T'aafhal Legacy 1: Ghosts of Orion

by Doug L. Hoffman

  “Just make sure I am behind you before you open up, da?” Bosco didn't care what the others said, the Russian Marine was still not totally comfortable arming polar bears with 15mm multi-barreled railguns firing depleted uranium slugs.

  Chapter 11

  Bridge, ESS Fortune

  As usual, Captain Chakrabarti was alone on the bridge, all other members of the crew either making shuttle runs or off watch. Siddhartha, Sid to his friends, didn't mind the time spent alone. It gave him the opportunity to think about his wife, Amita, and their two children, back at the Farside Moon base. Once this mission was over he would be able to spend six months or more at home. Oh how he missed his wife's cooking—and her company.

  Frank Hoenig, one of the shuttle pilots, had just entered Fortune's bridge. He was reporting in after a trip dirtside to deliver supplies and equipment to the settlers, in this case Brother Abraham's presumptively named town of Zion.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Hoenig,” said Capt. Chakrabarti, “I trust you had an uneventful trip.”

  “Yeah, Captain, another in a series of uneventful trips. The most exciting thing was offloading the cows—they really didn't want to get off the shuttle.”

  “Can you blame them?”

  “Hey, I wouldn't want to be off loaded down there. Of the three groups, Brother Abraham's has got to be the strangest. There were no women or children in sight at all when we dropped off the supplies. We had a number of large bales of alfalfa for the animals and they wouldn't let us take it into their 'town' on float palates. Made us dump it just beyond the shuttle's repulsor field zone, saying they would carry it to the settlement. They have to be nuts to want to haul hay bales by hand in that gravity.”

  “Perhaps it is best they become use to hard physical labor, they will soon be living like peasants from many centuries ago.”

  “Yeah, I guess sleeping with farm animals, bathing once a year, and shitting in a bucket is a part of everyone's cultural heritage. I just wouldn't go back to those days voluntarily.”

  The Captain shook his head. “We are not here to judge them, Mr. Hoenig, just to drop them off and get them started. How many more trips will be required?”

  Hoenig scratched the back of his head with his right hand and appeared to concentrate on his answer before replying. “I think that was the last of the cattle, we still have to drop off the horses and another load of fodder. That means one more run to each of the settlements.”

  “How long?”

  “A couple of days to load the bulk items and then put the horses on board. This time I'm taking the Arabs, at least there you can catch a glimpse of a woman’s face.”

  The Captain shrugged. He had requested a mixed crew for the mission but the powers that be decided female crewmembers might cause problems with the settlers.

  “Maybe on the next mission we will have a mixed crew.”

  “Yeah. Well with any luck we'll be home in a month and it won't matter. Tell me again why the first people to migrate to the stars are a bunch of religious fanatics? I mean, shouldn't we be putting our best foot forward here?”

  The Captain had often had such thoughts himself, both before and during the voyage. I think the real answer is twofold, he thought. First, these three groups were a problem for the authorities back on Farside and this was an acceptable way of getting rid of them. Second, this was an experiment, which may well fail. The authorities only sent expendables, just in case something goes horribly wrong. He did not wish to contemplate the implications that last point held for himself and his crew.

  “Ours is not to reason why, Mr. Hoenig,” he said to the shuttle pilot. “Let's concentrate on finishing our mission and go home.”

  “I'm with you, Captain. At least the robot seeders have done their job, there's a lot of green showing around the three towns. The animals should have plenty of fresh food inside of a month at this rate.”

  “We may well return one day to find this planet a garden paradise. In fact, that might be a good name for the place.”

  “You mean you don't like New Jerusalem, New Mecca, or Zion?”

  “If we asked the colonists to name the planet I doubt they would reach agreement. As far as I know, the merchants didn't name the planet either. I think I will put down Paradise as the planet's name in the ship's log, being optimistic.”

  “Right. That's why I am a pessimist.”

