Edward M. Lerner (7 page)

He watched the lidar tracks of his support ships peeling off one by one to plunge through the dense upper atmosphere of the world called Jupiter. The stripes and cyclonic storms of the gas giant—so like K’far, the largest object in the sky above K’vith—made Mashkith’s heart ache. But that momentary sentimentality was misguided. Long before this adventure, clan Arblen Ems had been expelled to the cometary cloud, far from the race’s cradle. He set aside that bitter recollection, as he rejected all his innermost doubts about the audacity of their plans. His plans. The clan’s future began
here
, not on K’vith.

Each dive increased their store of deuterium and tritium, but resupply was incidental. The auxiliary ships’ maneuvering was primarily defensive. So, too, was the precautionary charging to full capacity of the fuel-cell banks that powered the meteor-defense lasers. He thought it extremely unlikely these precautions were necessary—but he would not be Foremost if he did not reflexively assess risks, plan options, prepare for contingencies.

Any contingency. He thrummed his throat for the attention of his tactical officer.

“Sir?” Arblen Ems Rashk Lothwer scurried to his side with a clatter of toe talons on steel deck. Dependable, dedicated Lothwer.

“Prisoners secured?” Mashkith’s front eyes never left the tactical display.

“Yes, sir!” his aide agreed. “Lockdown complete. Access codes reset. No risk of interference from that source.”

“Always some risk,” responded the Foremost. Lothwer flinched at the soft-spoken rebuke—as well he should.

The human broadcast chattered on. “The shuttle carrying the UP delegation is settling onto the de-spun docking platform at the bow of the alien craft. The ship’s main body is rotating about twice per minute, presumably to simulate gravity for those inside. Two rotations per minute may not sound like much, but because of the ship’s size, it gives the outer surface a velocity above 150 kilometers per hour. Anyone so foolish as to attempt standing on the outer hull would instantly be flung into space!

“In the telephoto close-up, you can see the flames of the UP shuttle’s maneuvering engines. Touchdown is imminent … the shuttle has landed.” Sensors within the docking station confirmed contact. “How tiny our courier ship seems in comparison!”

“Rotation up,” Mashkith ordered. Shipboard instruments and human broadcasts alike showed the magnetically coupled docking platform turning faster and faster to match rotational velocities with the main body of the starship. Other magnets held the shuttle in place as the centrifugal force grew. When spins matched, the platform would again be accessible from the on-axis main airlock.

“Lothwer,” Mashkith said. The friendly tone was meant to ease the sting from the moments-earlier rebuke. “Honor guard to assembly point. Time now for the welcoming of our guests.”

Time now, therefore, for strict adherence to the plan.

An unexpected bonus of Corinne’s return to the airwaves, mused Helmut, was the restoration of order on the
Odyssey
‘s bridge. As ship’s owner she found no value in tidiness, but as a reporter she shunned clutter in her improvised studio. Whatever worked.

She launched into yet another recap, stalling until the diplomats disembarked from their shuttle. Helmut scarcely heard her, concentrating instead on his 3-V command display. Space around the starship
swarmed
with spacecraft. Four frigates from the tiny Galilean navy, Corinne had reported, were under the temporary command of a UP officer from Himalia. The prison base had provided two of its own armed vessels.

The space-traffic-control wavelengths crackled with orders for and threats to the many civilian ships. Some vessels carried media reps, others diplomatic observers, most thrill seekers from across the many moons of Jupiter. Few from out-system had had time to arrive. Yet. Helmut frowned at the chaos.

“To me, the starship most resembles an orbital habitat, a giant cylinder carved whole from an asteroid, hollowed, and spun up for gravity. Once again, the damaged portion of its hull rolls into view.” Corinne had cleaned herself up for the broadcast. He had forgotten she owned clothes
not
a mass of wrinkles. “There is surely a tale of adventure and bravery surrounding that mishap, a story this reporter will do her best to bring you.”

The region was simply too crowded for most ships to maintain position by choice of orbit. Ships a little closer to Jupiter than the starship slowly gained on the visitor, and were repeatedly commanded to fall back. Ships a little farther from Jupiter than the starship as predictably fell behind until they pulsed their engines to creep nearer. Of course one speeds up by dropping to a lower orbit and slows down by rising to a higher one. Each course correction raised fresh prospects of collision. More and more pilots realized that claims of collision avoidance could mask their ever closer approach to the starship. The armed UP vessels were soon reduced to playing chicken with the boldest of the onlookers.

