by A. C. Ellas
“Too bad this isn’t a sci-fi holo. Then, we could just ignore physics.”
Something’s afoot. Every Owl-class frigate in the fleet has been summoned to Hevetich, including Laughing Owl. Astrogator Cai and Captain Steele arrive prepared for anything, but they don’t expect the mission Admiral Nbuntu hands to them.
Humanity may be ready to strike back at the aggressive Rels, but Cai thinks the plan has more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese, and it’s up to the strategic mind of his husband to salvage the situation yet again.
With the war hanging in the balance and an admiral breathing down their necks, will Nick and Cai manage to complete their mission and take the fight to the enemy?
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The Owl Initiative
Copyright © 2016 A.C. Ellas
ISBN: 978-1-4874-0384-3
Cover art by Carmen Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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The Owl Initiative
Astrogator Series Book Seven
By
A.C. Ellas
Chapter One: Earth Orbit
Flat on his back, Cai stared at the ceiling as he allowed his leg to relax. He wasn’t given but a moment to rest before his torturer commanded, “Heel slides. Twenty of them.”
He concentrated on the position of his kneecap, keeping it pointed straight up as he slid his heel up the bed. It hurt. Unbelievably so. Cai persisted anyhow. When the foot was flat to the pad he was on, he slid it the other way, allowing the muscles to relax but still keeping the knee up. Only nineteen more times, and then Si-el will devise another means of torturing me. He blithely ignored the fact that Si-el was working from a stored set of physical therapy instructions and not just inventing these exercises on the fly. With all this marvelous technology, can’t they come up with some better way to heal a knee?
“It’s not the knee; it’s the muscles around the knee that are the problem,” Si-el replied.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Cai muttered as he repeated the exercise.
“Stop torturing your poor adjunct,” Nick suggested from the doorway. “Before he charges you with adjunct abuse.”
“There’s no such crime. Or if there is, it’s lumped in with self-flagellation.” Cai rolled his head to look at his husband. The man was dressed in the dark grey of the Space Corps semiformal uniform, with the gold and black rank insignia of a ship’s captain. “I thought you were heading Earth-side?”
“I am. After I make sure you’re okay.” Nick smiled.
“I’ll be fine,” Cai protested, trying not to grunt and swear as a lance of pain shot through his knee because he’d done the exercise improperly. “I’ll stay here and let Si-el torture me.”
“So it’s self-flagellation if you torture him but actual torture if he does it to you?”
“Of course!” Cai did the exercise right this time. “Ten?”
“That was seven,” Si-el replied firmly.
Cai sighed. “He doesn’t even let me cheat.”
“I’ll be back in a few days with Evie and Mom.” Nick paused, shook his head. “You sure you don’t mind me being gone that long?”
“Nick, the only thing I mind are these twice daily torture sessions I’m being put through.” Cai gave a mock glare then smiled at the worry he saw in Nick’s eyes. “I’ll be fine, really. Besides, you said you’d show me the unicorns!”
Nick grinned at that. “I remember. I got the new implant this morning.” Nick had gotten the first implant, an addition to his dataport, before the Brahe mission some time back. It had stopped functioning shortly after that mission, and Cai still wasn’t sure why. At the time, it hadn’t seemed that important, and he hadn’t pushed Nick to get it replaced, until that incident with the Guild chief on Hevetich. Even then, they had waited until the new, improved model had become available. With luck, this one would last longer. Cai would complain mightily to the manufacturer if it didn’t—the blasted device cost a full month’s pay, not that he did much of anything with his paychecks.
Cai tested it again. He watched himself through another repetition of the heel-slide exercise, seen through Nick’s eyes. “It’s still working,” Cai said, satisfied. “That was ten.”
“Yes,” said Si-el. “Ten more.”
Cai sighed dramatically and waved a hand in the air. “Go, my dear. Have a good time. Try to think of me, trapped in here with this torturer...”
Nick laughed. “See you in three. Promise.” He blew Cai a kiss before ducking back out of the room. With a soft sigh, Cai returned to his exercises. But his thoughts and his heart went with Nick.
Three days with no company other than his own six hadn’t done much for his temper. The implant had worked, and Cai had enjoyed seeing mountains and trees even more than he’d enjoyed the unicorns, to the point where he’d been forced to release the contact with Nick. It was too much. He would never set foot on a planet again, not so long as he was an Astrogator. Most times, that didn’t bother him, but the raw wilderness of Nick’s home was just too much for Cai, emotionally. Planet-sickness he dubbed it. Not homesickness, because he didn’t recall ever having a home, but it was related.
