Earth Song: Etude to War

by Mark Wandrey

March 6th, 534 AE

  Chosen Headquarters, Steven's Pass, Bellatrix

  Minu didn't look forward to this day any more than a cow would anticipate the slaughterhouse. Despite being good at confrontations, she didn't actually enjoy them. In her core she was simply too emotional and with too short of temper. As a result she tended to rely on intimidation first. As the world famous fiery redhead Minu Groves, two-star Chosen in the command branch, intimidation worked more often than not. Except when it came to her boss.

  “So you're here making demands again?” Jacob Bentley reclined in his plush office chair and regarded her. He'd been First among the Chosen for more than a decade now, and he had not grown in his appreciation of Minu one bit in all those years.

  His lean average build had not softened in his late thirties, unlike many men; the Chosen lifestyle did not lend itself to sedentary decline. The only real sign of passing years was the occasional gray hair in his neatly cut dark brown, and worry lines around his brown eyes.

  “Demands? No, requests.” He cocked an eyebrow and she sighed. “Please consider this?”

  Jacob gave the barest hint of a smile at getting her to soften her approach. “Of course I have emails here from a dozen sources supporting your request. Not the least of which is Dram and Gregg. What I don't understand is why, when you want something, every other department has to suffer and accommodate you.”

  “You make it sound a lot worse than it is.”

  “Would you like to hear a few dozen examples?” she asked.

  “Not necessarily.”

  “So you concede my point.” Minu shrugged. “So this list of Chosen is really that important to the Rangers?”

  “We believe so.”

  “Meaning, you believe so.”

  “No. Gregg and Cherise are in complete agreement.”

  Jacob's eyes narrowed. “And what weight does the opinion of a three-star logistics Chosen have in this decision?” Of course he was referring to Cherise.

  “She's just about the best logistics expert the Chosen have. If she wasn't so good at logistics, she would have been a Scout. You know that though, I'm certain of it. I've used her as a consultant when forming the Rangers a dozen times.”

  “That is neither here nor there. I'm sure you could produce a recommendation from your husband too, if you thought it would help.”

  “My husband is no longer a Chosen, and I would appreciate it if you left him out of this discussion, especially since it was you who got him removed from the Corps.”

  “That was a decision of the council.”

  “Oh, kloth shit.” Jacob's expression turned to ice. “The council was beaten over the head by you on that decision.”

  “You have no proof of that accusation.”

  “Pip.”

  “Different situation,” he said and looked down.

  Minu dropped it, knowing she'd made her point even if the way she'd won it left a bitter taste in her mouth. “So can we come to an agreement on a transfer for the Chosen I’m requesting?”

  “I think that is possible.”

  Minu was instantly suspicious. Jacob never gave in that easily, especially when he was on firm ground for a decision that would negatively affect her. “Just like that?”

  “Sure, just like that.” She nodded and started to get up. “If you can do me one little favor.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said I'd naturally do the First among the Chosen a favor.” This time he nodded and smiled. “As long as it is within my power.”

  “I need a recon done on a world.”

  “With all due respect, First, I haven't done that sort of work in years. I don't even have an official team anymore.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then I'm sure there are a dozen scout teams that could handle that request.”

  “There are, if we had a way to get to the world through the Portal network.”

  “Oh.” Minu understood now. “Can't you just ask Lilith to do the recon for you? She is Chosen, after all.”

  Minu's daughter had been granted five gold stars in command branch upon her arrival at Bellatrix, her new home. It was with the hopes that it would make her easier to control. Unfortunately for that plan, Lilith was all but uncontrollable, even by her mother. Of course Jacob had tried to force the Kaatan class starship away from her, and nearly paid with his life. The Kaatan and Lilith were as close to one as a machine and a human could become.

  “She does not want to go to the world I have requested she scout.”

  Minu lifted and eyebrow and Jacob shrugged. “Did she give a reason?”

  “She said simply she is not allowed.”

  “By whom.”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn't be forced to ask you for this favor.”

