by Shawn Jones
“Clearly you can turn them over to Kim.”
“She’s not imaginary.” Cort ran through back over the last few minutes with Rand. “Why did you comm me, Rand?”
“I don’t know, Gramps. Maybe I wanted to help put your head on straight. Kim can’t get all the credit for fixing you.” Rand smiled sadly and asked, “Did you love Clare?”
“Not the way she wanted me to.”
“I guess that pretty much sums it up. Goodnight, Gramps.” Rand disconnected before Cort could respond.
“Let’s go home, Zandra.”
When Cort walked into his quarters, there was a blanket and pillows on the couch in the front room. Zandra sniffed them and looked up at her Alpha. Just then, the door to the bedroom opened and Kim said, “Zandra. Come.”
The wolf looked at Cort with just hint of confusion before walking into the bedroom. Kim closed the door and left Cort alone.
Eighteen
Scorpion Station, Ares Federation
“It’s beautiful.” Kim Point was amazed at the open space. She felt almost like she was back on Earth. The first geodesic dome was finished and filled with air. At five kilometers in diameter and two and a half kilometers high, it was the largest structure ever built by humanity, and Kim was the first person to stand inside it. Coke and Zandra had cycled through the airlock with her, and when she told them to run, they covered themselves in fine red dust within minutes. Rand and Chief cycled through next, followed by Doctors Black and Verne, with Verne’s wolf. The small group had arranged for an hour alone in the dome before the engineers came in to run their final tests on the struts and nodes of the massive structure.
“Well Kim, what do you think?” Rhodes asked.
Kim wished Cort were here with her. He would feel free for once. Maybe. But maybe he would just think it was a bigger cage. “I am going to run for a few minutes. Then I think I will take our wolves back to Argyre she said and trotted off.
Earth
Dar and Lex were outside waiting for Cort when he stepped off Speral’s ship. “How are you, Cort? Dar asked as he shook the larger man’s hand. Directing Cort to Lex, he said, “Cort, this is Lex Sike. I owe him a lot. He’s not you, granted. But he does okay in a pinch.”
Cort reached out for Lex’s hand. “It’s good to meet you, Lex. Thank you for everything you have done for us.”
“Thank you, sir.” Lex felt a little starstruck and the pauses in his words showed it. “It is, it is an honor, sir. Uh, can I, uh, show you around?”
“I would like that very much Lex, but first I need an hour or so alone with Dar. Can you arrange that?” Cort asked.
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“You do need to talk to everyone here though, Cort. Lex can get them together for that. But a lot of these people believe in you, and believe we are alive because of you. It’s not every day one has the chance to meet a legend.”
“I suppose.” Cort sent a message to Speral on the ship.
--
“Cort, let me start,” Dar said a few minutes later, “I do not blame you. I was scared this would happen, but I don’t blame you.”
They were sitting in Dar’s office, just inside tunnel three at the edge of the great man made cavern. Cort remembered the months he lived here with Sköll. As he took a drink of the whiskey Dar had poured them both, Cort said, “I blame me, Dar. I’ve been through it enough that I should have known. I should never have kissed her. It gave her hope.”
“You are right, you should have known. But you didn’t. That doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It just means you are human. When it comes to war, you are truly Ares himself, I believe. But when it comes to women, well, you have a penis. That makes you a moron.” Dar sipped his own whiskey before he continued. “We all are. It’s part of being a man. But it’s good too, Cort. If women and men could figure each other out, life would be very boring. Hell, to be honest I question whether man would have invented the wheel if he wasn’t trying to impress a woman. Some Neanderthal wanted to copulate, so he impressed a hairy ape woman.”
“I killed your granddaughter, Dar. Why are you making jokes?”
“I am not making jokes. I am coping. There is a difference. You did not kill her, Cort. Loving you killed her.” Dar took another drink. “You want serious? Fine. I am glad we are in the middle of a wasteland. I am glad that Beards and his minions and every damned human on this continent died. I do not blame you Cort, I blame Atlantica. I have not shed a single tear since you told me what happened up on the surface. They deserved it. You were a commodity to them, as was Sköll. All they had to do was leave us alone and Clare and Kay would still be alive. They deserved to be wiped from the face of Earth because you have had to kill again. I know you are Ares himself. But had they not forced your hand, you would have connected a few modules in the middle some Martian plain and lived out your life in peace. The way you wanted to after you left here. So to quote my tenth great grandfather, fuck them. Fuck them and everything they stood for. I’m going to relish every minute of rebuilding this continent on their shattered bones.”
“Thank you for that, Dar.” Cort didn’t look up from his drink. He couldn’t.
Argyre
“It was amazing Cort! I ran in the same direction for nearly half an hour! Coke and Zandra were so dirty it took me another thirty minutes to rinse them off. The dome is incredible, Baby.”