Feeling irritable and out of sorts, Cai rubbed his aching knee as he studied the console, waiting for Nick’s signal. Nick wasn’t late, far from it, there were several hours to go before Cai could realistically expect Nick’s call. Realizing that he couldn’t speed time by staring at the console, Cai stood up, hobbled across the room to the couch, picked up a book and flopped himself on the faux-leather cushions. He looked at the book he’d randomly selected from the pile. Strategies of the First Q’Kathi War. He’d gotten this book for Nick; it was to be his birthday present. Vaguely curious about this volume that Nick had been interested in, he opened the book to a random page.
One thing contemporary historians fail to take into account when considering how strategies were developed by the War Leader is that the Rovania did not perceive the world as humans do. Humans are a primarily visual species, but the Rovania had poor eyesight by most accounts. The primary sense of the Rovania appears to have been scent, and certain strategies, when considered with the sensory differences in mind, suddenly make sense. Furthermore, since the Rovania could see in the dark as well as they could in more luminous settings, attacking in the dead of night without the use of artificial light also makes sense.
Cai shook his head and reread the paragraph. First, the author stated that Rovania had bad eyesight. Then, he showed how Rovani eyesight was superior to humans. “You can’t have it both ways,” he growled at the book, as if it could answer him. He set the book down, hoping that Nick would enjoy it at least. He gla
nced at the stack, and the next book floated up and over to him. The book was heavy and Cai had trouble controlling it, but he managed. Once he had the book in hand, he released his mental grip on it. He looked at it. The Iliad—the copy Nick had given him. He opened it to the first page.
Mῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί’ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε’ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προί̈αψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεί̈δης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
There was a flow to the Greek that was entirely lacking in English. He wasn’t entirely sure of his pronunciation on some of the words, but it wasn’t like there were any scholars of classical Greek literature waiting to pounce on him. “Sing the wrath, Goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles,” he murmured, translating the first line without needing to look at the English text on the facing page. “An accursed, destructive wrath, which for the Achaeans caused countless woes. Or should that be, wrath which caused countless woes for the Achaeans?”
That’s the problem with trying to translate the Greek, Cai realized. It doesn’t translate directly. It can’t. He was two lines in and already questioning his own translation. Homer’s word choice was so careful. He chose words not only for their meaning, but also for their sound. Rhymes in Greek didn’t rhyme in English. Alliteration in Greek wasn’t alliterative in English. Greek was an accented language, and where the stress fell in a word made a difference to the sound.
Tri-ess set a mug of hot tea on the table for him, and he finally relaxed and just got into the text, reading the Greek and doing his best, utterly ignoring the translation and allowing that most ancient bard, Homer, to take him away to a distant time and place.
The chiming tones of Nick’s call, therefore, took him completely by surprise, wrapped up as he was in Achilles’ well-justified anger at Agamemnon. He set the book down and rubbed his eyes as he sat up and accepted the call.
“We’re leaving the house,” Nick told him. “We should be at Orbit Control in half an hour.”
“I’ll have the shuttle ready for you,” Cai replied.
“See you soon. Love you.” Nick signed off.
Unwilling to let Nick get the last word like that, Cai reached out and touched Nick’s implant. Love you, too, he sent. He stood up, stretched and called for his adjuncts. He would only use two of them for something this basic. They brought him the bowl of raw Synde; as he usually did, he paused to savor the scent of it, honey and orange, sweet and spicy. He drank. He could feel the drug hitting his system, the sudden rush of expanding consciousness as if his skull were suddenly too small to contain his brain.
He walked into the Chamber and settled into his acceleration couch. It was extremely comfortable—it had been molded to fit his body and was adaptive to his moment-to-moment needs as well as any changes in his body over time. Right now, it offered the perfect amount of support to his still-aching knee. Cai stopped thinking about the chair as the ceiling opened and the crystal array descended. With a rush of power and a feeling of rightness, he left his physical body and became himself, his ship-self.
He had already performed his daily checks and maintenance, so he wasted no time on that and turned his attention to the shuttle prepped in the launch bay. He’d gotten two new shuttles from admiralty, a sort of shuttle-scout hybrid that really did have the best features of both its parents. He had taken to playing with them at every opportunity; it not only relieved his boredom, it improved his remote-piloting skills. That was necessary since he couldn’t just hop into the pilot’s seat and take the shuttle down in person. He ignored the fact that there were two dozen qualified pilots among his crew, more if he counted the officers with pilot certification, like Nick.
Laughing Owl was in a parking orbit adjacent to Orbit Control Station, tethered to a station tug. The refit to turn him from the tramp freighter he’d pretended to be back into the frigate he was had been completed over a week ago. There were some new things, too, like the shuttles, and a few new devices in the space between his hulls. He didn’t know what those devices were for; he’d been told that they’d be explained at Hevetich, where he was ordered to go once the crew’s shore leave was over. They got vacations. He didn’t.
