A snippet of April 6

“Good evening, Heather.” Mo looked nervous. Why would he fall back into that mode? Was it a mistake to invite him to her private space? She hoped he wasn’t going to start addressing her as Your Majesty or something. He wasn’t sworn to her even though he owned property in her realm. He was Jeff’s hired man and a citizen of Home now. She waved him to a chair in sight of the kitchen. He sat but stiff and tense.
“I made spaghetti. It’s a favorite in my family. I hope you like that OK?” she asked.
“That will be a treat. I haven’t had it in months. Different sorts of restaurants are one of the few things I occasionally miss about Earth. We had a Vietnamese and a Hungarian place we frequented in our old neighborhood.”
“I’m afraid you’re getting canned sauce with a few spices added and pouch meatballs,” Heather said.
“That’s a big step up from the self-heating meals I’ve been having sitting on the edge of my bunk. I don’t want to go to the cafeteria in my suit liner and I’m out of time and energy to get cleaned up and go back out by the time I get in.”
The cafeteria wasn’t much, just six tables and a tiny kitchen. But it served better meals than out of a self-heating can. Between Heather’s own employees and some lot owners still in temporary shelter, there were thirty four people living centrally in connected pressure. Two families living at depth in tunnels under Heather’s land because the modular housing they towed from Armstrong was destroyed or buried in the Chinese attack.
A few others lived in because their work didn’t permit them to live on their own land and commute. Not only did they have no fast elevator system to the depth they were at now, but there still were not small personal vehicles to be had. The traffic system and some vehicles were designed, and the standards issued by royal decree. They would be manufactured when the roads were cleared. They just needed to make a bigger printer to make the structural modules. The hand built bus that had connected them to Armstrong briefly was now sitting waiting on their surface streets to be cleared.
“That’s awful,” Heather said of eating canned meals. She was genuinely concerned. Mo was an asset and anything that wore his morale down was very bad. “We have kids living in pressure who would probably do courier work cheap if they just knew there was a market. They could run a hot meal to your room from the cafeteria. They probably don’t think to ask because they lived under strict North American law in Armstrong. They didn’t ignore it here like we did on M3 even before the revolution. I will drop a hint to some parents,” she promised.
“I never thought to ask either,” Mo admitted. “I guess my brain is stuck on Earth-think a little bit too. My son has turned into quite the entrepreneur on Home, so you’d think I would have adjusted, but it didn’t occur to me.”
“What does he do?” Heather asked.
“He buys old spex and com pads from folks. It seems like most people get new ones often, whenever there’s a new feature they like. Most of the time they aren’t worth the time to try to sell them. But if he’s standing right there offering cash they’ll dig it out of the drawer they tossed it in. People still find it hard to actually throw it away if it still works fine. The new people coming in are shocked at the prices for everything and happy to economize on something. He sells some to Earth because the down leg shipping is cheap.”
“I’m aware your daughter already has quite a reputation as an artist.”
“That’s one we didn’t see coming. She always was sketching stuff. Pictures of fancy clothing mostly. But she was a discipline problem when we lived on Earth. The school never saw her as having any artistic talent. In fact she got poor grades in basic art and then couldn’t get in the more advanced classes. My wife has shown me articles from Earth denouncing her work as simplistic and childish, but people sure seem to be willing to pay serious money for it.”
“On Earth that would be seen as a negative in academic society,” Heather pointed out. “If the great unwashed masses like it then it can’t have any value. Only the pure praise of their scholastic peers.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to be pining for their approval,” Mo said.
“Good. I’d be disappointed if she paid attention to such foolishness.”
“I have to admit. I haven’t been gone from Earth all that long. But I’m already looking at the news feeds and thinking I can’t believe I used to accept what they said pretty much automatically. Now they sound like they are raving crazies most of the time. But if I said that to the people I used to work with down there I can just see the looks they’d give me.”
“So sad, now you are oppressed under my iron fist,” Heather said.
“Oddly enough I think you are capable of doing the iron fist thing,” he said actually making a fist. “It’s just not scary because from everything I’ve seen you won’t do it for some stupid reason that doesn’t make any sense to anybody. Everybody from Armstrong is very happy you smashed their punitive force with an iron fist and didn’t let them be dragged back to a North American jurisdiction. Even the ones in temporary shelter. They are certain things will get better. They had no such hope at Armstrong. Things were so bad there some of them were near giving up and going back down to the Slum Ball.”
The tension Mo showed when he arrived seemed to have passed.
“That’s the nicest thing anybody has said in awhile. So, if you aren’t scared of me why were you all nervous when you came in?”
“I guess because I’m just a mining engineer and I keep expecting someone to tell me I shouldn’t be doing robotics and civil engineering. Now I’m going to advise you on something and I’m not even sure what discipline to label it. Environmental engineering? Process engineering?”
“All we care is if it works, Mo. We’d take your advice for just about anything if you display general competence. We’re not stupid and we’re going to run any ideas past other on Home and Earth before we undertake any big commitment of time and money. I’d take your advice on making spaghetti if you can show me a better way to do it, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t certified as a chef.”
“Good. I’m encouraged you’ll get other advice. That takes some of the pressure off.”
“Come sit here, it’s ready and no pressure to talk business while we enjoy it.”
“Oh my, you have wine.” There was a plastic carafe of red. Glass was just too heavy to justify lifting it from Earth. She served the pasta separately with a big blob of butter melting on it and the sauce and meatballs in the pan she used to heat it. Her serving dishes and table space were very limited. They had grated cheese in little foil packs and she wouldn’t serve on plastic plates and had metal silverware. Given how she was raised she had limits to her practicality.
“OK, you’re right I’m not a chef,” Mo admitted. “What did you add to make this so good?”
“Commercial sauce, but good stuff, Midi brand from North America. I added a little extra garlic, a tiny bit of anchovy paste, a tad of basil and tarragon, maybe a teaspoon of honey and five of those little dark chocolate chips like they put in cookies.”
“Amazing. Chocolate? Anchovies?”
“Those sort of things you add in moderation. You don’t want them to stand out or take over, but they add to the complexity. A lot of what we buy is intended for the sportsman and camping market. The quality tends to be much better than emergency food. Don’t be shy, take seconds.”
He had another full plate serving and she had just a little more. Eventually he sighed and leaned back in his chair. That was the first she was sure he was over being uncomfortable.
“Now tell me what is so complicated you couldn’t just send me a text,” Heather said.
“I’m aware you had plans to move steadily toward food independence. Jeff made me aware I should start talking with experts at inside cultivation on Earth to know how to lay out chambers and tunnels. Then later he told me to speak with the French who were interested in doing the same thing. We really have it easier in a lot of ways. We don’t have to worry about pests and disease as long as we don’t introduce them. On Earth it’s a struggle to bring in air and water and have workmen in and out without introducing problems.”
“And if we do have contamination we can pump a tunnel back to vacuum,” Heather said.
“Yes, and we can make our own air, water is harder but we have some that can be mined in dark craters. At least enough until we have a regular supply from the outer system,” Mo said.
“But we don’t have biomass. We’re carbon poor and we have no extra lift capacity. Nobody is even taking standby status freight. So we have everything we need but enough carbon dioxide for the plants. Eventually we can recover most of it from sewage and mulching crop waste, but we lack the tons we need to start a large recycling system going. We can’t do hydro or build soil without organics.”
“Exactly,” Mo agreed. “Eventually, long term, we can send ships to bring back hydrocarbons or carbon dioxide from Jupiter or beyond just like they are doing water now.”
Heather thought briefly of reminding him the first snowball wasn’t back yet and that the second expedition was having troubles. After considering it she didn’t see how that would help and it was confidential so she stifled it.
“What I want to propose is a stopgap. We have three million cubic meters of rock and regolith to back fill. There is anywhere from fifty to two hundred parts per million carbon. We should process the material to remove that carbon. You might also consider separating and stockpiling the iron at the same time. It will be a considerable asset in time and cost little to do so.”
“Yes, but the iron is easy to separate magnetically,” Heather said. “How much of a process is getting the carbon out? Is it going to involve milling and chemical extraction?”
