, curled up and snoring gently. For some reason, Doc Avery, who should have been bunking three doors down, was crashed out in Neil’s bed.

  More knocking. Neil, still wearing the clothes he wore out the night before, pulled himself up and went to the door. Harsh sunlight streamed into the room from behind a half-closed curtain.

  At the door was a haggard Rafe Sato.


  “You guys okay?” he croaked.

  Hazy memories of many drinks. “We’ll live. I think.”

  “Okay. Donovan wants you to come with us tonight. We’re going to meet a contact.”

  Neil nodded, closed the door and turned back into the hotel room. Tom had woken up and was rubbing his head.

  “Morning, cowboy,” Neil said.

  “It’s still morning?”

  “I think so. What was our drink count last night?”

  “Gawd, I lost track at thirty. When did the wheels come off?”

  “When Doc ordered that round of tequila shots.”

  Avery stirred and buried his head under a pillow. “Will you guys shut up? I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Get outta my bed, Doc,” Neil said. “And get me some hangover pills while you’re at it.”

  “Your bed? How’d I end up here? What are you people doing in my room?”

  “It’s our room, Doc.”

  Tom shook his head. “Doc, didn’t you bring that local girl sitting on your lap back to the hotel?”

  “I did, but I left her at the door. She wanted one hundred bucks American.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, I only had sixty, and I’m too proud to dicker.”

  Neil wondered if Avery was kidding.

  “You’re the tour bus driver on the road to perdition, Doc,” Tom said.

  Avery ignored him. “And I recall you weren’t doing so bad yourself,” he said to Neil. “Way to bag the young ensign. Though I guess you didn’t close the deal if you ended up back here.”

  Erin. At the fourth club – Sonny’s – they’d shut out the others and talked. Then she had leaned against the bar, her eyes wide and inviting … later, the rest of the group abandoned ... a long kiss at her hotel room door, but she didn’t invite him in.

  “You guys were mugging for about twenty minutes,” Doc said, laughing.

  Neil, embarrassed, didn’t respond. Bragging didn’t feel right. How does Erin feel about it?

  He didn’t see her that day. That evening, feeling somewhat better thanks to a couple of meals and some pills from Doc, he showed up at Donovan’s suite as requested. Only Rafe was there, with the distant look of someone reading text on his ocular.

  Rafe said, “Look at this.” He transmitted a file to Neil’s handheld.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the passenger manifest from one of the Chinese colony ships we ran into,” Rafe said. “I hacked it from the Chinese consulate computer. Donovan wanted me to confirm the identities of our four survivors.”

  “And are they on there?”

  “Yep, here’s Grandma and Grandpa Peng.” He scrolled down a bit. “And here is Cai and Li.”

  “Seems normal enough. What of it?”

  “This list is sorted by room number on the ship. I can sort it alphabetically, or, in the order their names were entered into the system.” He did so, and Cai Jinming and Li Xiao’s names moved to the very bottom.

  “Okay, so they got on last. So what?”

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that out of 3,000 people on board, two of the four survivors were the very last to get on? Hell of a coincidence. I think somebody just added their names to the passenger manifest since they arrived on the planet, and they didn’t fully cover their tracks by inserting them in the middle of the list.”

  “So if they weren’t on the ship, where were they?” Neil said. “They weren’t living on the fuel station. And this wouldn’t make much sense if they were already on one of the other colony ships. That leaves the corvette.”

  “My thinking exactly. That would make them PLA.”

  “Or the PLA’s guests on the corvette, unless this is all a big coincidence. If the ship was headed into battle, why would some of the crew get off? So they weren’t crew – they were government passengers, yeah?”

  “Sounds right to me.”

  They told Donovan when he returned a few minutes later. “Interesting. Rafe, I suppose we should investigate them further when we get a chance. Neil, glad to see you in civvies. It’s time to leave for our appointment. Are you ready?”

  Rafe nodded. Neil said, “Sure. But where are we headed?”

  “Meeting with a contact who should know where on this rock Sun is hiding. Got your sidearms?”

  “Yep.” Rafe patted his jacket.

  “Uh … no,” Neil said. “I wasn’t issued one.”

  “Here, take my spare.” He threw a holstered handgun on the bed.

  Neil picked it up. The 8mm Japanese automatic was a little thing, but heavier than it looked. He remembered qualifying on handgun back at ROTC – two years ago. He hadn’t touched one since. He took off his jacket, strapped the holster around his shoulder, and put the jacket back on.

  “Good to go.” He tried not to sound nervous. Why do we need guns? Americans weren’t hated in Graypen. Crime was a problem, but the consulate had provided everyone with a map of the neighborhoods to avoid, each marked with a large skull-and-crossbones.

