Battle of Earth

by Chloe Garner

  Cassie nodded. She had the front end of about half a dozen traps laid out in her mind just from what she already knew about them. It wouldn’t take much more to make any one of them actionable.

  She blinked at a still shot of a formation of fourteen sirens in a large fountain, hair wild and electric, bodies curved and ambiguous, faces… There was no word for their faces. Perfect, but without any detail to capture how or why.

  “You’re looking for trends according to temperature?” she asked.

  “Plotting by location within galaxy, location in universe, salinity, temperature, depth, volume…”

  She nodded.

  He’d know a lot more of the bodies of water they were looking at and naming. Cassie was way, way behind him on geographic knowledge of the universe, mostly because of age, but also because of his father. Being a diplomat’s son meant you saw a lot, even for a Palta.

  “Add turbulence.”

  “You have a unit for that?” he answered.

  “You’re capable.”

  He snorted.

  “Affluence, familiarity, energy types,” he said.

  “Air?” Cassie asked.

  “Out of the box,” Jesse answered. “I like it.”

  “Gravity. Moons. Position in solar system.”

  Jesse was nodding.

  “Need more data. Better data. This is corrupted by reporting statistics.”

  “You can fix that,” Cassie said, and he looked back at her.

  “Is that so?”

  She blinked.

  It had been an instinctive reply, and she’d expected him to name the theory some other Palta had developed on how to do it, but Jesse just looked at her. She nodded, standing and switching the screen over to a writing surface, sketching out variables. She used the ones she’d used as an analyst, because she didn’t know the Palta ones, and she had to create a few new ones. Jesse came to stand next to her, watching without comment.

  When she was done, she took a step back and he shook his head.

  “You are remarkable,” he said. “That will work.”

  “You have to come up with ways to supplement data when your set is limited,” she said. “I fought with that all the time.”

  “Only because you artificially constricted your data set,” he said, a slight mocking tone to his voice, but he went to sit on the stone again, switching the screen back, and Cassie returned to the couch. He took a breath and she could all but hear the re-calculation of his work going on to account for her theory.

  “Selection bias gone,” he said. “Yeah.”

  You could see it in the data, when the set was complete. It just lay better. Cassie knew that one, too.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Oh, I can tell you more about sirens than probably anyone else alive,” he said, continuing to page through news and photos. He was a month and a half back, now. “But none of it’s useful. The patterns tell me what they like. There isn’t anything they seem to be avoiding with real apprehension.”

  “Where is home?” Cassie asked.

  He shook his head.

  “No reason to expect there would be any data from there.”

  “They need water,” Cassie said. “Planets with water and no sirens seem likely.”

  “That’s all of the unpopulated ones,” Jesse said. “None of them report on siren activity, either.”

  “Jesse, you’re missing it,” she said. “You know everything about them. Temperature, gravity, salinity, ocean depth. Even including all of the unoccupied planets with known geography, you should be able to narrow it down to a few.”

  He nodded, working it out in his head for all of four seconds before nodding again.

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ve got four likely candidates.”

  “And which of them has recently had a massive, relevant change of circumstances?” Cassie asked.

  He snapped at the display screen again, one picture, the rest blank text, and the two of them each blinked four times. He looked back at her.

  “That look conclusive enough for you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  He stood.

  “Won’t know until we get there, will we?”

  *********

  The phone beeped. Troy looked up, finding himself in the dark with just the desk lamp keeping him reading. He shook himself twice, trying to get his mind back into the office, then stood, going to turn on the overhead lights and looking outside before checking his phone for the time.

  He hit the button on his phone.

  “What’s up, Bridgette?” he asked.

  “Olivia Macon to see you,” she answered.

  He nodded, rubbing his face quickly and sitting forward as the doors opened.

  Olivia let them fall closed behind her, looking around.

  “I really wanted to be mad at you for not calling me today,” she said, “but I have a hard time saying that this isn’t a really good excuse.”

  He nodded.

  “Have a seat, if you want.”

  She came to sit down in one of the visitors’ chairs, and Troy had a pang of guilt that he hadn’t come around to sit with her, instead. The office didn’t have anything resembling casual furniture; he would have to add that to his list for Bridgette. He didn’t want to remodel too heavily, because he would only be here for a week or so until Senator Greene got someone appointed who was actually qualified to run the base, but he could at least find a way to be comfortable and not so pretentious.

  “I really wanted to talk to you today,” Olivia said. “About… everything.”

  “I know,” Troy said. “And I owe you that. I’ve just been really busy today…”

  The words bothered him as they came out of his mouth, and he paused, frowning at his desk.

  “No,” he said. “No. You know what? Come on. I can afford to take an hour off and go get something to eat. Let me take you to dinner, we can talk. I do owe you that much.”