  “Okay, I'll ask her. But you need to understand that I can't order her to do anything either.”

  “Even though she's your daughter?”

  “Yes. She is her own woman, and has been since she was ten subjective years old.”

  “Like mother, like daughter?” Minu looked for a sign of insult in his words, but instead found a grudging admiration.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jacob nodded then shook his head. “I'll give you this. You are the toughest bitch I've ever known.”

  Minu smiled a predator’s smile.

  “Your father would be proud.”

  “Thank you, sir.” And she meant it. “I'll see what I can do.”

  “Then I will approve the transfer.”

  He was in too good of a mood, and Minu couldn't resist. “Now I have something to tell you.”

  “Oh, I can hardly wait!” His laughter was genuine.

  “I'm going to need a few months off.”

  “Well, you certainly have a shitload of accumulated leave. May I ask why?”

  “Certainly. I'm pregnant.”

  She’d gotten him, and she knew it. He looked like he'd been felled by an axe handle. “Are you serious? Really? How did that happen?”

  “I had assumed a grown man like yourself would understand the basic process.”

  He turned a little red, then broke into a grin and laughed. “Lilith gets a little brother or sister? Well, congratulations to you and Aaron both! And may the fates help us all if this kid is half as precocious as your first one is.”

  Minu stopped outside Jacob's Steven’s Pass office to quickly send a text message to Cherise about the approved personnel transfers. Just as she put away her Kaatan tablet computer, the little implant behind her ear chirped.

  “Hi Lilith,” she subvocalized. With the implant it wasn't necessary to actually speak to be heard.

  “Hello mother. There is a problem. They have lost contact with Pip and his expedition to Romulus.”

  “That was today? I'd completely forgotten.” Once Minu had verified she was pregnant, a lot of things had slipped her mind, at least temporarily.

  “Yes, they departed Remus fourteen hours ago and set down on Romulus. They were exploring the thermal vents. Two hours ago, I lost all telemetry from their pressure suits.”

  “No warning or communications?”

  “Nothing. I have ruled out accidents. Bellatrix primary star is quiet just now, there is no sign of meteor activity, and no other star ships in the vicinity. The Rasa pilot of the shuttle has had no more contact as well.”

  “Have you tried intense sensor scans?”

  “The planetoid’s active stealth network continues to defeat my scans. I am afraid that perhaps some automated defenses have been triggered.”

  “Is that possible in an old installation?”

  “If it is indeed manufactured by the People, which is not outside the realm of possibility.”

  “I'm heading for the factory.”

  Less than an hour later, she and Aaron were both jogging out onto the factory’s small tarmac and towards a knot of feverish activity. The prototype for the Phoenix shuttle squatted there with a dozen ground c
rew rushing to finish prepping it to fly. “How soon can we get off the ground?” Aaron demanded of the crew chief as soon as they were within earshot.

  “We didn't expect to ever fly this thing any time soon,” the man warned him, “aside from saving many of the systems and basic diagnostics, it is in identical shape to when you flew it last year.”

  “Will it hold up?” Minu asked him, fixing closures on her flight suit and shifting the equipment bag to a more comfortable position on her shoulder.

  “It's the same as the production Phoenix, with a few minor differences.” He turned to the crew chief again. “I asked how long?”

  “We've almost finished recharging the EPC.” He still looked reluctant. Aaron stopped and grabbed the man by his heavy protective vest.

  Despite the fact that her husband was a good twenty centimeters shorter than the crew chief, he was built like a squat Hercules. Aaron routinely pressed two hundred kilos, and his arms were bigger than Minu's thighs.

  “Ten minutes, sir,” the man stammered.

  “Get it done!” Aaron snapped and let him go. “We're going to start the pre-flight checklist.”

  Ten minutes later to the second, the ground crew rushed away from the Phoenix, dragging power and data cables, while Aaron spun up the gravitic drive and taxiied them away from the hanger. Two men were nearly swept off their feet by the swirling gravity wash from the power shuttle’s drives.

