by Dean, Warren
After the mercifully brief wormhole voyage had ended, she clambered out of the travel-pod and rode a 'well up to one of the dining decks. She had been travelling since the middle of the night without refreshment and was getting hungry. Finding herself alone, she changed quickly into her blue-green shimmer-robe, stowing the rest of her things in one of the passenger stores. She could retrieve them once she had been assigned a permanent berth.
Then she ordered a meal from the automated galley and, anxious to find out more about what was happening, wolfed it down as soon as it arrived. One of the analysts came in while she was eating and, after a startled glance at the command colour of her robe, gave her a respectful nod.
As soon as she had finished, she made her way up to the bridge deck. Hurrying across the conduit, she was disappointed to find that the bridge was almost deserted. Two or three analysts were working away at interface modules. Ko and the other command personnel had probably gone down to one of the other dining decks. She decided not to waste time looking for them and to find out what she could from the ship's com.
She slid into one of the bridge consoles and activated its interface module. Using just her fingertips, she sorted through the latest communications, looking for information on the upcoming expedition. There was very little, which was unusual. Most official expeditions were preceded by screeds of missives, statements, authorisations, and reports. But all she could find were communications with the Primefall planetary council about the logistics of the expedition. There was almost nothing else.
It reminded her a little of the time she had searched for the communique from the Ancient Council ratifying the Forever Gene trial. She had found no trace of it on record, which she thought strange at the time. Now, she could find very little on the upcoming expedition. What was its primary purpose? Was it going to actively intervene in human affairs or would its efforts be purely diplomatic? Was it authorised to protect or even evacuate individuals or communities in peril? Would terraforming measures be introduced to counteract the worst of the environmental damage? And if so, on what scale?
Looking for clues, she scanned some of the logistics reports. Her eyes widened when she discovered the size of the expedition. One hundred and twenty ships had been assembled in orbit around Primefall. It was a massive fleet, by any standards. Each ship had the capacity to carry forty to sixty thousand individuals, a combined capacity of about six million.
She sat back and considered the possible operational objectives for such a large fleet. She could think of only two; to evacuate large numbers of humans from the planet, or to invade. She discarded the second possibility almost immediately. Why would the Ancient Council want to invade Earth? There was nothing of real value on the planet as far as she knew. Even its inhabitants were insignificant in a cosmic sense. And anyway, territorial conquest was not a path that her civilisation had followed. Not since the ancient migration, anyway.
That left evacuation. But even that seemed unlikely. Her civilisation had never resorted to such drastic action before. Not even for client races which were in dire straits. They were usually coached out of their difficulties with the aid of technology. How bad was the situation on Earth if it justified such a radical departure from entrenched policy?
She continued scanning the logistics reports, looking at personnel numbers. Each ship of the fleet would carry a full crew, but would otherwise be almost empty. There were military personnel assigned to each ship, but they were few in number and not equipped for any major offensives. The ships themselves were armed, but their weaponry was mainly defensive in nature. She had been right; this was not an invasion fleet.
She flicked through more reports and saw that each ship had been supplied with large quantities of medical supplies and other provisions. That made sense; if large numbers of people were to be rescued from war-torn areas, there would be wounded who would need treatment and everyone would need food and water.
The expedition could be purely medical; she supposed. That would also account for the quantities of medical provisions, as well as for the large number of ships. They could spread out around the globe and tend to many of the war zones at once. But what good would that do? Yes, of course, many lives would be saved and injured people treated, but unless something was done to end the violence itself, the intervention would ultimately be pointless. She could only hope that the ambassador was authorised to deploy additional protocols of which she was unaware.
A com channel opened and the face of a translator she didn't recognise blinked into view.
"Emissary acknowledges," she replied without thinking.
"Shuttle ready for docking," said the face.
She flicked through the boarding protocols with practiced ease and quickly identified the shuttle and its authorisation. Prime authority; it must be the ambassador himself. She triggered the docking process and then hurried off the bridge towards the nearest 'well. If she met the ambassador on the reception deck, she could find out what was going on from the horse's mouth. She smiled to herself at the quaint human expression. How she had missed all this.
When the ambassador stepped aboard, she could see from his aura that he was extremely weary. Not from the relatively short shuttle ride from Primefall, she realised. He had been preparing this expedition for a long time, it seemed. That meant that the Ancient Council had authorised it cycles ago. And yet it had made no public pronouncement, not even in the face of the intense speculation which the issue had evoked. Yet another facet of the mystery she hoped the ambassador would unravel for her.
Tired as he was, he gave her a warm greeting. "Ah, it is good that you are with us, translator. I hope you are ready for the challenges ahead."
She smiled and inclined her head respectfully. "I will not let you down, sir, although I must confess that I am not sure what it is that I should be ready for. I have only just arrived, you see, and have not been told much.