  “What?”

  “Optimists are always setting themselves up to be disappointed. On the other hand, we pessimists always have a chance to be pleasantly surprised.”

  The shuttle pilot grinned and touched his brow with an informal two fingered salute—there was no way Fortune's crew could be mistaken for Navy personnel. Hoenig turned and headed toward the gangway leading aft to the hold and shuttle bays.

  “I prefer no surprises of any kind, Mr. Hoenig,” Chakrabarti said softly to the man's back as he walked away. Only another month, Amita, and I will be back with you and the children.

  New Mecca, Paradise

  Shadi urged the small flock of sheep along using a piece of doweling she had found among the supplies brought from the ship. It was hard to herd sheep without a stick or switch and there were no natural items on this world to do the job. The pasture space available to them was small, too small really. Overgrazing can occur when animals are kept on a pasture too long. That's what the instructional video she had studied during the trip out had said.

  With the grass barely taken hold, it was probably too soon to begin grazing the sheep in the fields, but the men had decided it should be done. When livestock clip grass by grazing, the plants are injured. Shoots that have been clipped and eaten are no longer able to perform their function of collecting energy from the sun. The plants must tap into the energy reserves in their roots to stay alive and begin regrowth. Shadi doubted that any of the men had viewed the videos on the way out, or bothered to study any of the materials provided by the Colonization Service. They certainly didn't ask for her opinion.

  At least being with the sheep got her out of the village, away from the other settlers and household chores. So far, she had been able to bring Dorri with her as well. She was having trouble keeping her little sister from being pestered by Ahmad. It just wasn't right to force a girl of thirteen to become someone's wife—it wasn't civilized!

  Shadi had also seen some of the men watching her, talking to each other in hushed tones. No doubt they were sizing her up for matrimony as well. So far her sharp tongue and obvious intelligence had kept her safe, but sooner or later one of the men was bound to ask the Imam for her hand. Who was she kidding? There was no life on this planet outside the settlements, no chance to run away. At least not if they wanted to stay alive.

  “Shadi! Let's move the sheep down toward the river so they can have a drink,” shouted Dorri from the other side of the flock.

  “All right,” she replied. Dorri really liked the animals. Shadi wondered how she would handle things the day the settlers started eating them. That was not supposed to happen anytime soon, since all the animals, the sheep included, were female and had been impregnated before the colonization ship left the Moon. Again, she had learned this from the computer system on the ship.

  As close as Shadi could figure, the sheep were due to give birth in about 65 of the long local days—that would be exciting. Of course that was assuming that the longer days and heavier gravity didn't affect the sheep's gestation period. If she and Dorri were given their choice, they would choose pasture lambing when the time came, rather than birth the lambs in the corral or barn. One positive about being on a lifeless planet, there were no predators to make a meal of the newborn lambs.

  The sheep raising manual said that the average ewe gives birth to two or three lambs, but sometimes only one and rarely four. If their flock averaged two and a half that would give them more than twenty new sheep to raise. They would only keep the biggest, strongest males, the flock only needed one ram though they would probably keep a backup. The rest of the male
s would be neutered and fattened up for eating.

  During the celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, which came at the end of the Hajj, it was traditional to remember Abraham's trials by slaughtering a sheep. Shadi had no idea where they were in the months of the Islamic calendar, but she bet that Imam Mustafa was keeping track. The fact that some of their wooly charges would eventually end up on the menu was yet another facet of their new existence she wouldn't explain to Dorri until the time came.

  Bridge, Peggy Sue

  On the forward display hung a dark, heavily cratered moon. So heavily cratered that it appeared porous, with cavities behind some of the craters joined forming large empty spaces. Along the moon's periphery, it looked like the outer surface was pierced by a multitude of holes through which stars could be seen passing.

  “Will you look at that,” said Sami Hosseini, “that can't be natural, can it?”