  “These people we’re going to meet are under a death sentence back in China,” Donovan said, as if reading his thoughts. “It’s just safer if we’re able to defend ourselves.”

  They drove in a rental ute – a vehicle that, a century prior, would have been called an SUV. It was about half an hour to their destination, in one of those neighborhoods the consulate had marked as unsafe.

  It was a dirty part of town. Groups of men stood on street corners, doing nothing.

  Rafe parked on a side street about a block from their destination. He got out of the ute, but made to stay behind. Neil looked at him quizzically.

  “They might not like me in there … too much Saki,” he said, waving his fingers as if they contained his Japanese heritage.

  The rebels were in a room above a shuttered Mexican restaurant, of all places. A woman and three male bodyguards received them. Only the woman spoke; she and Donovan clearly had met before. He introduced her to Neil as Huang Jin before they began a rapid exchange of Chinese. Neil recognized some proper names, and some general inquiries into each other’s health, but he otherwise couldn’t keep up with the conversation. Nor did he look to his handheld for a translation, knowing it was considered rude to translate an exchange you weren’t invited to be a part of.

  Things between Donovan and Huang Jin quickly grew cordial; at one point, the woman and Donovan laughed together at something she had said.

  A moment later, Neil’s handheld beeped: Rafe. Neil activated the audio connection and heard the young spy’s voice in his ear.

  “We’ve got problems. Three skycars overhead. One’s hovering; the other two are descending. I think they’re landing near your building.”

  Shit. “Donovan –” Neil started.

  “I know.” He’d also listened to Rafe’s transmission. He spoke a warning in Mandarin.

  Two bodyguards in the group pulled handguns; the third grabbed a sleek rifle from behind a couch and went to the front window. Neil went with him.

  A beige Toyota skycar landed on the street. Three men and one woman got out. They were Asian; they were dressed casually. One reached into the car’s trunk and pulled out a weapon Neil recognized, a Chinese-made assault rifle.

  They’re Chinese agents. Did they follow us?

  Huang Jin yelled at Donovan, who was trying to calm her. The agents outside heard that and tensed. Handguns emerged from jackets.

  “Donovan!” Neil said. “Hans are coming!”

  The bodyguard at the window pulled it open, pointed the rifle at the street, and fired a three-shot burst. Neil saw one man go down, clutching at his thigh; the others dove for cover behind the car and returned fire.

  Shots punched through the building’s thin outer wall, leaving behind sprouts of pink insulation. Neil dove for the floor. The bodyguard with him ducked, then moved toward the window again, intending to fire.

  He never got the chance. Neil heard a single crack, and the man spun and fell backward,
crimson blossoming from his neck. He hit the floor and made a choking sound for a few seconds, then was still.

  Later, when Neil reflected on the shootout, a lot of details wouldn’t come to him. But he did recall how his entire world became crystal clear. He didn’t flinch at the dying man in front of him, just regarded it as a data point in his now paramount effort to survive.

  The other two bodyguards rushed toward the window, taking positions on either side. Neil looked at Donovan.

  “Let’s go!” Donovan said, motioning with his hand. He had his gun out. Neil pulled his from its holster. Its weight was reassuring.

  Huang Jin did not move to come with them.

  “Jin, you aren’t safe here. We have to leave now!” Donovan shouted at her in English.

  More shots at the window; another bodyguard fell to the ground, screaming and holding his bleeding arm.

  That made up Huang’s mind; she shouted at the last bodyguard, who picked up his wounded comrade and helped him toward the door. The fire from the street subsided.

  They made their way into the hall; Donovan in front; followed by Huang, followed by the bodyguards, with Neil at the rear. When you shoot, set your legs to make a triangle with your body. Hold the pistol down, with both hands. Grip it tightly, so your fingers don’t milk the handle and make you miss when you pull the trigger.

  Rafe’s voice said, “Status?”

  It was the first thing Rafe had said since his warning. Smart, he didn’t clutter up Donovan and Neil’s thoughts with chatter.

  “We’re headed for a back door of the restaurant,” Donovan told Rafe. “Start up the car; we’ll be coming soon.”

  “Roger. Watch out, I think there’s a sniper in the skycar that’s still up there, chief.”

  They jostled down the steps, with the wounded man, half-limp against his comrade, crying out in pain, and rounded the corner into the kitchen. Where were the guys from the front? Neil couldn’t imagine what was taking them so long to enter the building.

  Donovan leaned on the steel fire door leading to behind the restaurant, opening it slightly. He peeked out, saw nothing, and said, “Let’s go.”