A flicker of mild annoyance washed through his aura. "Has Ko not briefed you?"
"Not yet, he has not had a chance to do so since our arrival from Azura." She hoped the excuse would deflect any criticism away from Ko. The last thing she wanted was to start the voyage in the head analyst's bad graces.
"Accompany me to the bridge," he said, starting towards the nearest 'well. "I will give you a summary on the way."
He was silent for a few moments, ordering his thoughts. "Since our departure from Earth, its civilisation has deteriorated at an alarming rate. A number of theories have been advanced to account for this, but I don't have time to go through them with you now."
"No need, sir, I have been following the debates."
"That is good. The Ancient Council has examined the situation and concluded that there is little prospect of the planet being returned to normal. Too much damage has been done, both geopolitically and environmentally. It has no central planetary authority with any real influence, which makes it almost impossible to co-ordinate an effective recovery strategy. Its major nations are too fractious and distrustful of each other to assist and, even if they did, smaller nations would oppose them at every turn, suspicious of their motives.
"You are aware of what happened to the star drive project on the Moon? At a critical moment, one of the delegations attempted to seize the technology for itself. In response, a group from some of the other delegations broke away, escaping in the humans' only star ship. The conflict resulted in loss of life. The ship disappeared into a wormhole and has not been seen since. As things stand at present, the people of Earth have no star drive, nor even a ship capable of wormhole travel.
"Predictably, the events on the Moon have caused relations between the major powers on the planet to deteriorate to new lows. Some have already fought skirmishes with each other and are on the brink of all-out war. At the same time, warlords have established themselves in many of the less stable areas of the planet and some have already used nuclear warheads against their rivals. It is only a matter of time before the major powers decide t
hat they must strike back with similar weaponry. The radiation levels on the planet have already risen noticeably and, in some areas, we will have to take precautions."
Vi recalled provisions in the logistics reports for large numbers of environmental suits on each ship. Now she knew why they were needed. "What can we do to help, sir? We cannot evacuate the whole planet."
"Indeed," he said, "That is not possible". "The best we can do is to save as many people as we can."
She was shocked. "But what good will it do to save only some of them? And what about the ones we can't save? What will happen to them?"
The ambassador paused, as if deciding how much more he should tell her. "The Ancient Council itself is divided as to whether we should intervene at all. Some of the councillors advocate taking no action at all. They argue that a race so bent on destruction would be a menace should it eventually achieve space travel. Others are mindful of our responsibilities towards a client race and feel that we cannot abandon it entirely. They point out that our studies have revealed that the race has certain positive qualities which could be beneficial to us in the long term.
"So it has been decided that, although we cannot save the planet itself, or its civilisation as a whole, we should not allow the human race to die out. Our mission is to land on the planet, offer a way out to anyone who wishes to leave, and to extract a meaningful number of humans. The evacuees will be resettled and, with their admirable penchant for reproduction, should be able to regenerate their civilisation in a relatively short space of time."
She could already see a few flaws in the plan. "What if more humans than we can take wish to be evacuated? How will we decide who stays and who goes? And where will they be resettled? Surely we cannot just dump them on some undeveloped world? They may not survive and the whole effort will have been for nothing."
By then they had crossed the conduit onto the bridge. It was now a hive of activity. Ko had returned and was seated within one of the consoles. She even caught a glimpse of Physician Ti at the far end of the gigantic circular space. The old gang was back together, it seemed.
The ambassador took a quick look around and then turned to her. "We have made what preparations we can in the time available. However our monitors report that the situation changes daily. We are not certain of precisely what we will find when we get there. The Ancient Council has given us some latitude to decide how best to react and we will probably have to make hard choices along the way.
"That is the one of the reasons I asked for you to accompany this expedition. You, more than anyone, were able to develop an affinity with the humans. You even befriended some of them. I will be relying to a great degree on your insight into the human condition when we get there. So please do not hesitate to offer your opinion whenever you deem it appropriate."
She started to say something, but he stopped her. "You must be prepared to be shocked when we get to Earth. I don't know how much information you received at the reproduction centre but, knowing those places, I suspect it wasn't much. A great deal has happened on Earth since we left, almost none of it good."
He looked around the bridge again. "Now, we must leave shortly and you should make yourself ready. I see that you have already donned your robes of office. I have assigned you the principal com console and you will take up the duties of head translator with immediate effect. Please excuse me; I have my own preparations to attend to."
He strode away, leaving her with an uneasy feeling; a strange mixture of excitement and dread. She couldn't help wondering whether Qara-Chinua was one of those in peril, or whether she was already dead. She grimaced and quickly dismissed the thought. The Mongolian reporter was tough and resourceful and Vi had to believe that she was a survivor.
She hurried over to the com console and strapped herself in. The trip to Earth would be much longer than the short hop between Azura and Primefall, and she wasn't looking forward to it. But she moderated her sensory perception levels, as she had been taught, and was able to endure the violence of the wormhole voyage without much discomfort.