  “That structure should be impossible,” answered Mizuki. “Any object so heavily cratered should not have retained structural cohesion.”

  “Meaning it should have been blasted apart by the collisions?” asked Beth. All of the ship's officers had come to the bridge to get a look at Mizuki's anomalous moon.

  “It could have formed as an aggregate of nickel-iron debris and ice,” Sami theorized, “the ice then sublimating away after formation.”

  “I don't see how it could have such large voids without collapsing if it is just an aggregated junk pile compacted by its own gravity. And look at those surface craters; they don't have raised rims like normal impact craters.”

  “It looks like one of those impossible planets that exist only in Bugs Bunny cartoons and at the end of science fiction films made by directors who know nothing about science,” said Bobby. As usual, he viewed reality through his own unique filter.

  “Beth is right, the holes look like they were bored into the moon, not caused by impacts,” Mizuki said. “According to my instruments, it must be fifty percent hollow inside!”

  “Hey, even I don't believe in the Hollow Earth theory,” said Bobby.

  “Hollow Earth theory, Bobby?” echoed the Captain, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Yeah. In the early 1800s, an American army officer named John Symmes theorized that a hole at the South Pole led to the hollow interior of the planet. As Symmes put it, Earth was 'hollow, habitable, and widely open about the poles'. His theory was actually taken seriously throughout the nineteenth century.”

  “Yer joking.”

  “No, a number of scholars wrote papers on the subject. It made a great premise for subterranean adventure stories like Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Sadly, there is no scientific evidence that such things are possible.”

  “You are correct, Bobby,” Mizuki said, smiling approvingly at her significant other for not advocating fringe science nonsense for once. “A solid spherical shape is the best way to minimize the gravitational potential energy of a physical object. Nature prefers solid bodies, even fairly small ones.”

  “But how could impacts cause that?” asked Billy Ray.

  “They couldn't,” replied Sami.

  “Maybe it has been mined,” said Bobby, proving he could still find conclusions to jump to.

  “Yer sayin' that this moon has been... excavated?”

  “Yeah. And I wonder if the miners are still around?”

  “Well, there's only one way to find out fer sure. Mr. Danner, take some of the crew and the Marines and recon that moon. Dr. Ogawa, pick who needs to go along from the science section. Let's see if this system has more puzzles to hand us.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Bobby replied, smiling at Mizuki. Mizuki smiled back with glittering eyes. Together they left the bridge headed aft toward the shuttle ramps.

  * * * * *

  There was a small crowd of armored figures at the base of the boarding ramp to Shuttle One. Two were towering gray hulks, giants in ceramic-metallic armor brandishing multi-barreled railgun rifles linked to ammo magazines on their backs. Two others were small only in comparison with the pair in heavy space armor. They were wearing standard space armor, with lighter protective bands and significantly weaker artificial musculature. One of the smaller pair sported a long sword whose handle stuck up behind her bubble helmet.

  The smallest member of the group wasn't wearing armor at all. He was all of five and a half feet tall and dressed in a dark navy blue jumpsuit—Chief Zackly. The Chief was addressing the two smaller armored figures who happened to be the officers in charge of the exploratory mission to the metallic moon.

  “Yous two don't go doing anything John Waynish out there,” the weathered little sailor admonished. “Ya got all the Gyrenes and these two lunkheads decked out in heavy armor—let them take the lead in case there's any trouble.” The last sentence was accompanied by a jerk of his thumb in the direction of Jacob and Hitch, the sailors in the heavy armor.

  “Don't worry, Chief. We're going to send out recon bots first and then let the Marines take the initial look around,” Bobby replied. “Until they give the all clear, Mizuki and I will stay in the shuttle like timid little mice.”

  “That goes for Dr. Hosseini and Dr. Leclerc as well,” echoed Mizuki. “We will be extra careful, Chief.”

  The Chief stuck out his elbows, balled fists on hips, like a banty rooster puffing out his wings to make himself look larger. “All right then, we don't want no casualties.”

