Earth Song: Etude to War

by Mark Wandrey

  A cough from the door showed Selain standing there pretending to examine a control mechanism. “Yes Sarge?”

  “Loaded and awaiting your orders, commander.”

  “Very well, we’ll be down in a minute. Kal’at, I entrust my daughter to your safekeeping.”

  “I will do what I can,” he said from a short distance away. “I must admit, our species’ lack of familiar attachments would seem a loss of ours sometimes.”

  “It has its benefits,” Minu admitted, then felt tears threatening again as she turned towards the doorway. And their downsides as well. She kept the latter to herself.

  The shuttle was one of the Kaatan’s complement of craft. It was decided to use the sleek needle shaped craft instead of Aaron’s Phoenix shuttle because Lilith could better control her own shuttles remotely from orbit. Kal’at was not qualified to pilot either, so it would descend under Aaron’s competent hands and return on remote, empty.

  There was less interior room, but still more than sufficient for the small contingent riding the comfortable seats. The twelve man squad she was beginning to think of as ‘hers’ took up the rear of the passenger area, while Aaron sat in the pilot seat and she took the copilot’s chair.

  Wiggin proved to be an unusual world. Residing in a binary star system, it was intermittently baked by intense radiation storms from an aging yellow giant star, the larger of the two. The other star, a much smaller nearly red spectrum primary, acted with insidious regularity to assist by flinging off massive amounts of coronal mass ejections from the yellow giant as it passed in irregular low orbits around its twin.

  “A dangerous and unstable star system,” Lilith had observed. Minu agreed as she watched the radiation meters observing current solar activity. They would need to use personal shields while exposed on the surface.

  “Must be some valuable stuff down there to even bother mining it at all,” Aaron observed as they pulled away from the Kaatan.

  Minu’s gaze was pulled up and she gasped as she saw her daughter’s ship. Formerly as pure and shiny as a mirror, it was now marred in a dozen places by ugly burns, the result of the titanic battles she’d seen recently.

  Along the bulbous ball on one side, the hull was breached in a gash that looked like a flaming sword had taken a chunk out of the hull. Minu could see the edges of the wound were more regular, signs that the ship’s bots has cleaned the wound. But now she understood why this would not be a simple fix, even for the resourceful bots.

  “She took a beating,” Aaron nodded in response to her reaction. “I hope our daughter was not covering up the extent of the damage.”

  Minu’s head spun around. “What?”

  “I just don’t know if she’d lie like that to get us to go ahead on this mission.”

  Minu was forced to admit she didn’t know either. Her daughter was as stubborn as she was fiercely independent. Minu didn’t think she lied about her abilities; she just had a somewhat overdeveloped opinion of them. Would she lie to her mother, and commanding officer, to get her to leave and risk her life by herself? Minu just didn’t know.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter at this point,” Minu finally said. “We can’t leave the Rangers on Jumpoff for six months while we trudge across the galaxy.”

  “We also can’t leave our little friend there alone for that long either,” Aaron said and gestured over his shoulder. Among the cases of supplies was a half meter long cylinder with a shoulder strap. Inside was a very valuable being of a higher-order species who was most definitely not happy with his mode of conveyance.

  “You can stay in here like a lab animal for the next six months, or ride in this thing,” Minu had told Hodo Bapal when she’d shown him the cylinder. It was equipped with an independent life support, along with packaged foods to his liking for several weeks. What it did not have was any way to exit from the inside, and no view of the outside world.

  “This is completely unacceptable,” he’d raged until Minu relented and gave him his tiny tablet back along with some data chips. It was enough, apparently, and he consented to the portable prison.

  “I could give a shit what his majesty thinks of the accommodations,” Minu snorted. “I’ll be most happy when he’s on his way back home, and the Chosen are considerably richer for the results. It’s the least we can get from him, considering how many of our people died on that world.”

  And something else Jacob has to answer for, she thought.

  The surface of Wiggin was a swirl of blacks and browns, with a little green in places and no visible bodies of water. Minu thought it was a miracle that any life managed to survive considering the intermittent hellish radiation storms.

  Kal’at was less surprised, suggesting that life was a thing determined to always find a niche. “Perhaps life survives in caves during these radiation storms to then repopulate the surface afterwards?”

  It really didn’t matter to Minu. At least there was oxygen in the atmosphere. They would only need filter masks to take care of radioactive particles and not to provide oxygen to breathe.

  “I have a fix on the Portal,” Aaron told them just before they dropped into the upper atmosphere.

  He adjusted their descent as plasma began to swirl around the nose of the plummeting dart. In moments there were surrounded by the hellish fire of reentry.

  “I try not to think of just how old these shuttles are during reentry,” Aaron said. “How many thousands of years old is this thing, and was any sorts of metal fatigue from age ever done?”

  Aaron’s way of making conversation in moments like these bordered on a kind of macabre engineering flagellation. Minu didn’t find it very amusing most days, and the looks of shock and concern from the dozen Rangers behind them made it clear they found it even less amusing.