“I wish I had been there. Why did you name it Scorpion Station?”
“The top-down view of the plans reminds me of one. Rand liked it because his mother’s sign was Scorpio.” Kim paused and added, “Cort, when will you see it? You’ve been gone a while.”
“I’ll see you and the wolves before I see the dome.”
“Really? When?” Kim asked. The way her eyes widened and contracted belied the even tone of her voice.
“How about now?” Cort peeled his balaclava back as he walked into their quarters. Kim turned away from her monitor and jumped up, spilling her coffee as she jumped into his arms. Cort dropped his grip and wrapped his arms around Kim’s waist as she wrapped her legs around his FALCON covered torso.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?” she asked after momentarily breaking their kiss. The wolves were busy bumping their muzzles into Cort’s thighs and sniffing his body armor.
“Where would the fun be in that?” He smiled.
An hour later she asked him why his was back.
“Lap’s people won’t help us develop the weapons. We are on our own about that. They also won’t give us any tech that they fear we may use to develop a weapon. So we are more or less back at square one.”
“Not really. Our people have been pretty busy. They might not help us make the actual weapons, but Speral has dumped zettabytes of data to us. Most of it is about the infected planets prior to takeover, but we have learned a lot about how the crystal grows.”
“Okay, so what have you come up with?”
“An apology.” Kim’s answer seemed sheepish.
“Wait? You’re apologizing? For what?”
“We have to go to at least one of the planets and physically retrieve crystal.”
Cort remembered waking up on the couch the day after they had this conversation before. He was not going to repeat that mistake. “Go on.”
Kim sensed his apprehension as she answered. “The planets convert to liquid crystal.”
“We knew that.”
“No. I mean they are completely liquid crystal. They seem to convert the entire mass of the planet to solid crystal first. Once it’s solid, the crystal converts to liquid. At that point, it is a non-Newtonian fluid.”
“You mean like the corn-starch stuff you can walk on?”
“Exactly. And it’s so viscous that we would have to hit it with a small moon to eject some of the crystal from the planet’s mass.”
“Which takes us back to the black hole stuff. Is it feasible?” Cort asked as he sat on the floor between the two wolves.
“No. Not without al
ien tech. We can create them easily enough. The trick is collapsing them. We can’t collapse one that is big enough to suit our purposes.”
Cort sighed without responding.
“Cort, can I change the subject?”
“When have you ever asked permission to speak your mind?”
“Could you give this up?”
Cort didn’t have to ask what Kim meant. “A year ago I could have. Before the aliens. But not now. That’s actually why I agreed to come to this time. I thought I would be alone here and Sköll and I would live out our lives in peace. Contrary to popular belief, no real warrior is a man of war. We only pick up our weapons to protect the things or people or ideals that are important to us. The warriors I have known dream of peace and of being left alone. We would be just as happy as explorers. Death may be the commodity we trade in, but it’s not who we are.”
Cort’s eyes changed and became distant in a way that Kim had come to recognize meant he was reliving some long past moment. “We fight because we have to, not because we want to. But when the time comes to fight, we do so with all of our being. So why did you ask me that?”
“I was going through the data we got from Speral. There’s a planet that was going be seeded, but the crystal started expanding in its direction so they left it alone. It is so beautiful Cort, and it is almost identical to Earth. It has ten continents, and its evolutionary stage is very early. It has small dinosaurs, Cort.” She went to the coffee machine and poured a cup into a ceramic mug Cort had given her. Turning around, she leaned against the counter and held the cup with both hands. “I don’t know. I was just dreaming, I guess.”
“Could we have the whole planet to ourselves? It would be nice until the crystal got to us.” Cort thought about Kim’s words. “Wait. Did the crystal change directions, or did it start expanding in an additional direction?”
“I don’t know. Why?” Kim knew she had lost the moment. Her warrior was back.
“If it changed directions, I want to know why.” Cort’s mind was stimulated now. “And I think I can get you some crystal without you giving me lip about it. Find out about the crystal changing directions, then call a conference. Include Speral in it. I’m going to go talk to Doc Black. Zandra, come.”
Kim kissed Cort as he walked out the door with the big wolf right behind him. Coke whimpered as the two left. “I feel your pain, buddy,” Kim said.
--
Doctor Black listened to Cort’s idea before saying, “Yes, it would work. We can place the sensors at several depths all around the target planet. If I design the probes right, we will be able to collect data until the sensors are completely compromised. Crystal will grow through different substances at different rates, so I can probably fabricate some sort of a platform that will let you remain safe while collecting a sample.”
“Okay, get to work on it. Don’t worry about the conference. I will make your excuses for now.”
“Okay. This is a good idea, Cort. It shouldn’t have taken so long for one of us to come up with it.”