  Olivia put up her hands.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t… I didn’t even know you were here until Celeste told me at lunch. Told me you had her working on something she couldn’t talk about.” She paused. “You didn’t drag her into one of the super-secret, everybody hates when they have to go do it projects, did you?”

  “No,” Troy said. “No, I don’t think so anyway.” He laughed, rubbing his forehead. “It’s not classified beyond anything else we do. It’s just need to know, and you…” He shrugged.

  “Don’t,” Olivia said easily. That, at least, she’d be used to. You didn’t talk about what you did on base unless you were talking to someone who was working on it, too. Everyone had their secret exemptions for the little stuff; Troy would talk about it with Cassie, because she had clearance to pull any of it, if she wanted to, anyway, when she’d been an analyst, but he hadn’t talked with Olivia about anything from the labs, and she hadn’t offered. It was just how the base worked.

  “They just can’t help but keep promoting you, can they?” she asked with a slightly bitter smile. “First you’re running the lab, then you’re managing a Palta, and now you’re running the whole base. And of course you are, you know? Who else is going to do it? You’re the one who’s always ready and able, and… you’re always busy.”

  “I know,” Troy said. “I’m… sorry.” He rubbed his face again. “What time is it?”

  “Almost eight,” she said. “Your… secretary?… said that you needed me to go get some things for you to stay here, tonight.”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t know who else to ask,” he said. “If Cassie were here…”

  Olivia stiffened, and Troy wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth.

  She looked away, then licked her lips and looked back at him with a put-on smile.

  “I’m happy to do it,” she said. “I’m glad someone is finally getting control of what’s going on, around here, and ther
e’s no one who would do a better job than you. I mean that.”

  She did. He believed her.

  “I promise, I’m going to make time,” he said. “The stuff that Donovan was doing… I have to deal with it right now. As fast as I can. But after it’s done, I’m going to make time.”

  She gave him a much more bitter smile this time.

  “You warned me about who you were,” she said.

  “You changed who I was,” he answered. She bit the inside of her lip and nodded.

  “I thought so, too.”

  She stood.

  “I’ll need your keys. You want a fresh uniform for tomorrow?”

  “Please,” he said. “I can take a shower at the gym, so I shouldn’t need anything but fresh clothes and my gym bag.”

  She nodded, taking his keys.

  “Can I get you something to eat?” she asked.

  He wanted to take her up on it, to accept the token that it was, but there was an instinct to flee, not to depend on her, not to accept her generosity because it meant something.

  Maybe he hadn’t changed as much as he thought.

  “Um,” he said. She waved her hands at him.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Wouldn’t want to make you commit to something that made you uncomfortable.”

  How had they gotten this way?

  “Can commit to going out with Cassie for six months, no word, but, no, me bringing you food, I might turn up with a minister and a wedding cake…”

  “Olivia,” he said. She didn’t look back at him, and he stood. “Olivia.”

  She brushed her cheek nonchalantly and turned to face him, her mouth tight. He walked around his desk to stand in front of her.

  “I haven’t done right by you in a lot of ways,” he said. “I know that, and sometimes it’s because… I forget. I prioritize other things above you, and sometimes I have to and sometimes it’s because of habit and sometimes it’s because I’ve never done this before. But we were happy. And I think… I think we worked. And I don’t know if we can do it again, but we at least owe it to each other to talk before we decide.”

  She licked her lips, then clicked her tongue.

  “You know where I am,” she said, giving him a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll leave your things with your secretary. Wouldn’t want to interrupt you while you’re saving the world. Again.”

  He watched her go, sad, but tonight wasn’t the night to try to fix it. He had people whose lives were in danger if he didn’t get them out of tricky situations on the far side of jumps, which meant he needed to get the secondary portal up and going again as soon as he could, but he was increasingly skeptical he could do it safely - the number of corners they’d started cutting on this side of the control wall was scary. The idea that they were cutting that many corners in the control booths was terrifying. It was only the most rigorous discipline on the primary portal room floor that had kept the casualty number at one. The secondary floor had three, already. It had more traffic, it had less security and scrutiny of each manifest. He was worried that, shutting down the floor for even a few days, he’d have more casualties on the other sides of jumps as jumpers failed to meet the terms of contracts.

  But they were contracts that he couldn’t honor.

  He pushed the button on his phone and Bridgette answered.

  “I need to see the entire legal team in here first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “You have Henry at ten,” Bridgette said. He frowned.

  “Henry?”

  “The foreign terrestrial.”

  “Is he coming here?” Troy asked.

  “Would you prefer an interrogation room?” she asked.

  How did she know about them?

  Interrogation would have been more appropriate, but both ways, the foreign terrestrial risked exposure before Troy knew what he was going to do about it.

  “Let me decide in the morning,” he said. “How many records have they decoded about the foreign terrestrials at the dormitory?”

  “I have a few,” she said.

  He rubbed his face.