“That’s the beauty. All you have to do is heat it and it and the majority of it is released as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane gas.”
“Enough to be worthwhile?” Heather asked.
“It varies from fifty to two hundred parts per million.”
“That doesn’t sound like much to me.”
“But Heather, if our material runs at the median concentration it means three thousand tons of carbon in just our back-fill. Plenty to stock a closed system and buy us time. If we need to we can send a group to set up mining in some of the dark craters. That would give us more water and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same regolith has higher carbon content too.”
“Would we have to divert some of our robots doing back-fill to run a remote mining operation?”
“No, because we will reach a point where we have as many robots working as the road network will support. Then we just replace the obsolete ones that wear out. We wouldn’t send the robots to a dark crater however, we’d send an automated robot maker or two.”
Heather thought about that a bit. “You can handle and convert the carbon monoxide easily? That stuff makes me nervous in a sealed environment.”
“We can burn it to carbon dioxide through a catalyst screen. We’ll do it physically isolated from environmentally controlled cubic,” he assured her. “The carbon dioxide liquefies easily to transport it if we do the dark crater operation. It’s in the ideal form to release for plants.”
“I’ve been speaking with Jeff about this. We also want to have a yeast tank operation. They’ve developed some strains of yeast that can be processed to something people actually want to eat – not just survival food. But without the biomass we weren’t going to be able do it because we had no feedstock.”
“Hydroponic beets are an excellent feed stock for tank yeast,” Mo said.
“You’ve been researching this deeper than you’re admitting,” Heather said.
Mo blushed. “I’m still no expert. But I had to be certain it would work as a package before proposing it.”
“What I’d like you to do is make a couple prototypes. I take it the transport robots won’t each have an extraction apparatus will they?”
“No. We don’t really need to change the design of the scoop and move units. We just add a mill at the edge of the crater to extract the iron and carbon. Then when the bin gets full of processed material it tosses it in the crater so it doesn’t build up a slope and make us periodically move that unit forward to a new lip. The material will be loose and that’s a dangerous operation to do.”
Heather nodded. “We want a prototype, and a unit to transport to a dark crater and test there for carbon iron and water extraction. Build that unit with weight and dimensional limits in mind for transporting it. I’ll need a budget proposal and a short description of the operation for Jeff and whomever he decides to consult. When can you have that for me?”
“I’ll have a basic proposal in a week,” he promised. When Heather lifted a skeptical eyebrow he explained. “I have an outline already and just need to add some drawings and address some of the questions you raised.”
“I’m curious, how do the other moon bases handle waste? Do they recycle and if not how do they dispose of it?” Heather asked.
“I have no idea. But I’ll inquire if you wish,” Mo said
“Yes, I wish. Would you care for some dessert?” Heather offered.
“I thank you, but not after the second helping,” Mo said, putting a hand flat on his stomach.
“Thank you then. If you send me a message about this, title the message with ‘Carbon’ on the header and I’ll know what it’s about.”
It was an obvious dismissal, and Mo stood and said his goodbyes quickly.

Another snippet of April 6

There are so many clicks and buzzers and chimes in a spaceship it’s like having a nagging mother. Some, like a com call that isn’t flagged urgent may just be a polite *ding* that repeats every five minutes and then drops to every half hour. After a day the ships computer will even give it up for a lost cause although the call light will keep flashing.
A real emergency gets a much more insistent announcement. Thus Barak found himself standing rattled with no memory of leaving his bunk, heart pounding and breathing raggedly even before the first blast of the emergency klaxon stopped sounding. He staggered to the com board, which fortunately was only three steps away. He only needed two steps today he was so motivated.
He didn’t have to call the lights up. The computer did that for him, emergency lights on top of the regular ones so if it had to switch over there was no pause. It was dazzling to his dark adjusted eyes. The heavy subsonics shook his very bones and he slapped the receive switch before it could repeat.
“Emergency light off,” he commanded. Nothing happened, that was out of his control. “Cabin light five percent,” he tried. That was still under his control and the double lighting eased off.
FIRE IN GALLEY CUPBOARD – read the screen and displayed a graphic pinpointing it. Barak could hear, could feel through his bare feet, the alarm still sounding in other compartments.
“Bridge com,” Barak demanded, and then struggled for a moment to remember who was on watch the XO or the Captain. Oh yeah… Jaabir. “Sir, what do you want us to do?” he asked the Captain. There was no answer.
“What’s going on?” Deloris asked from the bunk. He’d been by the wall and didn’t even remember how he got out over her. There wasn’t all that much room. Normally he thought she was cute, but her hair was a fright wig, her mouth hanging open in shock, and her eyes unfocused still trying to align.
“Fire in the Galley. No answer from the Bridge. I’ll go try to put it out,” Barak told her.
Deloris covered her face with both hands, pert little nose sticking between them. “No! Alice is environmental officer. She’ll go straight to the fire and it’s her job. You get a mask and find out why the hell the Bridge doesn’t answer. A station not reporting is assumed to be a person in danger. That’s anybody’s concern who is free to render aid.”
She might look out of it but she was thinking much clearer than him. “Put on pants and shoes,” she added, since he seemed inclined to rush out the way he was. He did one better, he used the toilet because that simply wasn’t going to wait much longer at all.
By the time he emptied his bladder Deloris had his deck shoes sitting in front of the bunk and was holding a pair of suit liner pants for him. Those would serve as well as anything. From the time the alarm sounded until he was in the corridor was less than four minutes.
There was a cupboard with emergency items at the head of the corridor and he snatched an air mask out of it, not breaking the seal just yet, but he could have it out and on in not much more than thirty seconds. He stuck the thicker seal end in his mouth to free up his hands and then went up the ladder for the control room like a salmon climbing a waterfall to spawn.
The hatch to the Bridge was closed and he stopped and laid his hand on it even though the computer hadn’t said anything about fire there. “Yuki-onna,” he addressed the ship by name, “is there pressure in the control room?”
“Yes, I have three indications of life safe pressure in the control room,” the speakers by the door answered him and the speakers down the corridor echoed it. He stuck his hand in the recess and squeezed the release. It was locked.
“Open the hatch,” he commanded.
“The Captain locked the hatch,” the ship replied. “You do not have authority to release it.”
“The Captain does not respond to com. He may be disabled in the control room and unable to effectively command. Open the hatch,” he ordered again.
The computer was smart, but that was a complex series of statements for it to examine for logic. It probably had a whole series of branching conditions to examine to come to a conclusion. There was a reason most people called Artificial Intelligences Artificial Stupids. At least somebody shut the alarm off and the hull stopped repeatedly ringing with it.
“You must declare a Ship in Danger emergency to override the Captain’s orders,” the ship replied in a calm female voice. It was maddening.
“The damn ship is on fire! Isn’t that enough of a Ship in Danger emergency?” he asked. He was upset or he never would have argued with an A.S. in an emergency. You just tell them what they want to hear, like talking to an insane person or a very little child.
“That is a separate emergency,” the ship informed him after another slight pause to consider the problem. “There are no indications of fire on the Bridge.”
Barak turned at the muted sound of bare feet hitting bulkheads and the Captain advanced up the corridor to him bouncing from side to side. The fastest way to progress since there wasn’t enough traction in their slight gravity to run. It was his turn to have his mouth hang open in surprise since Jaabir was naked with a bundle of clothing clutched in one hand.
“Open the door,” Jaabir shouted like the ship was hard of hearing. “You go back to your cabin,” he snarled at Barak like the whole thing was his fault.
Barak didn’t really think about it. Maybe it would have been the same if he had. He hit Jaabir in the face in a flash of anger feeling his huge nose, his most prominent feature, squash like a piece of ripe fruit under his blow. The adrenaline surge removed any restraint and he connected solidly driving him into the oppose corridor bulkhead and thrust himself back into the Bridge hatch. Then when Jaabir bounced off the bulkhead back to him he hit him again with the hatch at his back anchoring him to put some real heft into it.