At least most ships carried standard traffic-control transponders. Radar was the only means of monitoring the Snake aux ships and their swooping paths. Was their refueling need
so
urgent they couldn’t wait for the navy to impose order? The civilian flotilla, the UP ships trying valiantly to herd the civilians, the Snake scoopships suddenly bursting out of Jupiter’s opaque lower atmosphere, as often as not initiating a fresh cascade of evasive maneuvers … the pattern in the command display was too complex for Helmut to absorb.

He didn’t much care for it—and there was nothing he could do about it.

“You’re fine.” Art wanted to sound reassuring, which was hard on the fifth try.

The dash to Jupiter, it turned out, was Keizo’s first off-world experience. Before the starship’s arrival, a xenosociologist had no special reason to leave Earth. Despite tutoring from a shuttle crewwoman and Art’s repeated assurances, Keizo exuded anxiety about the imminent spacewalk. “The K’vithians came all this way. Would it kill them to do the last twenty meters to our shuttle?”

“Our esteemed boss says since they came so far
we
should do the walking.” It felt odd to agree with Chung. “Besides, won’t you learn more in their environment than in ours?”

“Just let me gripe, okay?”

“Check your partner,” came the order through helmet speakers. This was the
official
safety inspection.

Art yet again eyeballed the secondary gauges and idiot lights on the back of Keizo’s spacesuit, where everything continued to register as nominal. He tapped his friend’s shoulder so Keizo could return the favor. Five other pairs in the crowded airlock were going through the same procedure. Most were diplomats.

A comm test followed the safety drill. Their helmet radios provided twenty coded channels, permitting plenty of private conversations, and a public band. Had Chung not been a humanist, all that private conversation could, with far greater simplicity, have used neural implants to access the team’s wireless local network.

“Switching to ambient light.”

Illumination in the airlock faded to the dimness they would experience on the docking platform. Inverse-square law, Art thought, as nano-scaled photomultipliers in his visor kicked in. Had he been more patient, his eyes would have adjusted. Jupiter was just over five times farther from the sun than Earth. Any given area here intercepted less than four percent of the light it would catch in Earth’s neighborhood. Possibly just a coincidence, lighting inside the starship would be similar. A low-wattage incandescent bulb gave a good approximation of the light at habitable distances from a red dwarf sun like Barnard’s Star.

“Depressurizing.” Humming faded as less and less air remained to carry the sound of the pumps. Keizo’s mouth moved silently; he suddenly looked panicked. Art touched helmets. “You okay? Meet me,” he checked his heads-up display for an idle channel, “on band four.”

The rigidity of the inflated spacesuit in the now depressurized airlock defeated Keizo’s attempt to shrug. He tapped the channel selection into his forearm keypad. “Oops. Thanks. It freaked me out that you didn’t respond. I hadn’t selected a band.”

For many reasons, from similar interests to her experience in a spacesuit, Art wished Eva were here. They could
both
have kept an eye on Keizo. As it happened, Art’s desires were immaterial; Montoya had vetoed her participation. She knew too much about the UP’s antimatter program.

Finally, the outer hatch irised open. The contact team tromped down the ramp to the docking platform. Through the air in his suit and the medium of his own body came the clank of his magnetic soles striking the metal ramp and deck plating.

Two arcs of scarcely waist-high figures awaited them. White spacesuits and silvered visors blocked any direct view of the aliens, behind whom gaped the outer hatch of the starship’s own airlock. A high-pitched squeal warbled in Art’s ears, in the mutually agreed-upon clear channel. “Welcome to
Victorious
,” appended a familiar voice. The synthesized speech sounded like Pashwah. A clone, Art decided. Light delay made it impossible for the original agent on Earth to do translations.

“No identification or title given,” Keizo said on the all-hands private band. “Nor did the speaker show himself, such as by stepping forward or raising an arm. We know K’vithians use personal names, and that their culture is hierarchical. I theorize that their high officials remained inside.”

One of the shorter humans stepped in front of the rest; he towered over the K’vithians. “Thank you for your hospitality. I am Ambassador Hong-yee Chung. On behalf of the United Planets, welcome to human space.” A high-pitched squeaking followed, Chung’s remarks translated by a human-created AI.

