T'aafhal Legacy 1: Ghosts of Orion

by Doug L. Hoffman

  “You said that the smaller star was more than 230AU away from the pair of K types,” said Mizuki. “It could take a month traveling in 3-space to get from A to C.”

  “That's why we retain the services of humanity's greatest experts in alter-space travel, including your mentor, Yuki Saito. They tell me that, given the long distance between the red dwarf and its companions, it should be possible to do a shallow transit through alter-space between 'em.”

  “Forgive me, TK, but that seems like an extremely short distance for an alter-space transit. Saito-san says this is possible?”

  “Both he and Rajiv Gupta have done the calculations. They hadn't thought it possible over so short a distance either, not 'till they learned about those T'aafhal particle cannon that shoot faster than the speed of light.”

  “Technically they do not exceed the speed of light, they send a particle beam skipping in and out of alter-space,” Mizuki corrected. She was, after all, an astrophysicist herself and a former student of Dr. Saito's.

  “Whatever. In any case, they say that if you carefully calculate the entry point and are really accurate with the approach vector you can do a short hop from one star to another within the system. It's this system's fairly unique geometry that makes it possible.”

  “Just how long would such a transit take, TK?” asked Billy Ray.

  “They said on the order of five or six minutes.”

  “Wow!” Bobby exclaimed. Alter-space transits usually took days or weeks.

  “Right, so you should be able to get there a couple of weeks ahead of the colonists' ship.”

  “Then I guess we had best start loading the ship. What about the rest of the crew?”

  “We'll be sending qualified candidates directly to the ship for you to interview. Chief Zackly has already signed on and can help screen the prospective spacers.”

  “Will you be coming with us, Elena?” asked Mizuki.

  “No, I am very happy right here, thank you. But I will make sure all of the course calculations done by Yuki and Rajiv are downloaded into the Peggy Sue's computer.”

  “Well people, we had best get on board then,” said Captain Vincent, smiling at his officers. “We got a lot to do and a short time to do it in.”

  Residence Level 5, Farside

  Jimmy Tosh was making his way home from working the lunch shift at Jesse's bar in the Atrium. While primarily a drinking establishment, Jesse's served an assortment of lighter Island type fare—conch salad, grilled redfish with mango chutney, chicken baked in banana leaves, and such. Though some of the customers were more interested in drinking their lunches, the tips never quite rose to the level of the evening crowd. Jimmy would be returning for an evening shift starting at six.

  A tall, slender young man with dreadlocks and mocha skin, Jimmy was a native born Jamaican, like Jesse Lowe, his employer. He professed to be a Rastafarian, as his mother had been. Indeed, his name did honor to two notable reggae musicians: Jimmy Cliff and Peter Tosh. Last name not withstanding, to Jimmy's knowledge he was not related to either. Like most reggae artists, he did have a fondness for the Rastafarian sacrament of choice—ganja.

  Strangely, the widely used term for marijuana did not originate in Jamaica; it was actually a Hindi term for hemp resin derived from ancient Sanskrit. But then the islands of the Caribbean had been a veritable multicultural stew, melding cultural influences from all over the world. Right now, Jimmy was looking forward to taking a few tokes and having a nap before returning to work. Rounding the corner to his apartment block, he did not see the two burly men until they were upon him.

  “Oof!”

  Jimmy exhaled forcefully as one assailant grabbed his left arm and the other put a meaty fist into his solar plexus. Doubling over, the slender Jamaican found he could not inhale. Supporting their victim between them, the thugs swept him into a side alcove with a conveniently disabled surveillance camera.

  “Where you going so fast, boy?” asked Vasyl, still supporting Jimmy by his arm.

  “We think maybe you not like us anymore,” said Ruslan, the thug who had struck the blow, “and after we were nice enough to give you credit.”

  All that Jimmy could manage as a response were a few gasps.