The droplets of blood sprayed all over in the slight gravity and Jaabir crumpled slowly in the gentle pull, unconscious and limp. That might not have been a good idea, Barak realized shocked at how bad the fellow looked from just two punches. He’d never struck someone with his fist as an adult.
“Yuki-onna, the Captain is injured and I am taking him to the Infirmary,” Barak announced. “Please advise the ship’s company of that and ask the XO to meet us there to treat him.”
“Done,” the computer replied quickly, “The XO asks what the nature of his injuries are?”
“Blunt force trauma of the face. Probably a broken nose. Perhaps a concussion,” he admitted. Starting to wish he hadn’t hit him the second time. He still didn’t regret the first. “What is the status on the Galley fire?” he asked.
“The environmental officer vented the Galley ready storage to vacuum. Sensors indicate there is no source of heat remaining consistent with continued combustion. The EO now informs the ship’s company that the fire is out and after sufficient cooling the scene will be put back under pressure and examined to determine the cause of the fire, what may be salvaged, and remedial action.”
“Thank you Yuki-onna,” Barak towed Jaabir by an ankle, careful to not bump him where he had to go around a couple corners. Charlotte Dobbs the XO was waiting for him at the Infirmary. Wearing mismatching top and bottom and sticky footies. Her hair was a as bad as Deloris’ even though it was shorter than Barak’s, and he realized she had no eyebrows if they weren’t drawn on.
“What happened to him?” Charlotte asked angrily. She started positioning Jaabir on the treatment table. She didn’t ask Barak’s help and didn’t need it in the slight gravity.
Barak started to open his mouth and then remembered what Happy Lewis, April’s grandfather had told him a dozen times… volunteer nothing. He stopped and took a deep breath.
“I don’t intend to discuss that with you,” he replied, feeling a great calm come over himself. “Your concern right now is to treat him.”
“I’m Commander with Jaabir incapacitated,” she barked at him. Why did everybody have to yell?
“I’m sure God himself is impressed with your promotion to his peerage,” Barak said and smiled. It obviously infuriated her. Jaabir started moving a bit, but didn’t open his eyes. He actually clutched them closed harder, and let out a little moan.
“What I mean is… I order you to answer me.”
“I will only answer an official hearing on the matter,” Barak replied.
“All right… Consider this your damn hearing,” Charlotte yelled at him. “You beat him up!”
“You can’t prove that,” Barak calmly replied.
“No, I can’t, but you did, and we both suspect you had something to do with Harold’s death too, but we haven’t figured out how to prove that yet either. You’re going to be big trouble now with two strikes against you when we do hang them on you.”
Barak was shocked. He’d had no clue his Captain was conspiring with the XO to pin Harold Hanson’s death on him. It took a moment before he could frame a reply.
“You are distraught and embarrassed for your lover. Undoubtedly you are embarrassed you helped him desert his duty station to have sex, although I understand the pressure on you from the Captain. You are not speaking rationally and I won’t expect it of you. You not only can’t prove I beat him up, as you said, but you have no basis to accuse me with Harold. I was in the lock when he had his accident. My suit camera will show I was nowhere near him when we heard his suit lose pressure, and it will document he often abused his suit kicking the ice off.”
“Your suit camera failed, which we found very suspicious,” Charlotte sneered. “And you can’t prove we were having sex either. There’s a camera on the Bridge too that will show what happened with you and Jaabir. The ship won’t allow that one to be erased!”
Barak silently thanked April’s grandfather again and his lessons to a green kid on how things really worked. He wasn’t going to reveal just yet he had his own copies of all his suit recordings.
“Neither of us ever went in the Bridge,” Barak told her. “Jaabir had it locked under his authority. The only thing that camera will show is – he wasn’t there!” He stopped let that idea hang there for her to consider it certainly wasn’t anything to her advantage.
Charlotte looked stricken. She was running on emotion and hadn’t thought it through that far. For some reason she’d assumed they both made it onto the Bridge. Perhaps just the amount of time that had passed. She probably didn’t even know he locked it.
“As for the other. Yes I make a formal accusation. Yuki-onna please copy this conversation to the log. You both neglected duty to have sex on watch. When Jaabir came down the corridor he was naked with his clothing in his hand,” Barak said disgusted.
Charlotte grimaced hard. She would have had the sense to get dressed.
“If you wish to establish your innocence I suggest you have one of the female crew come to the Infirmary. There has to be a rape kit in a sick bay this well equipped. Use it and seal it as evidence and there won’t be any question later,” he challenged.
“That is not the purpose of the kit,” she said angry. “I don’t have to prove anything. As for you, return to your quarters. I’m not sure what I’d trust you to do. I’ll review your duties and your status if Jaabir isn’t fit to resume command soon. I consider you a risk until then.”
“A risk? You aren’t acting like I’m a danger. Which I am not. If you really thought I was a danger and violent enough to have killed Harold and attacked Jaabir you’d be cringing from me. Instead you are standing here alone yelling in my face and haven’t called for anybody to come escort me to my cabin. But I’ll take myself there now,” he said turning to the hatch. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kind of shorthanded. You might think on how you plan to assign the extra work of keeping me confined to my cabin and who gets to do my work,” he paused to say over his shoulder as he left. Jaabir had a hand up to his face feeling carefully.
“Yuki-onna, please copy my conversation with the XO to my com console,” Barak said in the corridor. Best to get it protected before that too mysteriously disappeared. He’d make sure it went on his private memory chip as soon as he walked in his cabin.

A short Family Law #3 snippet

“Commander Gordon,” Robert Frost, captain of the Sharp Claws appeared not just on the command audio feed but came up on the video feed to Gordon too. That indicated he had something more than routine to discuss.
“Captain Frost,” Gordon acknowledged and nodded, a human gesture many of them had assimilated.
“We have the first case of an infection from an alien life form. I just finished speaking with my medical officer about it. The crew woman who reported to sick-call tried to treat it herself but it didn’t improve.”
“Well, I guess all those protocols put in place by the Earth powers were not entirely without merit as our recent hosts implied.”
“Oh, we’ve known there are things one can catch already. Thorn has a whole list of them, mostly various amoebas and parasites. The people who keep an embassy open on the Elves’ world just in case they ever want to have anything to do with us get something called Blue Dot. They feel tired and get little blue bumps that go away in about three days. Nobody has ever isolated an organism causing it or documented a human to human transmission. I don’t think they’ve ever had a Derf on world to see if they catch it. The thing Earth worries about isn’t that sort of thing. They are fearful of something deadly like the flu or smallpox.”
“I take it this isn’t such a devastating disease or you’d be more upset?” Gordon prompted him.
“Yes, it another irritating thing that I’m pretty sure we can deal with, but it still seemed worth a word of warning.”
“Good, I’m putting our medial guy on the circuit. He’s our environmental officer too. Would you describe how you became aware of this and we’ll send the recording to our other vessels too.”
“The young Human woman is a previous Fargone missile tech who left their service before we recruited her. She’s twenty seven Fargone years old, a bit more than twenty eight T-years. She got a patch of white and itching to the inside of her little toe on her right foot. Thinking it common Athlete’s Foot she asked our medic for a tube of anti-fungal cream and she prophylactically applied it to the other gaps between her toes with clean hands , and then applied it to the afflicted area last. It didn’t improve, indeed it got worse, appeared on the other foot, and changed color to a yellowish hue. That’s when she returned to medical and sought help.”
“What is this Athlete’s Foot?” Gordon asked, puzzled. It seemed like an athletic foot should be a good thing.
“It’s a common fungal infection in humans. It is often spread in communal areas where people go bare footed. But it is incubated in the dark and moisture between their toes. The more so because shoes and socks keep the foot in the dark and limit drying air circulation. This is a Badger analog of a fungus, but the medical tech was smart enough to scan a swab and see there is alien genetic material present. Indeed it returned an error message because there are sequences not common to any Earth organisms.”
“How did you confirm it is a Badger organism?”
“We have some sequencing of Badger and Badger planet organisms from trading items. There were short sequence matches once the medical scanner was supplied a wider database. But we showed photographs of her foot to Badgers on the Dart and they immediately said: ‘Oh yeah, boot rot.’ It seems it is an occupational hazard to those who have to wear boots for their work such as caring for herd animals and working in industrial settings. Most Badgers avoid wearing an enclosing shoe unless absolutely necessary.”
