Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2
Page 61
In the aftermath of the Hashmedai invasion of Earth, several Hashmedai forces surrendered when they realized they were not going to win the war. The ships they had left that didn’t flee had been destroyed or crashed on Earth, effectively stranding them there. The Empire never sent ships to recover them so the thousands of Hashmedai soldiers and ship’s crew became a part of Earth’s population and offered to work as laborers to rebuild the cities they destroyed.
Radiance, who were mortal enemies to the Hashmedai race, insisted that humans hunted down and killed all surviving Hashmedai. The UNE became fearful of losing Radiance support and began to aggressively capture Hashmedai to hand over to Radiance, while discouraging human communities from getting close to the Hashmedai. Some communities around the world refused, choosing to accept and forgive the Hashmedai, and allowed them to live amongst them despite UNE and Radiance disapproval.
Said communities took up arms and formed an extremist group known as the Hashmedai Liberation Front (HLF) to protect the Hashmedai and human sympathizers that lived with them. Eventually what started as protection for the renegade communities turned into terrorist activities worldwide, thus labeling cities like Manila and Vancouver as UNE ‘Red Zones,’ and advising all Radiance races living on Earth to avoid them along with members of the UNE military.
“You used to do work with IESA, right?” Foster asked?
“And contract work for the UNE military,” Rivera replied. “Helped design some of their ships and program the EVE AI.”
“Wanna come back?”
“Thought about it, but I’m too deep here you know? Someone will find out about me caring for Hashmedai in this community.”
“Not if you’re eight point six light years away.”
“Sirius?”
“Yep.”
“I thought the Carl Sagan was scrapped in favor of another warship.”
“The President forced it through, been a secret this whole time.”
Rivera gazed at her human and Hashmedai students as they sat and downed bottles of water together in the shade. “Don’t suppose my students can come with me?”
“Afraid not, I have no control over the colonists we’ll be taking, and I doubt any of them will be anything other than human.”
Rivera walked over to the group and began to address them in the Hashmedai language probably giving them the heads-up she wouldn’t be living with them soon, Foster figured.
“You speak their language well,” Foster said after Rivera was finished.
“I speak, English, Filipino, Hashmedai, and all six dialects of Radiance.”
“So, you’re a language expert as well?”
“It helped since Radiance did give us their technology to build our ships while we merged it with reverse engineered Hashmedai tech. Not to mention I helped program the EVE AI to speak multiple languages, had to make sure it spoke those languages correctly. Oh, and I helped design the Earth-based language learning tools.”
“That how you learned all those languages?”
“Of course, there’s no way I’d be able to fluently speak, read, and write seven different alien languages so quickly.”
“Sorry, I just never understood how those worked.”
“You load the app onto a data pad, link it with a neural interface that taps into your brain, and from there it uploads small fragments of the selected language into your head each time you use it.”
“Kinda like ‘I know Kung-Fu’ sorta deal?”
“To put it lightly, there’s a bit more to it than that, for starters it reads your synaptic pathways so that—”
“And that’s why I want you on the team.” Foster said cutting her off. She didn’t fully understand technobabble, but knew that life in a system far away from Earth was going to need someone that did, just in case things went wrong. “You’re smart, you know shit I don’t, and say words I can’t even begin to figure out how to say.”
Foster’s house
Los Angeles, Earth, Sol system
February 28, 2033, 05:25 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Foster sat on her living room couch and debated how she was going to approach him when he arrived. So . . . we gotta talk, Hey, listen . . . Hey babe. I love you but . . .
Whatever she went with, it had to be soft, she didn’t want him to get the wrong idea and she didn’t want him to curl up in an emotional ball and be alone forever, he was still young, much younger than her. The doorbell rang, its chime had awakened her pet tabby cat, Starlet, from its slumber on the arm of her couch next to her. Foster opened the door and allowed her boyfriend Mike Fisher to enter, for the last time.
“Hey, Mikey,” she said to him.
“Hey, babe.”
The two sat down at the couch while Starlet leaped away and jumped up onto the nearby windowsill where the night sky hung above. Foster looked into Mike’s face, the same face she couldn’t resist kissing, the same face she thought she’d see a lot more often after learning she wasn’t selected to become a member of the original three ships set to explore the cosmos.
“So . . . we gotta talk.”
Mike’s face cringed at her words. “Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re breaking up with me?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because that’s what all women say when they are ready to end it.”
She looked away and thought about what her next words would be. “Well you gotta understand—”
“Oi I knew it.” He slapped both of his hands across his face and sighed. She leaned in closer to console him.
“Mike! Look, they’re fixin' to send me to Sirius.”
“I thought you’d be staying in Sol?”
“They got one last ship coming out of the shipyard; they want me to be the captain of it.”
Their eyes met up as his flustered face changed slightly to one that was happier, happy for her. “Oh wow, that’s great,” he said.
“Gonna be a seventeen-year trip, Mike.”
“And I can’t come, huh?”
“If you’d applied to be a colonist, maybe.”
“That wasn’t gonna happen and you know it,” Mike said. “I ain’t got no skills nor any say on which ship I’d end up on. Damn, I should have joined the navy or something, I reckon they’re sending military folks on your ship as well, right?”
“For defense, yeah.”
“So, this is it, eh?”
“If you been resisting the urge to cheat, you can do it now, I won’t get mad.”
Friendly laughter was exchanged between the two due to her comment. Starlet meowed like the attention-seeking cat she was. The two walked over to the window, observing what caught the tabby’s attention when they were talking. Starlet was looking to the stars; well, the stars that were visible in the LA skies.
Foster never understood why Starlet had such a fascination with the stars. From the moment she found her as a tiny kitten to now, it always spent part of the night looking up at the stars. It was Starlet’s fascination with the stars that reminded Foster of her father’s crushed dream to join NASA, a dream she intended to carry on in his honor and seek a career in space. Whenever she had doubts that IESA would accept her, she would look at Starlet, much like she was now and reinforce the motivation to study hard and pass their numerous entrance exams, physical tests, and training.
“I think I’m gonna enlist,” Mike said while he kept his eyes to the stars.
“Little late ain’t it?”
“Better late than never,” he looked away from the stars redirecting his attention to Foster, she saw the determination burning in his face. “I’ll enlist and push to one day fly out to Sirius and meet up with you.”
“Better make sure they put you on a ship then.”
“I’ll be a pilot or something. They’ll have to keep me on a ship with skills like that.”
She hit his arm in a flirty manner. “You can’t even drive a car!”
“I’ll learn! Flight
school, enlistment, do my training and get posted on a ship.”
The two leaned in close and shared a passionate kiss, the last one they’d experience together. His hands held onto her waist while her hands cupped the back of his head, stroking his soft brown hair. Her life, going forward, would revolve around the expedition and building a new home for humanity. She had doubts that intimate moments will happen during that quest, and so made no attempt to let him go, and didn’t object to him unbuttoning her pants.
Up next: The Siege of Sirius