  “You see, boy, you owe us 400 credits and we want it now,” Vasyl said, tightening his grip on Jimmy's arm. Vasyl and Ruslan were Ukrainians, part of a gang that ran various illicit enterprises—prostitution, drugs, gambling, etc. Though much of mankind had been destroyed and those on the Moon were comparatively few, there still existed among the survivors a strain of human that found preying on their fellows preferable to productive labor.

  Several days ago, Jimmy happened upon one of the Ukrainian gang's floating crap games and proceeded to lose his accumulated savings of several hundred credits. Sensing a mark ripe for the taking, the game's organizers gladly extended credit to the young man. In short order he lost those credits as well, ending the evening more than two weeks' wages in debt.

  “You transfer money to account on card,” Vasyl said, handing Jimmy a card, which he accepted with trembling fingers. The fact that there was no physical currency on the Moon was no impediment to vice—criminals were infinitely inventive when it came to milking their victims. “If you not pay by Friday, you owe 500 credits,”

  “And we come visit again,” added Ruslan, “only we not be so nice.”

  To underscore the threat, Ruslan sent a short jab into Jimmy's back in the area of his kidneys. Again the young man's knees buckled and this time his attackers let him fall to the floor. Their message delivered, the two Ukrainians departed, walking down the hallway, chatting amiably with each other. In the alcove Jimmy remained on his knees, retching.

  Polar Bear Habitat, Farside

  Umky gazed up at the dark starry heavens, where uncounted points of light twinkled through the cold air. The temperature was frigid, befitting a cold winter's night, and a constant wind blew traces of snow over the ice ridges. The male polar bear raised his nose to the wind and sniffed... and the illusion was shattered.

  Polar bears have the sharpest sense of smell of any Earth animal, capable of detecting prey kilometers away beneath the Arctic pack ice. It was that keen sense that betrayed the simulated environment provided for his kind. No matter how well the filters scrubbed the recycled air there were still smells that could be detected by ursine noses: the smell of far too many bears, crowded into the habitat's small area; the smell of humans outside the simulated environment, living in the surrounding Moon base.

  The humans mean well, Umky thought, they tried to make the habitat as natural as possible.

  The temperature, the seasonal change of the day-night cycle, the sky overhead, even the windblown snow, were all there to ease the stress on Farside's polar bear community. But any bear who smelled the air instantly knew that he was not free on the polar ice pack, he was in a cage. A comfortable and elaborate cage, but a cage nonetheless. True, they were free to come and go, free to mingle with the humans on the rest of the base, but there the heat was so sweltering and the monkey smell so overpowering that most bears stayed in the habitat. Many, having served in the Marines, called it their quarters, but at times Umky thought of the habitat by a different name, a despised name among his kind—zoo.

  Umky sighed. Things had become so complicated since aliens rained gigantic meteors down upon Earth several years ago. The weather patterns were still greatly disturbed and the planet was trending colder and colder—the human climatologists said that the next glacial cycle was starting and things would get much colder before they got warmer again. It was not the cold that bothered the white bears, it was the lack of food that kept them in their safe-haven on the Moon, and dependent on the humans.

  Umky felt trapped. He had fought along side humans against the alien invaders, but now he could not help feeling that the humans would rather their ursine allies stay out of sight. New humans recruited into the Fleet and Marines did not value the presence of polar bears like the old timers
. He put in two years with the Marines and was glad to return to the company of his own kind. But things were also changing in polar bear society.

  Some bears, mostly females, were saying that they should emulate the humans by forming stable family groups. In the wild, male bears only associated with females during mating season. They then left the females to give birth and raise the cubs on their own. This made good sense in the wild, it was hard enough for a single bear to feed itself without a mate and cubs along. But they were no longer living in the wild.

  His own mother and father, Isbjørn and Pihoqahiak, had started the trend toward families, staying together to raise their cubs jointly. Several of the older males said that it was unnatural and that polar bears should not ape, so to speak, their human allies. But then his father, who was known to most humans only as Bear, was a most unconventional and famous polar bear.

  He was the first of the talking polar bears to be recruited by the legendary Capt. Jack. Isbjørn and Umky himself were among the first batch of bears that humans brought to the Moon. Now his parents and their latest litter of cubs were off with the Captain somewhere in search of more adventures. Unfortunately, their odd ideas about family commitments lingered on.