“Then I assume they know how to treat it?” Thor asked on the audio feed.
“Yes, but their cure is to crush a sort of common weed that looks like a succulent and stuff the sticky mass in the toe of the boot. The other folk remedy is to find a source of mud near a natural body of water and coat the foot liberally with it, getting it between the toes thoroughly, and allow it to remain and dry out for a few days before washing it away. Apparently there are naturally antagonistic organisms in such mud. Since neither cure is available here my medic cut the upper section away from the toes on a pair of cloth shoes. We are coating one foot with a disinfectant wash we use for surgical prep and the other foot with a dilute solution of iodine.”
“Thank you. Keep me appraised if this becomes a bigger problem or doesn’t respond to treatment,” Gordon requested. He appeared ready to end the discussion but Lee spoke up.
“Gordon? Captain Frost? Just a thought here. Most Human laundry is vacuum tumbled. A freeze dried fungus may be dormant but not dead. You might make sure her socks get wet washed in chlorine bleach or something similar or they may just re-infect her.”
“That’s interesting,” Frost said looking surprised. “I’ll mention it to my medic right now.”
“How did you know that?” Gordon asked Lee after Frost was gone.
“When I lived with my relatives in Michigan for awhile their kids got Athlete’s Foot at the community pool and quickly spread it to everybody else at home. I remember my cousin’s wife putting bleach in the wash to get rid of it.”
“So you did learn some practical things on Earth,” Gordon said, amused.
“Just all kinds of skills,” Lee assured him, scowling. “I know how to form a jail gang to keep safe. I know how to get back in line quickly to get a second serving in the jail mess, and I know how to slowly eat a candy bar in tiny little nips and make it fill you up if they have you on lock-down and aren’t feeding you. I learned how to sit in the sun where there is a breeze to keep the mosquitoes from leaving you a mess of welts. I even know how to suck-up to a bureaucratic negative tax official so you get your case moved forward while the angry combative folks don’t get what they need. Doesn’t mean I want to live on a planet where I need those sort of skills,” she said, firmly.
There was a lot Lee still hadn’t told him about her time on Earth Gordon reflected.

A snippet of April #6

April slouched deep down in the oversized Hardoy chair. She’d bought two in this larger size thinking they would be more comfortable for Gunny and other big men. It turned out she preferred them. The back went up high enough for her to lean her head back and the extra width spread the heavy ballistic cloth flatter than a smaller chair with light rip-stop fabric. It supported her legs clear out to the rolled over padded edge under her knees.
In the half G apparent gravity that her apartment was kept at the chair was as comfortable as a hammock and almost as hard for her to lever herself from its depths. It was low enough she could safely sit her coffee mug on the floor beside her and plenty of room on each side to tuck snacks or reading material. She had her comp-pad laying screen down on her stomach at the moment paused on the newsfeed she was reading while she gazed out her view port.
The commonest size of apartment on Home wasn’t any bigger than a cheap motel room in North America and every square meter had to do double or triple duty. Kitchen tables and beds that folded up against the wall when not needed were common. They used the sort of appliances and fixtures common to travel trailers and motor homes on Earth. She had a huge apartment by local standards. So much so it embarrassed her on occasion as a visitor would freeze for an instant with surprise on their face when they stepped inside the door.
Her bodyguard Gunny had immediately rated it a four-car apartment upon stepping in the first time, since he had an annoying habit of comparing every place he saw in Home to the size of a garage you’d expect on a North American home. He was of the opinion what he called the half-car model might drive people crazy from confinement, but he had a skewed view of things having lived most of his life on Earth. April knew that some of the Japanese found the local accommodations compared very favorably to what they had lived in back home.
She’d been spoiled rotten growing up because her family was relatively well-to-do. Her grandfather had helped in the construction of Mitsubishi 3 and put all his money in both spun residential cubic and zero G industrial space. Also her father was the resident manager for Mitsubishi with a generous housing allowance.
As a child she had her own bedroom that was the size of a walk-in closet on Earth. Even more of a luxury was her own square meter all-in-one unit bath that became a shower stall with the door sealed. By orbital standards that was a palace. So she might have found the very smallest apartment oppressive herself. They were barely more than hot slots, but she’d never admit that to Gunny.
Behind her there were two sofas facing each other across a table on a rug that defined a formal living area. In smaller apartments they would be wall hung fold-downs from the wall. They were IKEA super light hide-a-beds in case she needed to put up guests. She had enough wall space for both a fairly large 32K video monitor and some big pieces of art. There was also room by the cooking area for a real table that could seat six which she left set up. It looked sturdy enough but the legs could be folded inside the drop apron and set to the side if the floor area was needed.
The kitchen against the inside bulkhead had a simple two burner stove and a microwave. April had the luxury of a small refrigerator too. A few folks didn’t bother with even that much, taking all their meals at the cafeteria. It was decent food too. Mitsubishi saw to that. If you had a stove that meant you needed dishes, pans, utensils and things like spices and volume to store them. It soon escalated to the status of a cooking hobby rather than any necessity. You easily could keep a few cans of self heating stuff like soup or stew for when you felt sick or were just too tired to trek down to the cafeteria. The cafeteria also would pack take away and there were cheap courier services to deliver it.
Further from the entry behind the kitchen and dining area the end of her space was divided into two small bedrooms with a bath between them. Each had a private section but a shared shower stall between them with lockout doors so only one side would open at a time. That was all framed off in temporary wall panels that jammed in place between overhead and deck with locking vertical seams.
If she let her body guard, Gunny, go it would be easy to remodel by removing the panels. Neither had brought idea up the idea of him leaving in some months now. His one month gig had turned into open ended employment, although less than full time. His status now was more ‘on call’, especially since Home was further from Earth and trouble now. He could take short security jobs with other associates.
The reason she pulled her chair over by the port was to enjoy the view. Right now the moon was in a thin crescent on the edge to her right. From this side there was no light reflected off the Earth so it was utterly dark on the left portion. You were made aware of it more by the absence of brighter stars than any illumination of the surface at all.
The sun was directly visible to the right of the moon and she had the port darkened until it was bearable. They were at that point in their orbit around the L2 point where the Earth disappeared behind the moon. In a couple hours the thin slice of moon would have the sun just barely shining past the edge of it and the blue marble of the Earth would rise from behind the opposite dark horizon of the moon to the left. It would display a crescent to the same side as the moon but a bigger section. They were much too far away to see the lights of cities in the dark section by eyeball.
Neither were there any lights to be seen from here on the dark portion of the moon. All the settlements of humankind were on the other face of the moon that stayed pointed to the Earth. The few places with any people or surface structures on this side were barely visible with a very good telescope when they were in sunlight. The headlamps of a rover or floods outside a habitat entry were insignificant.
April could still call her friend Heather at Central on the other side of the moon or anywhere on Earth for that matter. There were plenty of satellites in lunar orbit to relay the call. There were now several such systems so you couldn’t be cut off easily. It was on the one hand still conveniently close here. Hardly any further than Low Earth Orbit in terms of propellant cost. Being at L2 only cost about ten percent more it in freight costs over lifting from Earth to LEO. Unless you were in a hurry. On the other hand it was just distant enough from Earth to enhance their safety. The Earthies had never seemed able to resist the occasional pot shot at Home when they had been in LEO and the added distance was sufficient to give them warning of hostile approach.
That was all background however which all slowly turned every few minutes as the habitat rotated. Their current orientation kept the sun in view although it looped back and forth. Dominating the close view that stayed fixed was the nearby strut tapering from the ring in which April’s home was to the hub above. The same ring extended horizontally across the bottom of her view with another spoke extending to the far side of it a third of the way around. The view was dramatic with massive elements one rarely saw in Earth architecture. The only dynamic aspect of the close view was the slow dance of shadows back and forth as Home rotated.