Chapter Two: Shuttle Flight
The preflight on the shuttle done, he launched it and contacted Orbit Control Station, which was distinct from the Orbit Control Base, which was on the ground, though both were just referred to as Orbit Control since the station was geosynchronous to the base and linked by a unified command structure. To increase the confusion, it was also sometimes called Space Corps Command, which wasn’t accurate since Space Corps headquarters was nowhere near any spaceport, which Cai just figured was typical. Why have Space Corps HQ anywhere near what they commanded? Cai wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn they had buried HQ under a mountain somewhere in the name of security.
“Orbit Control, this is Laughing Owl. Shuttle Aristophanes en route to base for passenger pickup.”
“Laughing Owl, shuttle Ariston... Arista... shuttle is cleared for approach and landing, assigned to pad Delta Eighteen.”
Cai focused his attention on the shuttle. It was a responsive machine, much more maneuverable than he was. He enjoyed flying it but didn’t indulge in any wild acrobatics. Orbit Control would have a litter of kittens if he did anything to foul up the carefully orchestrated flight paths of the hundreds of shuttles that went between the two control points on a daily basis. Instead, he flew it as precisely as he could, dropping it from orbit to the exact center of pad Delta Eighteen without a single course correction. Once his shuttle was on the ground and secured from flight mode, he opened the outer airlock door and lowered the lift.
He had never liked the old shuttle design. Having a spacecraft with a single hatch that opened directly to vacuum was, in his opinion, stupid and dangerous. He liked airlocks. Airlocks saved time, energy and lives. He surveyed the base through the shuttle’s sensors, checking out the other shuttles, admiring a few scouts—he’d wanted a scout ever since Brahe. He’d requested a scout so many times that he was the first frigate to get to play with the new hybrid shuttles. According to Admiral Nbuntu’s aide, the admiral was hoping the two shuttles would stop the endless requests.
Cai hadn’t decided. He hadn’t gotten to use the shuttles in action yet. If they fought as well as they played and flew, they’d do admirably, without entirely filling his launch bay like a scout would. He’d crammed two scouts in his belly for the Brahe mission, and he still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to stuff them in there, given that he’d also carried a full wing of two dozen fighters, an equal number of drones and a pair of shuttles.
He wondered if a frigate launching a scout could be analogous to giving birth, but he stopped speculating about scouts when the shuttle’s sensors picked up an approaching hovercart. There were lots of hovercarts around the base, and they whizzed by all the time, but this one was heading straight for him. The cart came to a stop directly before his lowered lift and settled onto the ground with a phoomph as it released its air cushion. If anyone had been standing beside the cart, they’d have been knocked tail over teakettle by the blast.
“Can I recommend some anti-gas medication?” Cai asked, unable to resist. It had sounded like an enormous fart.
Evie’s laugh peeled out in response to his query, and she swung out of the cart and onto the lift in a single, smooth motion. “Hi, Cai,” she caroled. She then turned and helped another woman, this one older, though not yet old, out of the cart. The woman looked up at the shuttle and nodded a little.
/> Nick brought up the rear, carrying several bags and a basket. “I don’t think you could give that thing a big enough dose to help, Cai,” he said as he thumbed the lift controls.
The lift ascended smoothly. The hovercart whined, lifted up, wobbled twice then finally stabilized itself enough to whizz away. Cai, for one, was glad to see it go. The last thing he needed was a farting hovercart phoomphing up and down his central corridors. His passengers hesitated at the top of the lift, looking into the admittedly small space of the airlock.
“Please enter,” Cai said smoothly. “There is enough space for all of you.” Since the floor space of the lock was identical to the platform of the lift, that was technically true. It just looked smaller because it was enclosed.
“If you’re sure.” Evie stepped in, still supporting the other woman, who didn’t really look like she needed the support, but she didn’t object to the help, either.
“Are you sure?” The woman, who had to be Karen Gillespie, asked.
“Cycle the lock, Cai,” Nick requested. “No reason to squeeze, we’ve got time.”
“Very well.” Cai closed the outer hatch, spun it locked, equalized his pressures and opened the inner hatch. “Welcome aboard the Aristophanes, ladies. Please take any seat you wish.”
“Aristophanes?” Karen Gillespie grinned from ear to ear as she entered the main cabin. “You named your shuttle after an ancient Greek comedic playwright?”
“It seemed appropriate for a shuttle belonging to an extinct humor-inflicted symbol of wisdom.” Cai closed the inner airlock door, opened the outer hatch again to admit Nick and his bags. “What are you lugging?” he asked privately.