  Like his father, Umky was a large bear. At six years old he was full grown and an adult in all ways but one—he had yet to become a father himself. That was proving to be a bit of a problem because, given his linage, the young she-bears all assumed that he would be willing to settle down and be mates for life, what the humans called “marriage.”

  Umky felt the instinctive drive to father cubs, but he was not ready for a lifelong commitment. The available females, however, felt otherwise and without said commitment mating was out of the question. His life had devolved into a morass of temptation and frustration.

  What's a bear to do? he asked himself. I need to get out of this place or I will go crazy.

  He recalled that another young bear, Aput, mentioned a group of humans preparing to make an extended space voyage exploring the Orion Arm. A long space voyage might be just the ticket; remove temptation and give him other things to think about. Maybe they could use a bear on the crew.

  Chapter 4

  Main Lounge, Peggy Sue

  More than 135 meters in length with a beam of 12 meters and massing 8000 metric tons, the Peggy Sue was not a small ship. This was her third major overhaul since her launching from Parker's ranch in Texas, years ago. Her updated armaments received the benefit of the latest technology, gleaned from the M'tak Ka'fek. New shields, based on the T'aafhal battle cruiser's designs, now protected against superluminal weapons of the type used by the Dark Lords. This was a technology shared with the ships of the Fleet.

  To make room for a larger complement of drones and remote sensing instruments, the gravitonic torpedo magazines shrank leaving space for only 10 antimatter tipped weapons. To compensate for the loss of firepower two new superluminal particle cannon were mounted, one portside and the other to starboard. This new armament was complemented by sensors that could see massive objects through alter-space, be they stars, planets, or ships with gravitonic drives.

  This was technology not shared with the Fleet, and it made the Peggy Sue more than a match for any vessel Earth's Navy possessed. Withholding the advanced technology from the Fleet was not done out of malice. The particle cannon and sensors were still experimental. Peggy Sue's upcoming voyage would be a field test for the copied T'aafhal weaponry.

  Other changes had been made to the ship's layout, including expanded laboratory space for analyzing samples from alien worlds. To prevent contamination, several clean-rooms were provided that could be isolated from the ship's environment, even ejected into space in an emergency. To make room for the expanded lab space the armorer's facilities and machine shop moved aft next to the engineering spaces. There also resided the suits of space armor for the crew. Riding on top of the ship's hull were two pinnaces, a larger shuttle for crew and cargo and a fourth armored shuttle modeled on the assault craft used by the Marines. Captain Vincent believed in being prepared.

  It was the middle of the afternoon and Beth and Mizuki were drinking tea in the ship's main lounge. The main lounge was a space more like a fancy restaurant and nightclub than a mess hall on a Navy vessel. Spanning the full width of the ship it featured several sizable portholes and one very large, eye shaped observation port on the starboard side. The two women were seated at a table in front of the observation port, with Mizuki's flock of butterflies flitting about the ceiling.

  “It looks like we are ready to depart, as far as the science section is concerned,” said Mizuki. “Though I wish we had a microbiologist.”

  “You've got a chemist, a geologist, a climatologist, and a biologist,” the First Officer replied. “That's pretty good considering how quickly we have thrown this crew together.”

  “Yes, but I wish they were more experienced. None of them have ever been outside the solar system.”

  The flock of butterflies suddenly descended from the ceiling and swarmed around the two officers, flashing green and yellow. Then they darted across the lounge toward the aft doorway. They arrived at the same time a woman dressed in medical white stepped into the lounge. Mizuki almost shouted a warning but paused when the flock began swirling around the newcomer, flashing gayly in a rainbow of colors.

  “Well hello,” the woman said, “I've missed you little guys too.”

  Mizuki jumped up and ran across the room to the woman in white. “Betty! It is so good to see you!”