The glass curved from knee level to almost straight overhead, and most of the new ring being built was visible by looking up. The spoke to the new ring were positioned at the same angles off the hub. April had wondered briefly if there was some reason for that but forgot to ask anyone.
There were only a few panels missing from the skin of the new ring and some gaps where ports like her own were not fitted yet. A few places scaffolding hung off the outside of the ring and two bright yellow lines and hand rails temporarily marked the inside limit on which suited workers could walk without danger of sliding down the curved surface. The ring wasn’t a perfectly circular cross section. There were center sections top and bottom that were flat before it started to curve.
Only a couple months ago there had been a lot more machinery, materials, and scooters floating two hundred meters or more back which was the closest safety zone in which material and equipment could be parked that would be used that shift. Construction was winding down.
Some items could be brought in by scooter by matching speed with the ring and side-slipping onto the inside surface. That was fun to watch. Her pilot friend Easy could do that as slick as catching an egg on a plate. Some were too massive and had to be lowered from the hub on a tensioned cable and slowly nudged up to matching rotational speed without over torquing the hub.
There was talk of extending the hub and putting a third ring on, but she’d read that would be the last as after that the calculations said a forth ring would be unstable in too many situations. It would make moving the habitat as they had from LEO an impractically slow operation to avoid over stressing a long thin hub. Nobody wanted to give up their mobility since it had proved so vital to their safety.
If they wanted to build a similar habitat it wouldn’t be difficult to park it in a slightly different halo orbit around L2 such that they both danced around the same point in space but never crossed over the center at the same time. A necessity that had made Gunny smile and explain to her the Earth custom of a figure eight race or demolition derby. She thought he was pulling her leg until she did a net search.
The area behind April had head room to stand but the glass overhead curved down until it met metal shell about knee high. Her chair was pulled forward close enough to the glass she had to be careful standing up. That low area helped make the room feel bigger but was rather limited in how you could use it. She had some storage cabinets made to fit up to the edge of the glass with castors so they could be pulled out of the low overhead. Heather’s mom had a similar lay-out and raised tomatoes and a few herbs in the narrow space along the port. April intended to do that too… someday. Now she just had a few green plants that helped keep the air pure. Most people had one or two even if they didn’t have exterior ports and needed to illuminate them. They were just nice to look at beside making the apartment smell better – something natural for the eye that wasn’t man made.
There was a pattern of light in the corner of the port she hadn’t noticed before, a little dappled splash of light from internal reflections in the port maybe… April squinted at it. But it looked odd. It wasn’t something her mind recognized as a familiar pattern. She levered herself out of the chair to investigate leaning over closer… and jumped back.
“Gunny!” she called out horrified. Gunny appeared from his room looking rattled from her tone with a pistol in hand. He scanned the empty apartment looking hard for something like a Ninja army hidden behind the sofas.
“Not there, here.” She said, pointing at the corner of the port.
He came over and leaned close as she had, but didn’t jump back. Then eased back a couple steps so he didn’t hit his head when he stood straight. He tried to look neutral but didn’t manage it to hide his irritation at alarming him.
“You want him shot? Most folks just pick a spider up in a tissue and flush him down the toilet.”
“I’ve never seen a spider on Home before. Aren’t they venomous?”
“A few. The really bad ones are big hunters and jumpers like tarantulas. Not little web weavers. None of them are deadly unless you have a sensitivity, but I have to admit some of the little house spiders can give you a nasty bite if you roll on them in your sleep. I’ve had a couple nip me but it didn’t even wake me. Down below nobody makes a house air tight to keep everything out. I’m just happy leave the mosquitoes behind on Earth. They really bother me. The filthy little things carry disease.”
“Just do the tissue thing would you? It doesn’t belong here.”
“OK,” Gunny agreed, but stopped after a few steps and pursed his lips, looking back thoughtfully.
“What?” April demanded.
“Nothing, I’ll get rid of him for you. I just have to ask. What has he been living on?”
That question didn’t make April happy at all.

New start to Family Law 3

The previous was pretty horrible. I trashed it and started over. This works better – more stuff happening now and less info dump.

Chapter 1
Lee was strapped in watching the big plot screen above the physical view ports. There wasn’t much to see through the ports unless they were near a planet or station. Just a few dots of the brighter stars even though the bridge had subdued lighting. Nevertheless they had yet to find a starfaring race who chose to be sealed up inside their hull with only a view screen or radar to look out. As good as electronic had gotten, and better every year, screens failed. Power failed. Cable shorted and cameras got destroyed. Nobody wanted to picture themselves in a hull turned blind coffin. They had just met a new race with kilometer long ships of unimaginable capability and on the front of their vessel they still had plain old viewports, despite their superior technology.
They were on run to first jump to go back home after a long voyage of discover that was very successful. They started out from Derfhome seven months back finding a water world and two major sources of metal along the way. Nobody was going home poor even on the smallest shares. They’d found one race barely past the point of lofting satellites and still confined to their star system. They hadn’t been agreeable to trade and were so disagreeable there was no point in landing. It could only be trouble so they’d left quickly.
Their next find of sentient species had gone much better. They found the frontier world of a whole group of races in cooperation and trading with each other. The world, Far Away, at which they stopped was dominated by the race they called Badgers. There was also a large number of a race they dubbed Bills and a few examples of other races, some of which didn’t have their own ships.
The only fly in the ointment was that this group of cooperative races was in crisis. They’d just come in contact with an aggressive race that disrupted their exploration and commerce. They called them Biters, and all their ships were armed because they preyed on each other as easily as strangers. None if the other local races had ever armed their ships.
Looking at the plot screen there were nine ships other than the High Hopes Lee was riding in. They came out from Derfhome with only five ships. In fact they had gotten named The Little Fleet before they left. If they added many more ships it wouldn’t be very little. The four new ships were Bill and Badger Deep Space Explorers a Badger fast courier and a merchant freighter coming along as a supply tender. None of them armed. Buying arms to defend against the Biters was a big reason they were coming back to the Human sphere of exploration.
Lee was sitting in a second tier couch. She’s grown up on the ship, but this wasn’t her old seat. The bridge had been reworked and extra consoles fitted in with bigger seats. She’s grown up with her parents and her Uncle Gordon the only others aboard. They’d explored for years together until they finally found a class A habitable world. The Holy Grail of every explorer’s dreams.
She was now two thirds owner of the High Hopes with Gordon because in surveying the planet her parents had been killed by an unexpected native life form. Gordon was now Dad. He adapted Lee as the Andersons had arranged. This wasn’t as simple as it might sound since he was Derf. An entirely different species with different culture, custom and law.
He certainly looked different. He was about the same mass as a mature Grizzly bear. With a bigger skull, blunted face, a wider mouth, and most noticeable, heavy middle arms with massive claws and lighter arms above with true hands. He looked just like he should to Lee. She’d been assured by a Derf doctor examining her that he was one good looking hunk of Derf. Said doctor being a smaller Cinnamon female.
The counter in the plot screen showed twenty seconds to jump. Lee couldn’t imagine not having a thrill at seeing one set of stars change to a different pattern. The technology was mature. There was very, very little chance they would jump and disappear like some of the early explorers. Lee never thought of it when they jumped. Gordon always did.
They were spread out because of the new ships. There was a tidal disturbance around a ship leaving local space. Gordon trusted his ships to jump within a couple kilometers of each other. These four new ones not so much. They appeared to have their vectors and velocity down pat. Now they would test their timing. They weren’t members of the Little Fleet, but Gordon made clear they would follow his orders if they wanted to travel with him under his protection.
The counter reached zero and the stars blinked into a new pattern and a star straight ahead shone bright displaying a small disc. The ports immediately darkened until it was comfortable to look unless you stared straight at it. The other ships showed the same distances and relationship on the plot, so they were in sync. Lee let out a little hum of delight and Gordon breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“Clear sky, no artificial emissions, optics show a clear path ahead. Checking it wider with radar by your leave,” the navigator Brownie asked Gordon. Brownie was too busy to dwell on the fact they made it again.
“Check our path. Have the Retribution ping the whole system at full normal power.” The Heavy Cruiser Retribution carried military grade radar. It had a much bigger hull to mount many more elements in its array. If they cared to temporarily shut down most other power usage they could fry another ships electronics light minutes away.