  “Here we go,” Aaron said and engaged the internal compensator.

  Minu felt the familiar tingle of an artificial gravity field surge through her body. A second later the Phoenix jumped into the air and rocketed straight up. The shuttle's new generation, hybrid ion drive screamed a song of finely tuned high technology.

  “You didn't request permission to take off.”

  “They can fine me,” he said as he nosed the craft upwards, breaking the speed of sound before they passed ten thousand meters.

  Minu got on the radio and went through the formalities as Aaron mumbled. “My friends might be in danger, fuck the rules.”

  Once she'd filed the belated flight plan she turned to her husband, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Gregg emailed, he has a platoon of Rangers standing by a Phoenix at Ft. Jovich if we need them.”

  Aaron nodded.

  “He said he can have them up there in under an hour,” she said.

  “Let's hope we don't need them.” He worked with the controls for a minute. “Isn't Faye due in only a couple weeks?”

  “Yeah,” Minu agreed, “but he's Chosen.” They both nodded, understanding his dedication to his duty.

  The shuttle rocketed upwards so fast that the air turned to iridescent streamers of plasma across the windscreen similar to the effects of reentry. A part of Aaron’s mind noted when they made it to orbit five minutes faster than they ever had before.

  Minu was also aware he was pushing the prototype dangerously. Aaron had called it a kludge once before; a collection of ideas all holding hands and temporarily agreeing to cooperate. She hoped they’d continue to cooperate until they were back on solid ground.

  As soon as they were safely in orbit, Minu started using the radio. “Pip, Kal'at, this is Minu aboard Phoenix 001, do you read us? Over.”

  She continued to make the call every five minutes as they broke orbit and made for Romulus. Once they were in space, the shuttle's speed was limited only by the power of its drive and ability to protect human passengers from the massive G forces.

  Lacking a gravitic lens drive like the Kaatan, it could only use the ion propulsion system, distantly related to the impulse drive the Kaatan used. Minu watched the navigation data closely. It wasn't that she doubted her husband; it was only that flying manually meant that an extra set of eyes could make the difference.

  He pushed the mid-course braking maneuver as closely as he dared. Minu was just about to say something when he flipped them over and began thrusting backwards to kill their momentum.

  It was a carefully controlled maneuver; Romulus was several orders of magnitude smaller than Bellatrix and moving in a relatively quick orbit. A moving target.

  With no atmosphere to factor in, Aaron brought the shuttle straight down. Minu caught herself gripping the arms of the co-pilot seat unconsciously as they fell toward the moon tail first, riding a column of ionized plasma.

  “That is an aggressive flight path,” Lilith spoke into her ear like a conscience.

  “He's a good pilot.”

  “He is that.” Minu smiled a little under the stress of the approach. Her daughter didn't offer praise lightly.

  As the ground loomed, Aaron flared the shuttle and fired its maneuvering rockets to kill the last bit of velocity, bringing them down less than a dozen meters from the other Phoenix shuttle.

  “Rasa pilot, has there been any contact with the team?” Minu knew the most likely answer but needed to ask anyway.

  “Chosen shuttle, there have been no signals.”

  “Understood. Please transmit their last known location and continue to monitor while we go EVA and conduct a visual search.” In the rear of the cabin Aaron already had the suit locker open and was laying out two pressure suits.

  During the formation of the Rangers, Minu had made zero gravity and vacuum operation part of their basic training. She'd spent hundreds of hours in both standard issue pressure suits and the heavily armored version the scouts and Rangers employed. Donning the complicated suits was second nature to her by this point. Even with the head start Aaron began with, Minu quickly finished and went to help him verify his connections. “Been a long time since I wore one of these,” he commented as he fit the limp plastic helmet over his head.

  “Like riding a bike,” she said as she examined the door controls.

  “I never learned.”