  “It's great to see you too, Mizuki,” Betty White said, as the women embraced amidst a cloud of fluttering color. Beth walked over to join them and Mizuki barked a command to her pets in Japanese, ordering them to behave.

  “Hello, I'm Beth Melaku,” said Beth, extending her hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” replied Betty, shaking the proffered extremity. “I'm Dr. Belinda White, though my friends call me Betty.”

  “Doctor?” Mizuki said. “You went back and got your medical degree?”

  “Yes, Ludmilla insisted.”

  “Dr. Ludmilla Tropsha?” asked Beth.

  “Yes, after we all got back I worked with her for a while on some of the T'aafhal medical technology—they are so far beyond us I felt like a tribal witchdoctor. After a few months Ludmilla arranged for me to go back to school and get my MD.”

  “Betty was our Navy corpsman on the Peggy Sue and the M'tak Ka'fek,” added Mizuki, “she grew me a new set of legs after I was wounded on Ring Station.”

  “Then I'm doubly happy to meet you, Betty.”

  “I just got back from a year's residency at the Mars Base hospital. I came in on the Issac Asimov, along with a couple other Peggy Sue veterans. I ran into them again a few days ago and they told me you were planing another voyage.”

  “Yes, we are going to go looking for fame and fortune among the stars,” Beth said with a hint of sarcasm. “Emphasis on the fortune according to TK. Who were the others you mentioned?”

  “Steve Hitch and Matt Jacobs. I see you have them both working below under the watchful eye of Chief Zackly.”

  “Yes, we've been fortunate to sign up a number of veterans from previous voyages.”

  Betty looked down for a moment, as if embarrassed. “Speaking of that, this is more than a social call.”

  “Oh?” said Beth.

  “Yes, I understand that you were looking for a ship's doctor for the upcoming voyage. Has the position been filled?”

  A hint of a smile appeared on Beth's face. “If that is why you are here, I think it just has.”

  “That would be so wonderful!” exclaimed Mizuki.

  “You will have to speak with the Captain, of course. But since you know him, and the Sailing Master, I think there should be no problems with you joining our merry band.”

  “That's fantastic!” Betty said, a huge smile lighting up her face. “I was afraid the position would be taken.”

  “This will be such fun,” Mizuki
enthused, hugging her friend again. As she did, the flock of butterflies changed color to reds and oranges, flew a tight circle around the three women, and then exited the lounge headed aft.

  “Now what's got into them?” asked Beth.

  “Red is usually a danger warning,” said Mizuki, “I wonder what is happening?”

  “Maybe we should follow them,” added Betty.

  The three followed the butterflies' trail, heading aft at a run.

  Sick Bay, Peggy Sue

  Mizuki and friends found her errant flock of butterflies milling about the door to the medical section. Inside they found one of the crew, Matt Jacobs, supporting a slender man with dreadlocks. Looking on was Jesse Lowe, concern etched on her normally smiling face.

  “What's going on here?” asked Beth, the ranking ship's officer present.

  “Jesse showed up at the port cargo hatch with this fella in tow, Ma'am,” the sailor replied. “He's pretty banged up and Chief Zackly said to bring him to sick bay.”

  “Set him on the examination table, Matt,” said Betty. Regardless of the man's identity, he was hurt and she was a doctor.

  “He is the waiter from Jesse's bar,” said Mizuki, recognizing the young man.

  “Yes, yes,” Jesse said fretfully, “dat be Jimmy Tosh. He de waiter and part-time cook at my restaurant.”

  “What happened to him, Jesse?” asked Beth. “He looks like he was in a fight.”

  “Yeah,” said Betty, easing her patient back on the table with Jacobs' help. “A fight he lost.”

  “No mon,” Jimmy slurred through puffy lips, trying to make light of the situation, “you should see de other guys.”

  With Jimmy lying down on the table the medical sensors lit up, showing heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. His left eye was swollen almost shut, his lip split and he was favoring his right side. Betty picked up a tablet and used it to examine his limbs and side. Holding the tablet over parts of Jimmy's body its screen revealed the bones and soft tissue beneath his skin and clothing.