“Take us on a lateral sufficient to see what’s behind the star, and you can pick a target star on pretty much the same heading for us to continue. I doubt we’ll be stopping here. Do you see our escort?” Gordon asked Brownie.
“No drive emissions ahead. Nothing on the radar frequencies he was using.” Gordon was speaking of a new species who came into contact with the Biters just before their departure. They built kilometer long spaceship of performance none of them could match. Of course the Biters fired on them at first contact. That was just what Biters do. The huge vessels came through the Far Away system, snatched a Biter ship there and one stayed behind to observe the Little Fleet. It took a Human ship away briefly and brought it back. It didn’t leave then however. They hung around and when the Little Fleet and four new vessels left it passed and jumped ahead of them. Now it wasn’t to be seen.
“We have radar return on a very thin asteroid belt ahead. I see enough of an arc I think it extends all the way around the star. Optic survey only sees one rocky planet close to the star and a rather small gas giant so far the other side of the star we can barely see a disc,” Brownie reported.
“Your buddy bugged out,” Thor the XO remarked to Lee. She’d predicted the huge ship would escort them all the way back home. It would be awkward if they did. They’d done some trading but made no progress at sharing language at all. The aliens spoke, but a wailing gibberish nobody saw any pattern to yet. They didn’t transmit images of themselves so that severely limited sharing words by pantomime. They showed themselves trading but not on video.
“You’re just hoping I’ll panic and start negotiating to buy my bet back,” Lee accused him. They’d each bet a tenth of a percent of their worth over the matter. Lee stood to lose a lot more than Thor.
“You can buy it back anytime you want,” he agreed. “But it will be sweeter the longer you hold out.”
“What discount are you offering to settle right now?” she demanded.
“Discount? Why should I discount it? I can just take your money now so it doesn’t eat at you all the way back and embarrass you. Do you think a Fargoer would discount a sure thing?” Some of the people in the fleet from Fargone were a little crazy about gambling. They had been betting with credit slips against each other to be paid out of their shares when they got back. At least Lee was betting money she already had.
“I’ll stand pat then,” Lee informed him. Nobody ever died of embarrassment.”
“Wise little one,” Ho-bob-bob-brie said. He wasn’t being sarcastic.
Ho-bob-bob-brie was one of her successes. She’d encouraged Gordon to advance him to the bridge crew. She didn’t often suggest anything touching on command. She tried to make sure she didn’t push anything that would get turned down, because she worried Gordon would keep a mental list and consider it all in the future when she wanted to advance to command.
Lee owned two thirds of the High Hopes. She also owned the Deep Space Explorer The Champion William and the Heavy Space Cruiser Retribution of their fleet outright. The Mothers of Gordon’s clan, Red Tree had sold them for cash and rights to establish a second clan-hold on the planet Gordon and she discovered. The clan retained a couple merchant ships and the much smaller destroyer Sharp Claws which accompanied them, but sold the other ships as inappropriate for a merchant clan. They were all war captures from the USNA by Gordon.
Since she was Gordon’s adapted daughter she was by their culture in an intermediate position between being a child, as if she was under Earth law, and being a full adult. She could make contracts and speak to what would be done with her property, but certain adult things such as being a clan Mother were still closed to her. Nobody in their right mind would suggest she could command a fleet of star ships. Gordon was commander. Lee might speak to what sort of business and trade she hoped the fleet could do, but not order it to turn or stop.
“I’ve been thinking… ” Lee said into the silence.
“Should I sound General Quarters?” Brownie asked, mock concern in his voice. Gordon didn’t reprove him for idle chatter on the bridge. Instead he stifled laughter, one snort of amusement betraying him, true hand covering his nose and mouth. It did seem like every time Lee committed thought something happened.
Lee glared at him and ignored it. “The Caterpillars sent video and still frame to us of all our races, when they included the Biters in the composite it was a clear accusation, they even repeated it. But they have never shown us a picture of themselves. But when they came out and traded with the crew of The Champion William they weren’t shy to let themselves be seen. They didn’t even have anything to cover up. They obviously can’t wear pants, but they could wear some sort of robe. It would be easy to wear a mask like the Hinth too. They wouldn’t even need a strap. They could just hold it from the back with a couple face tentacles.”
“Perhaps they have a cultural aversion to depicting images of themselves,” Thor the XO surmised. “The Hinth have a strong physical reaction to close proximity. Being bare faced to others all day exhausts them. They could never have had cities or cooperated on any scale without muting the fight or flight reaction.”
“Or a religious prohibition,” Lee tossed back at him.
“The Human Muslim religion prohibits artistic depiction of living things that might be taken as idols,” Alex Hillerman said on the command circuit. He was the Head back in Engineering and only one there on this circuit. “Not that pictures of people and animals are specifically prohibited in the Qur’an, but it has become a very rigid custom because they might be seen and used as idols. Especially any representation of their prophet.”
“What do they do for art then?” Lee asked.
“Oh they have plenty, but it is abstract, geometric and calligraphy mostly,” he replied.
“I wonder, now that we have video of them how they would react to us sending them images of themselves?” Lee wondered. “Or perhaps just a simplified cartoon sort of image like our stick figures?”
“I’m making this a standing fleet order,” Gordon said. “No images of the Caterpillars will be sent back to them. For that matter no images of real caterpillars. I refuse to experiment when the people in question obviously have much more advanced technology than us. They have better ships and Captain Fenton reports the missiles the Caterpillars fired were clearly nuclear when they self-destructed. They weren’t terribly big, and we have no idea if they can pump an X-head laser, but they could easily be variable yield and they just used the low setting to self-destruct. I’d rather not find out what they can do by pissing them off and getting a thorough demonstration.”
“Aye,” Lee agreed quickly, wishing she had added that it didn’t seem a good idea to actually do before Gordon.
“Was that humor?” the Captain Slick of the Bill ship Green asked the Badger, who the Humans called Talker, on the Badger Deep Space explorer Wonder. He used a private circuit, afraid his question might seem ignorant. Talker, or more accurately ‘His Excellency the Voice of Far Away’, was reputed to understand these aliens better than anyone else.
“The navigator asking if he should sound General Quarters was humor,” Talker explained. General Quarters is a ship-wide alert by means of a distinctively jolting, loud sound which warns there may be sudden maneuvers, imminent battle or even collision.”
“That is funny?”
“Indeed, I can assure you they found it a fine jest. I could hear somebody on their bridge stifling laughter.”
“And?” the Bill asked.
“And what?” Talker encouraged him to elaborate.
“And what else was humor in their conversation?” Captain Slick asked.
“Not a gods be blessed thing.”
The Bill was silence, staring out of the screen at a complete loss to understand it.
“I do understand it,” Talker said. “I can explain it, but have you ever heard a joke that became funny by deconstructing it for someone? I usually understand Bill humor too. I mean, I understand the mechanisms. I may not find Human or Bill humor personally funny to laugh out loud at it. I can predict with some certainty that I could not make Bill humor funny to Humans either.”
“Do analyze it for me then Badger. I agree it is lost to me for enjoyment, but perhaps I too can learn the nature of their humor to understand them better. I must add though… The navigator, Brownie, is a Derf and Lee is a Human but apparently his humor still works between them?”
“The races seem to think disturbingly alike. I can’t explain that. They have been in contact less than a generation. So there has been no time for the cultures to – he slid his spread fingers together to mesh them – blend. Yet it is for all I have no explanation. It just is. I know it makes you unhappy, the way you called me Badger! in the Human style. Like it was an accusation. But do not judge. Be happy they have any sense of humor.”
“Why should I care? It just seems to make them stranger and harder to understand to me.”
“They were poking light hearted fun at the girl for saying she had been thinking, because it would seem every time she starts thinking out loud it complicates their lives far more than the utterances of a little girl should. It was like – “Oh no, not again!”
“That is a complicated humor, depending on knowing their history,” Slick said. “Were she a Bill of influence she still might take offence at it.”
“Humans don’t think much of those who take their own dignity and importance too seriously.”