As soon as Emissary reached Earth's star system, she re-energised her aura, anxious to get some idea of the planet's present status. She tapped, flicked and blinked away within her interface module, manipulating the information feeds available. The wormhole had deposited the ship just outside the planet's atmosphere. From there, she should be able to access the Personet and pick up various other sources of terrestrial data.
She concentrated on establishing the Personet link first; that was where she was most likely to get information quickly. While she was busy, an alert blinked into existence above her left eyebrow. She activated it with a glance. It was a radiation warning. In the last few days the planetary radiation level had skyrocketed. Her heart sank. The reading she had seen before the ship left Primefall had been high, but within human survival range. It was now beyond that. The ambassador's worst fears had been realised. The use of nuclear weapons had proliferated to uncontrollable levels.
The first reports she found on the Personet confirmed it. The world's major powers had all opted to employ nuclear strikes against smaller nations and warlords who had already used, or threatened to use, nuclear force. So far, the powers had restrained themselves from entering into full scale wars with each other, each distracted by local threats close to or even within its borders. But it would not take much, she sensed, to spark a major conflict.
It took some time for the rest of the fleet to assemble. For safety reasons, only one ship was permitted to travel through a wormhole at a time and, although several wormholes had been opened simultaneously, moving such a large fleet was still a time-consuming process. The wormholes had opened in different quadrants around the planet, ensuring that the fleet would be spread out as widely as possible.
In that time, Vi built up as comprehensive a picture as she could of the planetary situation. She forwarded her observations to the ambassador and the other ships of the fleet. Radiation levels were not uniform. In some areas they were still within tolerable levels, in others they were beyond deadly. The toll of dead and dying in those areas was astronomical, and rising.
The Personet itself was breaking down. Already, large areas of the planet had gone quiet, the servers and relays in those areas having been destroyed or damaged. The network was otherwise still functional, but its coverage was diminishing by the day.
She looked specifically for reports about the two nations that meant the most to her; first Mongolia, and then Thailand. She was relieved to see that the radiation levels in the former were relatively low. The Personet was still active in Ulan Bator and she scanned the channels for news of the people and places she knew. The city was still intact, it seemed, and the government was still in place. She was happy about that; she had always liked the energetic President Ganzorig.
She hoped that Qara was in the city and had not been despatched to some crazy hotspot. She called up some of the current broadcasts from Mongolia Today. Relief flooded through her when she saw her diminutive friend reporting from downtown Ulan Bator. Except for some lines added by worry, Qara's earnest young face was unchanged. That was to be expected from someone with the Forever Gene, she supposed. Vi wondered how much change the reporter would see in her if and when they met again.
Sadly, that was unlikely. There were so many places on the planet where people desperately needed help. The fleet, as large as it was, did not have the capacity to go to all of them. There was no guarantee that the ambassador would detail a ship to be sent to Mongolia. Even if one was, there were more than a million people in Ulan Bator and millions more scattered across the country. There was no way to be sure that Qara would be one of the people rescued.
She resolved that she would do all in her power to intercede on behalf of the Mongolians. The ambassador had urged her to offer her opinion whenever she thought it appropriate and she decided to take him at his word. She would remind him that, when the expedition had first arrived on Earth, the Mongolians had been
kind and generous hosts. They had even been prepared to shelter their guests in the face of military incursions by their more powerful neighbours. More than any other nation on Earth, they deserved help.
The situation in Thailand was much gloomier. The Personet was down in much of South East Asia and it was difficult to ascertain what was happening there. The latest reports she could find were of uncontrollable riots and rebellions across the area. A hollow feeling settled over her when she found out that a fire had destroyed large sections of Bangkok. She couldn't bear to think of anything having happened to the Royal Palace. How could the humans be so careless with such beauty?
Unable to contain herself any longer, she decided to speak to the ambassador immediately. She opened a com channel to his console, coding it confidential so no one else could access the conversation. It was some time before he responded; he was busy co-ordinating the incoming ships.
When he eventually spoke to her over the com, it was in his usual calm, measured tone. "Ah translator, most of the fleet is now in position and I will shortly give the command for it to descend to an orbit just above the planet's mesosphere. From there, our shuttles will be able to travel to and from the surface relatively quickly. But first, you shall broadcast a message to the humans over the Personet. I believe that it is still active in most of the major centres.
"Word it carefully, the situation on the surface is volatile and we don't want to provoke an aggressive response. Reassure the humans that our intentions are peaceful and that we are here to offer whatever assistance is needed. Stress that we have brought medical supplies and that we are prepared to evacuate anyone who wishes to escape war zones or dangerous radiation levels. We do not intend to use military force or to involve ourselves in any conflicts, other than as peacemakers. We are, however, more than capable of defending ourselves if attacked."