“I know. I’ll talk to you soon, Doc,” Cort said as he left the lab with Zandra in tow. Back in his office, he sat down and started planning. Kim commed him to let him know what she had found out and that everyone was ready. He logged on and immediately spoke to Speral.
“Speral, according to your records, the crystal growth changed directions after it arrived in the system you have designated as Rosok. Why did it change directions?”
“Cort Addison, the Rosok system is an independent system that has resisted joining into any kind of agreement with the Collaborative Government, so I cannot answer your question. I speculate that the dominant species of that system has developed a weapon which is effective against the crystal.”
“Tell me about that species, Speral,” Cort said.
“Cort Addison, it is a sentient species. That is all the information we have in our records. I will supply you with those records. Three attempts have been made to contact the species, but in every case we were destroyed by the system’s inhabitants.”
“Get me those records as soon as possible, Speral. One more thing, do you still have your entry data for the system?”
“Cort Addison, yes we do. We have four data points within the system. Our original entry to the system was at the gravity-neutral point near the perihelion of the system’s single gas giant. We have data for that point as well as the three points where our vessels were destroyed.”
“How long does it take them to respond and destroy your ships?”
Speral closed her eyes and studied data as the others watched. “Gods, I would love to be able to do that,” Rhodes said.
“Cort Addison, the response time from system entry until measurable response varied, with that time decreasing with each deeper penetration into the system. Based on our data, the dominant species of the system uses a tachyonic particle net to detect system incursions. Because of the nature of that detection system and weapon response times, the system uses a sublight kinetic weapon system.”
Mike Rage asked, “Speral, why didn’t you use your defensive systems against the weapons?”
“Mike Rage, our defensive systems were not able to repel the weapons. I do not know why, as the composition and design of the weapon is unknown.”
Cort asked, “Speral, did you try to contact the system before or after the crystal attempted to attack them?”
“Cort Addison, we made two attempts to contact the system inhabitants before the attempted incursion by the crystal. The final attempt was made after the crystal changed directions.”
“Speral, are you willing to revisit that system if we can ensure your safety?”
“Cort Addison, I would like to review your strategy before committing resources to that system again. What is your plan?”
“I don’t have one yet Speral, but I will soon.” Cort paused before saying, “Let’s move on for now. I took an idea to Doc Black this afternoon that he…”
The conference lasted thirty more minutes. Cort, Doctor Black, Chief Rhodes, Kim Point, and Speral all had homework to do before another conference the next day. Kim went to Cort’s office after the meeting and sat down across from him. “Do you have any ideas about this new species?” she asked.
“No good ones, but if they stopped the crystal it means one of two things: Either they know how to stop it, or the crystal doesn’t want them. Either way, we need to know the reason.”
“Yeah. Listen, Cort. I have a bad feeling about it. We are well on our way to stopping the crystal ourselves. This new species clearly wants to be left alone. I agree we need to know more, but I don’t want kick a hornets’ nest either.”
“I know, but we have to know why the crystal turned. Don’t worry though, we are a long way from making that move.”
“I’m glad to hear that at least.”
“I had a message from Doctor Black waiting for me after the meeting. He thinks he will have a set of sensors designed for us next week, and he’s already got an idea for a platform to work from, and the goal is to be ready for deployment in two weeks.”
“Do you have a target planet yet?”
“No, but I sent Speral a message asking her to find us one.”
“I hope it’s not our planet,” Kim said wistfully.
“It’s our planet now?”
“Yes. It’s our planet. Come home soon,” Kim said as she stood up. Bending over to kiss the top of his head, she asked, “I have you for two weeks, right?”
“Probably. See you in a bit.”
Cort met with Mike Rage about staffing and equipment qualifications and then commed Speral to get updates on the progress of the crystal infection. Before heading back to their quarters he took Zandra to the proving ground to run, where they ran into Jeff Pence. “Hey Jeff. How are you?”
“Good, sir. How is Earth?” Pence asked as he fell in beside Cort.
“Earth is good as well, and their dome is almost completed. It was odd being back in my cave
again, though.”
“How is Mr. Dar handling everything?” Pence asked. “I hope it’s not too personal a question, sir.”
Running and talking lent an odd cadence to their conversation, but they were both used to it so Pence didn’t think anything of the long pause before Cort answered, “He is a strong man. That’s really all I can say because he’s not ready to talk about it. But he’s staying busy and focused. It’s not often that an amateur historian gets to design his own government. I think it’s a good distraction for him.”
“How so?”
“Back on my Earth, I had an uncle who ran cattle. He lost an entire herd of good cattle once. Over a hundred head as I recall, and he told me afterwards it wasn’t the first one that bothered him, even after he knew they were all going to die. It was the last one....” Cort paused again to allow his breath and stride to synchronize. “…that died that hit him the hardest. Dar is the same. As long as he has others to worry about, he will be able to process his grief in stages. so being governor of the Earth group will be good for him.”