“A Bill might imply she had passed intestinal gas to label her remark as offensive. Such as, “There is that odor again!”
“Yes, Lee told me Humans, at least the males, pass through a phase of such humor,” Talker said.
“Are we all of arrested development then in their eyes?
“See, you value your dignity. They would mock you for that. But their humor can be surprisingly dark. Consider when the Biters attacked them at Far Away as soon as they saw them. The Biters were intent on killing them.”
“Well, yes. That’s sort of the nature of Biters,” Slick said.
“Have you ever heard a Biter crack a joke?” Talker asked him.
“That’ll be the day!”
“Indeed. Do you know what Gordon told me when I worried about the Biter’s reaction and the possible trouble it might precipitate?”
“Seeing how inferior the Biters’ weapons are I imagine he found them contemptible.”
“Yes, well I will reveal to you that we examined the Biter ship and the rear section was vaporized. Whatever beam took it off left an edge so sharp I had to be warned not to cut myself on it. However examining it closely there was an arc to the cut. From that we determined the beam was large enough to have vaporized the entire ship if it had been directed exactly at the middle.”
“Still accurate enough to stop them.” Slick said
“No, much more accurate than that. The shot was off to the rear, but exactly on the centerline of the ship,” Talker said. He watched the Bill’s face. There was a pause while he digested the information, a scornful look while he rejected the implication, and a look of stunned horror when he figured the odds of that happening by chance.
“They…”
“The Human expression is that they were toying with them.”
“Dear sweet… ”
“There is a reason I went off on this tangent in discussing their humor. Again, do you know what Gordon said when I worried about how the Biters would take this?”
“I have no idea at all now.”
“He said, “To hell with them if they can’t take a joke.”
“Oh, the depth of the their disdain! They are but errant fools for whom you grease the path to watch them fall and wonder what happened!”
“See? You do understand it.”

Snippet of April #6 –

I may put one more after this. Un-copyedited. Changed the ending twice perfecting it…

The Fox and Hare was busy. It had been so busy of late that April felt obligated to inquire what evenings were less solidly booked. The host hadn’t wanted to answer at first, firmly insisting he would accommodate her at any time. He’d been equally stubborn when she had earlier suggested she wasn’t poor and in fairness to the other owners she should pay for her service. He’d pointed out that he was one of the other owners and he’d see it paid out of his share before he’s present her a bill. He was an owner, but a minor one. Making him pay would be even less fair so she dropped it. April couldn’t figure out why he felt so obligated to her. She’d never done anything special for him personally as far as she knew.
April inquired of the accountant finally and found out that Wednesdays and Thursdays late in the month were the slowest days. That appeared to be accurate since there were three empty tables, something she hadn’t seen other days. She was certain there wouldn’t be any open on a weekend. She was alone, everybody she called to invite having a commitment. Gunny off doing some security work. She took a table for two against the wall. The wall side was a nice upholstered seat and the other side empty because they brought a folding chair if somebody sat on that side.
The Caprice salad was a light appetizer. It would leave her hungry enough for the seafood fettuccine she’d had before and knew to be ample even for her appetite. A reduced alcohol dry white wine went perfectly and left her clear of mind even if she started on it before the main course. Her waiter was Jesse Duval. She’d first met him and his wife Helen almost a year ago. They’d been visiting Home for life extension therapy, something not legally available at home in Spain. They had returned to Home recently but insisted they were now Jesse and Helen instead of James and Elena Alphonses. They never broke their cover identity with her or anyone else as far as she knew. She knew they couldn’t do that with their doctor, but that was an entirely different matter.
There had been confused news reports after their return to Earth about high Catholic officials infected with something and a hunt for terrorists wanted for spreading an infectious agent. Since some of the common life extension therapies were administered using a viral carrier she and Gunny suspected the couple had somehow broken quarantine. If so they were smart to flee. The crazy Earthies felt inflicting a longer healthier life on somebody to be a heinous crime.
Jesse had applied to the Fox and Hare and gotten a serving job with ease. Not even mentioning April as a reference. He was good looking and projected good humor without it seeming strained. The host had confided in her that Jesse had already turned down a couple job offers from customers impressed with his manner. If they only knew he’d been responsible on Earth for managing a major charity. He was way over qualified to be a server and would make more from the sort of tips that were quiet confidence and overheard conversations than cash on the table. April had the sudden thought she should tell Chen who was running Jeff’s intelligence efforts to recruit Jesse. His wife Helen had landed a job with a small firm that did PR and advertising on Earth for space based clients. It would surprise her if they both continued working for others long term.
It was getting near the start time for the entertainment this evening. On a quiet Thursday it would be a singer or a pianist, not a band or a series of acts. Two of the empty tables filled and with just a couple minutes until the lights dimmed the last empty table near her in Jesse’s section was claimed by a middle aged couple.
They were interesting, no doubt at all they were Earthies, but they had all the signs of life extension therapies. Their apparent age suggested that they’d been older than was usual when they got treatment. Tourists were often well dressed, if Earth style, it wasn’t cheap to lift to Home after all, but these two were better dressed than usual. His jacket was perfectly tailored and April knew the little purse she carried was about five thousand EuroMarks. He carried himself with authority. Not the self-conscious ramrod stiffness of a control freak but the real self assurance of someone who didn’t know what it was to feel intimidation.
The host held the lady’s chair for her after switching it around so they both faced the stage. She was obviously used to having that done for her by how smoothly it went. The host went away and Jesse was serving drinks to the next table. Once rid of them he tucked the small tray under his elbow and turned to the newcomers. His face went through shock then fear and despair. He looked over each shoulder in turn seeming to be surprised he didn’t find hands on him. April saw something very unusual was happening and triggered her spex early to record the encounter even before he looked over his shoulders.
When Jesse looked back at them the man made a small restraining gesture above the edge of the table, palm down. Jesse bent his knee and for a second April thought he was going to kneel before them, but the man made the outstretched hand flutter emphatically and frowned, which seemed to stop him. He was still frozen to the spot where he was standing, completely flustered and not responding normally.
The host getting the high sign from the bartender that something was amiss turned back. The woman saved any confrontation by getting up and hugging Jesse. She looked past him to the worried host and waved him away with a smile. She was a big woman, as tall as Jesse and held his elbows to his sides, leaned in close and spoke low to his ear smiling and visibly calming him. He finally gave a few nods of agreement though if he said anything it was too low for April to hear. When she sat back down he went off to the bar.
He must have gotten a drink order while the woman was close. He had just a few words with the host, looking embarrassed and leaving the host still looking dubious. By the time he returned and served the couple he seemed composed again.
April sent the video to Jeff’s man Chen, suggesting they should know the identity of this couple. She didn’t expect a quick answer. Sometimes it was several days before Chen responded to a message from her. This time he answered in a couple minutes, just as the lights started dimming.
“Jon’s people said they came in two days ago on the regular shuttle from ISSII. They are traveling as Ferdinando and Sancha Jimenez which seem to be false identities. A net search and Interpol inquiry shows no hits except similar names of historic persons.”
“Are the historic personages Spanish royalty?” April asked, having a sudden idea.
There was no immediate reply. A couple more minutes went by before Chen came back. “Yes, one of the kings in Spain before it was really one country, King of Leon and Count of Castile and his wife. The first of the kings of Spain to claim to be an emperor back in the early ten hundreds. Are you a big history buff or did you arrive at that by some other route? Sometimes you freak me out.”
“A different route entirely,” April admitted, but volunteered no more. “Would you please have one of your underlings find photos and brief biographies of the last two kings and queens of Spain and send them to my pad?”
“Sure. Any deadline on that?” Chen asked.
April looked at the couple. They seemed to be enjoying the lively pianist who was just starting, had some sort of wine and were sharing a small appetizer. They looked pretty firmly ensconced for a meal and the show.
“Within the hour if that is practical. If you need reimbursed for the research this is personal not mutual business with my partners,” April told him.
“That’s easy,” Chen said, ignoring her offer. “I’ll have it sent to your pad in a few minutes.”