  Mizuki and Bobby both nodded and then ascended the gangway into the shuttle. As they did, the Chief rounded on Jacobs and Hitch.

  “Listen, yous two monkeys. Marines is, well, Marines, so I'm depending on yous. We don't want to lose any civilians and we sure don't want to lose any officers, so keep both eyes peeled for trouble.”

  “Don't worry, Chief,” said Hitch. “Matt and I got this.”

  “Just remember what I told ya.” The Chief stepped out of the way so the two lumbering sailors could board. As the boarding ramp retracted into the shuttle's hull, Zackly stepped out of the boarding area and secured the airlock door. The airlock depressurization alarm sounded and Peggy Sue's oldest crewmember muttered, “I don't know why, but I got a bad feeling about this.”

  The Metal Moon

  Kq*zt was lounging at the bottom of one of the larger crater openings when his young friend Gx!pk happened upon him. The moon's inhabitants often spent time in contemplation, sitting like immobile boulders on the surface of their little world. They did this because observation and contemplation were counted among the joys of life by their kind. It also did not expend much energy.

  The other major activity for the creatures was browsing for food, which they did by eating their way through the solid material of the moon. This required quite a bit of energy and the reward was often small. In fact, the complexity of the moon's internal structure, an almost fractal like maze of intersecting tunnels of many sizes, was an indication of how slim the opportunities for finding food had become. On occasion, an asteroid or other body would collide with the moon, setting off an unseemly scramble to tear the interloping object apart. Sometimes the objects contained food, sometimes not.

  A few individuals had begun giving voice to the nearly unthinkable idea of moving to another moon. The only problem with that idea was that the last time the creatures had migrated was so long ago none remembered how they accomplished the feat. These were among the thoughts that Kq*zt cogitated on while sitting placidly at the bottom of the crater.

  “Hey, Kq*zt! What are you doing?” shouted Gx!pk, oozing out of a meter wide tunnel from the interior.

  “I have been thinking. You should try it sometime.”

  “What? Oh, funny. I wish I was as quick witted as you. So really, what are you doing?”

  If a silicon rock could sigh Kq*zt would have done so.

  “Among other things I have been observing that ship you sighted leaving the second planet. It has entered orbit around
our gassy primary and looks to be matching orbits with us.”

  “Oh?”

  Gx!pk pulled up next to his friend and focused on the ship, floating in space a thousand kilometers away. Multispectral active sensors on the ship scanned the moon, using electromagnetic radiation ranging in frequency from long radio waves to terahertz bursts.

  “It seems to be quite noisy. Why is it shouting so much?”

  “I think that it is trying to see our moon more clearly.”

  After contemplating Kq*zt's answer for a minute or two, Gx!pk exclaimed: “Hey look! A piece has split off from the main ship. Is it reproducing?”

  “Reproducing? Not likely. The ship is probably not a single living being. More than likely there are creatures inside it, and given that they visited the inner planets first they are most likely warm life.”

  “Warm life? You mean lifeforms that live in the zone where H2O melts?”

  “Yes, they can only live unprotected in an environment where H2O is a liquid.”

  “But that is still much colder inside than we are. Why are they called warm life?”

  “Because even colder lifeforms exist that live on worlds as cold or colder than our own. But unlike us, they are not molten inside. They are cold life, and often the servants of darkness itself.”

  “You mean servants of the Dark Lords?”

  “Don't use their name! They hate all forms of life that are not like themselves. Warm life and cold life have been at war with each other since the beginning of the Universe.”

  “And which side are we on?”

  “Neither, we just stay quiet and hope not to be noticed—by either side.”

  “Really? Well that might be difficult, because the small ship is heading right for us.”

  “Hmm, I think you are right. This time we must tell Qz@px and the other elders. If these aliens are coming to take a look around we must all hide in the tunnels.”