  Minu shot her husband a little glare and he grinned sheepishly in reply. She just shook her head and leaned back to relax during the terminal part of their reentry.

  Aaron set the shuttle down two kilometers from the planet’s only Portal. He found a level spot where a hill hid their approach and landing from the village built inevitably close to the Portal, as on most every world Minu had ever visited. The Portals were the only means of commerce, and thus the obvious place for settlements to be built.

  It only took the twelve Rangers a few minutes to unload the cases of supplies and convert them to backpacks via their integral straps and harnesses. Minu knew only too well how precious little they were carrying, considering how far they would be going. She’d been farther from home in her travels as a Chosen, though never this far from friendly space, and never without any hope of help or rescue should something go wrong.

  And then they were ready.

  “Lilith,” Minu called on her little gem communicator implanted behind her ear, “offload is complete.”

  “Acknowledged, mother. Safe journey.”

  “You too, sweetheart.”

  “Remember we can still talk with these quantum radios, regardless of how far apart we are.”

  “I won’t bother you too often.”

  “It is never a bother to hear from my mother.”

  “Thanks, it’s good to hear you say that.”

  “Tell her we love her,” Aaron whispered in her ear.

  Lilith said she’d heard, and Minu told him so.

  “Kal’at asks you to give his regards to his brother and nest mates and that he will see them soon.”

  “We will.”

  The shuttle’s ramp slid up, the door rotated closed, and it lifted off with a skin-tingling sensation from the gravitic impellers. Lilith executed a smooth 180 degree turn, and it accelerated away towards the horizon. A moment later they heard a dim sonic boom and saw a glint of silver as she arrowed the shuttle up towards orbit and out of site. They were alone.

  “My father said the journey of a thousand kilometers begins with one step,” one of the Rangers remarked.

  “I wonder what he would say about forty-seven hundred light-years?” Minu asked al
oud, and then regretted saying such a sobering thing. As she looked over the men and women she saw a mixture of resolve, concern, and trepidation. As well she should.

  “I’m not going to say this is going to be easy. Only a few humans have ever come this way before. This is dangerous territory, and we’re caught by the wrong species, we’ll have to fight, or die.

  “You soldiers represent the finest mankind has to offer. I have no fear we will make it home. Concentrate, do your jobs, and be ready for anything. That is all I can ask for.”

  “We’re ready,” Selain said. His soldiers nodded in agreement.

  “Then let’s go,” she said, and took that first step.

  Chapter 65

  June 19th, 534 AE

  Planet Wiggin, Gulla Territory

  The respirator masks were uncomfortable, and so was the heavy pack on her back. Minu kept finding herself unslinging her shock rifle to carry it instead of on her shoulder, the soreness of which it exacerbated. Worse, her lower back was hurting and that had never happened before. Of course she’d never been pregnant and in the field before either.

  “You okay dear?” Aaron asked from behind, obviously noticing her fretting over the gun.

  “Just starting to feel knocked up.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Probably going to look forward to six months from now.”

  “Did I ever tell you my mom was in labor for thirty hours?”

  “Did I ever tell you to shut the fuck up?” she asked.

  She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know he was probably grinning ear to ear.

  As soon as they set up, the sergeant sent two men to recon ahead. They were both armed with shock rifles modified with higher level optics than the standard issue. Somewhat more bulky that the other models and capable of doing pinpoint damage at extreme range. They would use their weapons and other sensors to reconnoiter the village around the Portal, just to be certain. The others were halfway there when the recon team reported in that the village was abandoned.

  “No signs of recent activity,” called one of the female members of the Ranger squad assigned to recon. “We found some equipment, probably mining gear that held date records more than five years old.”

  “Good to hear,” Minu said and ordered them to keep a high outlook, just in case. “Also set a Portal activity monitor as further security. We have three with us, might as well set this up as an extreme outpost.”

  The miniature laser communicators would monitor the Portal for activity. It would warn them if the Portal were about to come alive with inbound traffic, and also record activity for years to come. Any time another human equipped with the correct gear came through; it would upload its records to them. It was a valuable piece of their covert intelligence equipment, and the Chosen had placed hundreds of them throughout the galaxy. They’d only been located and destroyed a handful of times.

  “Acknowledged. Recon out.”

  The rest of them took a slow approach, as was standard procedure to avoid detection, and arrived at the village fifteen minutes later.

  Minu hesitated to really call it a village; the totality of it consisted of everal dozen Portal sized shipping contains modified to be living quarters, offices, labs, and storage. One acted as a combination headquarters/power distribution center. This was a working camp, not a village.

  The team spent an hour scouring the camp for anything useful, and finding nothing. Minu did find mineral samples and placed a couple in her kit bag for Chosen scientists to review later. There were some medium sized charged EPCs but they’d left with all the power they needed, so she didn’t disturb them.

  This was, after all, someone else’s territory. They weren’t on a salvage operation. Intel, on the other hand, was always on the agenda.

  The Gulla were one of the rare amphibian species, looking a bit like anorexic frogs on stilts. The living quarters were all designed to be partially flooded, and even through their respirators everything had a slightly fishy smell about it.