Art had to respect Chung’s attentiveness to the diplomatic niceties, as their surroundings kept distracting him. The ship’s rotation manifested itself in the wheeling overhead of stars, nearby Callisto, and mighty Jupiter. This near the spin axis magnetic boots held him securely, but centrifugal force still tugged at his body.
Let’s go.
Spacesuit shielding notwithstanding, humans belonged inside, protected from Jupiter’s vast but invisible radiation belt.

Lights sparkled and flared as spectator ships jockeyed for position. What a zoo it was out there! Had the UP sent twice as many ships to keep order, they would not have sufficed.

Finally, a Snake gestured at the open airlock. Mixed groups of humans and aliens cycled through the lock, beyond which waited more greeters. Spacesuited ETs marched off, presumably to shed their vacuum gear. The corridor, like the airlock, was amply tall for humans. Parallel lines of small holes marked the ceiling as far as Art could see. Similar rows of holes marked the ceiling and wall of a cross corridor. Decoration?

The aliens were whippet-thin, iridescent-scaled bipeds. Their faces seemed less humanoid than their bodies, probably because of the upward-oriented third eye near the apex of the skull. They lacked noses, their nostrils lying flush with the plane of the face. Each extremity bore four digits, one opposable; the tips of razor-sharp retractable talons were barely visible in hands and sandaled feet. More than half their greeters displayed the back-of-the-neck scalloped ornamental ridge of a male.

All wore belted, jumpsuit-like garments of a common fashion, made of a plastic-like material. Similarities in clothing, despite differences in ornamentation and color, suggested uniforms. The largest Snake stood about 125 centimeters tall.

“Helmets stay on,” Art reminded everyone. K’vithian and terrestrial life alike were CHON-based, but…. “Yes, there’s oxygen, but these guys like concentrations of volcanic gas we’d find toxic, especially sulfur dioxide. And keep your suit heaters on. It won’t be much above freezing.”

An honor guard waited in two parallel ranks. Their ramrod postures conveyed energy, discipline, and utter seriousness. These guys were
scary
: like erect, pack-hunting pumas who had evolved intelligence. Who had built a starship. Who almost certainly used vast quantities of antimatter. Art was suddenly glad to be wearing a pressure suit. It cloaked, he hoped, an uncontrollable shiver.

One of the taller aliens raised his arms in welcome, fingers spread. His uniform was white and starkly unadorned. His thin lips parted but did not further move as he spoke a sequence of squeals. An overhead speaker declared, “I am Arblen Ems Firh Mashkith, Foremost of this vessel. Please follow me to our meeting room.”

Mashkith strode briskly, humans and Hunter officers in tow. The hulking visitors, despite their bulky pressure suits, kept pace without difficulty. The carefully planned route threaded featureless corridors and elevators. Crew streamed back and forth, as ordered—and as ordered, none spoke to the humans. The doors they passed were secured. Gravity increased toward K’vith standard as they trended “uphill,” away from the spin axis. K’vith standard was a bit below the Earth norm, possibly enough to confuse their reflexes.

This is not the time to dwell on petty tactical advantages, Mashkith chastised himself. This is a moment for boldness.

As though reading his Foremost’s mind, Pashwah-qith netted to him, “The die is cast.”

Mashkith still marveled how openly the humans revealed themselves on their infosphere. The die is cast: It was the declaration of an ancient Earth warlord leading his legions across the river Rubicon to invade Rome. He had cast the die for Arblen Ems twenty long Earth-years earlier. Let another quote from Caesar’s
War Commentaries
now be his guide.

I came. I saw. I conquered.

Over his real-time vision Mashkith had superimposed an augmented-reality overlay: what lay behind each door, what was controlled by each switch, anything that might evoke inappropriate curiosity in their guests. Translucent icons that characterized radio chatter hovered in the corners of his enhanced vision. Besides the open channel to which all had agreed, the humans communicated over a fluctuating number of encrypted bands—prudent, not impolite. His mind’s ear did its best to sort out real-time translations of the open channel, and of everything relevant the ship’s sensors managed to overhear through helmets. Intuition and AI assistants sought in their separate ways to filter from the flood of data that which was most significant and time-sensitive.