  “Bring those in at midnight,” he said. “I need to start going through them.”

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered. “Thank you.” He paused. “Coffee.”

  “How do you take it?” she asked.

  “Bring the pot.”

  She laughed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  *********

  They gathered supplies, because both of them were concerned that a world that wasn’t generating enough energy to support energy creatures might not be supporting much physical life, either. Cassie felt the cold building in her core again, and she considered, briefly, if she would be able to recover from another night’s sleep without hot water, but she figured that was Jesse’s problem, more than it was hers, and she kept working.

  When they had two days’ food and three days’ water, along with some equipment they’d each selected as essential - no firearms, this time, Cassie realized - Cassie took a step back from the packed bags and put her hands on her hips.

  “I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but she might not make it through the jump with us.”

  He nodded.

  “I had.”

  “She can’t exist out of water,” Cassie said. “Not completely out of water.”

  “You want to plug the shower or use the bathtub?” Jesse asked. Cassie smiled. It was gratifying to know he’d already thought it out, too.

  “We’ll need to use resort power for the jump,” she said. Sourcing enough energy for that much mass through a remote source was just too much. She’d done the math, including every clever hack she could come up with, and she hadn’t found a way.

  “That’s not a problem,” Jesse told her, “but you missed the real solution.”

  She raised an eyebrow and he grinned.

  “I’m not going to spoil it for you,” he said. “But I will tell you that the only one who could pull it off is a Palta.”

  She frowned, intrigued, and he winked.

  “My vote is shower,” he said. “Bathtub is a little cozy, when you consider the backpacks.”

  She nodded.

  “I concur.”

  They went to the bathroom, sealing the door to the shower and then pulling the lever that slid the drain closed. A polite voice warned them that they would need to put in an override force on the door for the desired depth of water, and Jesse keyed it into a display on the glass, then turned on the showerhead.

  “You want cold, to match where we’re going, or something more comfortable?” he asked.

  “Split the difference,” Cassie said. “It’s going to take a while to fill. No point just standing around in frigid water.”

  He nodded, setting the temperature and coming to stand next to her.

  “You figured out how to get rid of her, in case you need to?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Not thinking about it,” she said. “We’re going to figure out what’s wrong and fix it, and she’ll leave on her own.”

  “If she can,” Jesse warned. “Her awareness is going to be very strange, given that she’s on her own and inside a physical body. You shouldn’t be counting on her to get herself out.”

  “She asked for help,” Cassie said. “I’ll worry about defending myself once we’ve helped her.”

  Jesse shifted.

  “Suit yourself.”

  There wasn’t anything else to say, so they just stood and waited as the water crept up their ankles. They would wait until they were chest-deep to initiate the point-to-point transfer, just to be sure that there was enough water left for the siren, if she got left behind. Cassie didn’t have to ask; that was the plan because she thought it was the plan, and Jesse would know that that was what she thought.

  It was novel, working with someone like that.

  Working with the rest of the jumpers, there had been an awareness of a common set of tactics an
d methods, and they’d often counted on each other to be predictable when they needed to be predictable, but to stand next to a man that she didn’t even have to signal… It was comfortable.

  The water crept up past Cassie’s waist, and the awareness of cold inside of her swirled, sensing the water and responding with a new energy. Cassie braced herself, closing her eyes and waiting.

  “You okay?” Jesse warned.

  “Fine. She likes the water.”

  She heard the noise that was probably best translated ‘as I expected’ and she shook her head at the smugness, the water reaching her ribs.

  Another minute, and the water spilled away. She opened her eyes to an ashy, dark planet.

  *********

  Shower and shave.

  Fresh uniform.

  Back to his office, where papers were scattered everywhere and three lawyers were waiting in the hallway.

  “This is it?” he asked.

  “We have other members on the team we can pull in,” the taller man said. “But we’re trying to keep this small until we know more.”

  Troy sighed, then waved them into the office after him, going to sit in his new chair. He took a full minute getting the settings where he wanted them, then he looked up and sighed.

  “You’re going to have to forgive me if I’m a bit slow,” he said. “I’ve been up all night trying to figure out everything they did since the new portal was functional, and I think I hit my capacity to absorb new information about two hours ago.”

  He blinked and motioned.

  “Coffee?”

  It was the second pot, and it was probably stone cold, but he poured himself a cup, anyway, going to sit down again as he sipped it. He coughed.

  “Good choice, not taking any,” he said, grimacing, then shaking his head and putting down his mug. “All right. I have very limited time… for the foreseeable future. So we’re actually going to work to an agenda. First up is those damned NDAs. Tell me everything.”

  “You don’t want us to tell you everything,” the taller man said. “That would take until tonight. Captain Andrews spent all of yesterday going through them, and she’s still not on solid ground with them.”

  “They learned a lot from the Palta contracts,” the woman said. “They’ve got a lot of teeth.”