  Finally the men were gathering in the center of the camp near the Portal having found little of any real interest. More importantly to Minu, she’d not found a single clue as to the whereabouts of the cache her father supposedly left there.

  “It isn’t like my father,” she was telling Aaron. “I’ve found raided caches he’d left, but never any cache at all. It isn’t like there are many places here in the first place.”

  “Maybe he had to be creative because of that.” He gestured around at the little encampment. “I mean, look. It’s not like the Gulla probably don’t use every square centimeter of this place when they’re here.”

  “You have a good point.” Minu stood in the center of the square in a situation she’d found herself in many times before. She’d be on a planet in an unknown situation, faced with multiple options or decisions to make, and no clue what Chriso would have done in those situations. Frustrating would not quite describe it.

  Minu sat on and a piece of decaying broken equipment and thought. She realized she was just wasting time and reached for her Portal control rod.

  And that was when she noticed something. One of the Rangers had an instrument out and was giving it a puzzled look. Minu got up and walked over to him.

  “Is there a problem soldier?”

  “Ma’am, no – I mean, I don’t think so…”

  “You’re confusing me, son,” Minu said with a cockeyed grin.

  He looked at the instrument with a profound look of confusion.

  “Maybe you better just explain what’s going on.”

  He shrugged and showed it to her. He was running an energy scan of the area. The most prominent signal was from the Portal itself. Of course, each of the soldiers and people present provided small energy signatures as well.

  “Here’s the problem,” he said and pointed to the screen. A few meters away was a very small energy signature. It could easily have been mistaken for nothing more than a background noise. Of course, background noise did not fluctuate.

  “What exactly do you think that is?” Minu asked.

  The man stared at the screen for a minute, obviously deep in thought. “I guess if you insisted on my opinion…”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay. Then I would have to say it is some piece of equipment someone left lying around.”

  Aaron had wandered over during the exchange and was looking over their shoulders. “It’s not an overly large signature,” he added to the conversation. “If you asked me somebody left something there.”

  “My father never ceases to amaze me,” Minu mumbled. “Good find, soldier.” The man beamed, water to someone lost in the desert. Minu knew she was known to be miserly with her praise. She believed it made that she did give out much more valuable. “Aaron, score!”

  A minute later they were both examining an old dualloy footing on one of the bunkhouse containers. The container was old, the foot was much older. It was impossible what it was originally used as. It was possible to see that the Gulla re-tasked it to the current purpose.

  “There must be some sort of way into it,” Aaron said to his wife.

  She’d normally be the one down on her knees, crawling under the container looking for the cache, but her advancing pregnancy was making her husband less likely to allow her to exert herself. She wanted to stop him, but she was secretly enjoying the attention.

  Underneath the cramped space below the module, Aaron held a small light in his teeth as he examined the dualloy metal footer. It superficially resembled a simple metal column, almost an oversized I-beam. One side of the open part seemed wrong to him; his engineering background spoke of a bad angle. “It might have a hidden compartment,” he said as he worked.

  Using a free hand Aaron wiped away some of the years accumulated dust, and a thin plate fell away.

  “There we go,” he called triumphantly. Inside was a standard issue Chosen field box. They were common in caches all over the galaxy. Using his be
lt knife, Aaron popped it free from its hiding place then replaced the cover. The cache might need to be used again someday so he would log its location into his tablet later.

  Crawling back out, he handed the box to his wife who smiled and rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek. The Rangers all whooped and laughed, making him shake his head.

  It was rather unlike many of the caches she’d found from her father. No code, no locking mechanism at all on this one. About forty centimeters long, twenty wide, and ten deep, it was unremarkable.

  She popped the catch and looked inside. The last thing she was expecting were portal control rods. Definitely not fifteen of them, and most certainly not slightly glowing transparent ones.

  “What the heck?” Aaron wondered, looking over her shoulder.

  “Are those PCRs?” Selain asked.

  Minu didn’t answer, but dumped one of them into her hand. It was cool to the touch and of the same proportions as the dark metallic PCRs she was used to. For comparison she took hers from the pocket on her jumpsuit leg and looked at the two next to each other. “Sure looks like it,” she said then holstered her original rod. “So let’s see if it is.”

  She touched the rod on its base, the same as she’d activate a normal rod, and it instantly came to life. The surface went from transparent to translucent, and two rings of Concordian script appeared around one end. Again, identical to the other PCR. The script, however, was completely different. “Whoa,” she said and examined the script.

  “Can you read it?” her husband asked.

  Like many types of script that formerly meant nothing to her, these lines of floating symbols bored straight into an area of her brain she didn’t have full control of anymore. “Sort of,” she mumbled, gritting her teeth and letting the symbols rumble through her cerebellum. Incomplete connections fought with each other, none of them making sense in her conscious mind. The series of script was tantalizing and for some reason exciting.

  “I don’t know what’s special about them,” she admitted, then pointed it at the nearest portal. Unlike her other PCR, it didn’t interface.