  Unlike the production model, the prototype was not fitted with an airlock. Instead they simply depressurized the entire cabin. It would have taken almost five minutes to pump the air out. Noting that there were ample reserves of oxygen, Minu just spilled the atmosphere into space through relief valves. With a roar of escaping air, the cabin was in vacuum in less than ten seconds. “Let’s go find them,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  March 6th, 534 AE

  Maintenance Access, Unknown Facility, Bellatrix Moon Romulus

  Minu walked around the pentagon-shaped outline in the rock. It was now a clearly defined mechanically cut line in the stone, unlike the hinted outline that Pip had spotted. Aaron stood a meter away using his hand-held scanner to examine the area. “No sign of them within a kilometer,” he reported. “Beyond that the planet’s stealth field is interfering with the scans.”

  “They're not up here,” Minu concluded. Just like Pip she found the button in only another minute, and just like him she used the same fearless curiosity the Chosen looked for and pressed it. With a rumble the five sided elevator began to descend.

  “Got it,” she said and stepped onto the elevator. Aaron trotted over and joined her before it had gone down a meter. Not wanting to start a collection of rescue craft on the surface, Minu quickly opened her radio to the shuttle frequency. “Rasa shuttle, we have located an entrance and are descending. We anticipate LOS any minute. We are not to be considered overdue for,” she consulted her suit’s air stores before replying, “two hours.”

  “Acknowledged,” the pilot replied. “I will monitor this—” The last part of his sentence was cut off suddenly as a hatch closed over the top of the descending lift.

  “At least we know they didn't get blown up,” Aaron said in the darkness.

  Minu reached up and activate her suit light as did Aaron. The wall of the elevator was nearly glass smooth, cut from the living rock of the mountain around them. The lights created kaleidoscope patterns as they moved steadily downward.

  “At least they hadn't been blown up when they took the elevator.” She triggered her implant and spoke. “Lilith, can you read me?”

  There was no response. That gave creden
ce to her daughter’s hypothesis that the installation belonged to the People. They would know how to block the type of quantum signals sent by the tiny implant. She'd communicated with her daughter instantaneously over light-years before. The Kaatan was orbiting the moon nearby and now she couldn't reach her. I hope Lilith doesn't begin bombarding the moon!

  “You try the implant?” Aaron asked.

  “Just did. We're cut off.”

  Aaron glanced up at the retreating hatch then down at the floor. Minu couldn't help but notice how he glanced at her stomach before going back to stare at the wall.

  “I'm only two days pregnant, you know?” His cheeks turned a surprising shade of red. “Are you embarrassed?”

  He shook his head but the blush intensified so he shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

  “Good grief, why? We've been married for five years! We already have one kid, albeit by accident.”

  “I know, it's a weird reaction, it doesn't make any sense at all.” He laughed and shook his head some more. “I just feel… naughty!”

  “Did you just say that?” They both laughed long and hard. Then it was Minu's turn to blush as she recalled the night of debauchery when they conceived. It was rather naughty, in a morally sanctioned sort of way. “We can do some more naughty things when we get back home, you know?”

  “Consider that a date.” Even though his demeanor was more relaxed, Minu could still sense an extended aura of protectiveness about her man. He would have dived on a bomb to save her before. Now she thought he would fight through a hundred monsters with his bare hands, and then jump on a bomb to save her. There's no hope for us if this is another girl!

  The lift moved downward for five minutes before they were suddenly in the open of a large room, riding a pentagon shaped hoverfield powered platform through open space. “Oof,” she whispered and reached out to grab Aaron. Her pilot husband was his normal unshakable self, leaning out to glance down to try and see how far down it went.

  “Ground a few meters below,” he announced.

  In less than a minute, the lift gently settled to the floor.

  Minu stepped off the slight rise and played the light mounted on her chest around. The room was cylindrical, five meters on a side and tapered upwards until it became the bottom of the shaft they'd just descended through. Like that shaft, the room was a glass bottle carved from the volcanic basalt of the mountain's heart. “Door over here,” Aaron called. Minu took one last look around and turned to see what he'd found.