Despite the misleading way he said it Chen didn’t hand it off to a research associate. He wanted to see this himself. When he looked he was surprised to find the Spanish succession was in dispute and some turmoil. There hadn’t been any big public stink about it, but apparently the current official head of state and his wife had retired. They didn’t say he had abdicated. It was much more mysterious than that and involved the ‘retirement’ of a number of other high government and Church officials.
Chen looked at the video April had sent him and the news service photos. It couldn’t be… They were far too young and the Crown and Church were death on Life Extension. But that nose! You could split logs with a nose like that. The sort plastic surgeons promise and could only approximate. Their children on the other hand were all accounted for in recent stories at very public activities.
He forwarded the files to April’s pad, appending information about the apparent chaotic state of the Spanish secession and hesitated to add anything. Finally he simply said – “Look at the nose.”
Indeed, it was a magnificent nose. Suitable for looking straight down if one chose to. The owner didn’t look to be minded that way. He was relaxed and eating a steak which was trying to hide beneath a pile of mushrooms. It amused April when she realized he was chewing in quarter time to the piano. She wondered if he realized it? The appetizer tray was gone and she noticed they only had a glass of wine not the whole bottle.
When Jesse check on her she didn’t need anything but she asked him, “What is the bartender’s name Jesse? Does he manage the wine too?”
“Yes, Mis Lewis. Festus has to wear the Sommelier’s hat too. We’re too small still to keep one busy full time, and their cellar here is rather small compared to many Earthside establishments.” He thought on it a moment… “In truth it’s small compared to some family collections.”
“Have him come speak with me when he has time,” April requested.
“Certainly, is everything satisfactory?” Jesse barely gave an eyebrow twitch of curiosity but didn’t ask why.
“Everything is lovely. I just need his expertise.”
It wasn’t long before April saw somebody else take over at the bar and Festus disappeared. She thought he’d gone on break or even off shift until he suddenly popped back up beside her table standing at attention like he was going to be presented a medal, or stood before a firing squad. Looking at him she realized he’d gone to the kitchen and removed his apron, cleaned up a bit, combed his hair and put on a fresh shirt. She’d never spoken to the man so why had he gone to all that trouble?
“Miss Lewis? Jesse said you’d like to speak with me.”
April scooted over a little and patted the seat beside her. “Just April is fine. You needn’t be so formal with me. This won’t take long but sit down a minute please. I’d rather not attract attention. With you standing there and the pianist between numbers we’re the most obvious thing happening in the whole room.”
“I think the help are invisible to most people,” he objected. He did sit however, but not too close. April moved closer because she intended to speak quietly. He was surprisingly thin close up. She hadn’t noticed from a distance. The long sleeves covered it a bit, and his face didn’t look thin, it just sort of long and hound-doggy. He seemed uncomfortable so she got to the point rather than torture the poor fellow.
“The middle-aged couple toward the stage and a bit to our right seem familiar to me. I think they are Spanish. I’d like to send them drinks and I thought it would be a nice surprise to send something Spanish. They had wine already with dinner.” April looked and the woman’s glass was gone and his had just a bit left. “Could you suggest something else to send to their table as a gift?”
He looked much more comfortable now that the conversation was on ground he knew. “Spanish liqueurs tend to be very strongly flavored and people usually love them or hate them. So that’s a risky thing to send to their table if you don’t know their tastes. We only have one that has a strong flavor of sloe berries. It will just kill your palate for anything subtle after. But we have a Spanish sparkling wine made by the same process as Champagne. It’s called Cava and we have both Freixenet and a few bottles of Codorníu. The ones we have are just slightly sweet and very appropriate for after dinner. People buy the Freixenet because it has a fancy bottle.” That appeared to amuse him. “However, I like the Codorníu. It’s served very cold and we have it chilled and ready if you like.”
“That would be perfect. Please send a bottle to their table and tell them it is from Dame April Lewis.” She discretely handed a folded hundred EuroMark bill to Festus below the table and he took it readily with nod of thanks.
The staff waited until the pianist finished the next number before wheeling a Champagne bucket to their table. It was a Magnum. She hadn’t thought to ask. That was a lot for two people. The man, Ferdinando or whatever his real name was looked surprised and then amused. After a few words with Jesse he looked at April and made a gesture and face to indicate the Magnum was huge. Then he waved her over to their table.
Jesse already had a chair and was putting it beside Ferdinando opposite his wife. By the time she got there and sat down Jesse had the cork out and presented it. Ferdinando waved it off and after a taste had Jesse pour for all of them. It was new to April and pretty good. The pianist returned then. Jesse stashed the bottle back in the ice under a serviette, and they put off any conversation until she did a few songs and had another break. She was pounding out some jazz that would have to be rude to shout over. Jesse returned to refill them and April leaned over and apologized.
“I didn’t think to ask them what size of the Codorníu they had. It might have looked like I sent the Magnum to pressure you to invite me over. I didn’t intend that.”
“My dear, you worry entirely too much about looking too forward. I’ve seen pushy in every form and magnitude. Some to dwarf this bottle. You radiate neither the self importance nor the devious smoothness of the obnoxious. You also sorely underestimate my capacity for Champagne when it is this good. I am however used to drinking it with little sweets to nibble. I wonder if they have something?”
“They have baklavas,” April offered. “Everything else is big or messy and needs to be eaten with a fork or spoon.”
“That will serve,” Ferdinando agreed
“They have the duel here, dear,” Sancha said from his other side. “Don’t let a Frenchman hear you call it Champaign or we’ll be getting up at the crack of dawn.”
“Is there any real rule that you can’t sleep in and try to kill each other at a decent hour?” Ferdinando asked.
“That’s a really interesting question,” April allowed, looking surprised. “I think it’s just tradition. I admit when I called a fellow out I just automatically told him he could apologize or meet me in the morning.”
Ferdinando looked at her closely to make sure he wasn’t being played… “And what terrible thing was this fellow doing to drive you to put your life on the line?”
“Well, it was more like putting his life on the line,” she insisted. “You had to be there to understand how we got to that point.” She could feel herself blushing and just hated that. It also didn’t satisfy Ferdinando, who wasn’t taking that as an answer, just silently giving her the old fish eye… “This fellows body guard jostled me but it escalated from an earlier disagreement.”
“Yeees…?”
“As a matter of fact, he was littering,” she admitted. It sounded so stupid now.
“Well, I can see why the hallways are so spotless,” he said.
Jesse delivered a tray of various shapes of baklava. After Ferdinando selected April got one with pistachios.
“Corridors actually.”
“Call them anything she wants, dear,” Sancha counseled, laying her hand on his arm. He nodded a grave acknowledgement to her that it seemed a wise course.
“It’s not like that,” April objected. “I haven’t – shot anyone – in ages,” she temporalized.
“And I’m sure your restraint is appreciated,” he acknowledged. Which didn’t sound sincere somehow. “You called yourself Dame. We’d say Doña. Do you limit the use of the duel here to the upper class as the English did?”
“No, that question came up before the Assembly already. A woman from Central on the moon wanted to challenge a resident of Home to a duel. They considered the question and the overwhelming argument advanced was that the duel is a fundamental right not a privilege granted by the state. There were issues. This particular challenge seemed unjust to many, but they allowed it rather than lose or limit the custom.”
“That is interesting. Who eventually won, and how did people feel after the fact?”
“The lady called off the match. So far every duel called has resulted in a yield, an apology, or the person decided to accept exile rather than yield or fight. I don’t doubt we will see a duel eventually with an ending everybody sees as a bad. But it was generally agreed the duel addresses things the law doesn’t deal with well. The Assembly has made very little law so far, so custom has to address many things.” April stopped and was frowning.
“You have a thought?” Ferdinando prompted her.
“I’m trying to think how to explain. On Home I’m not Dame anything unless somebody calls me that as a courtesy. Or more likely is trying to get my goat, since I had a hard time accepting a title and my close friends used to tease me about it pretty hard. We have no royalty or peerage on Home, all that has to do with Central on the moon. My friend Heather is the Sovereign of Central and declared some of her close friends and subjects peers. That’s why they started calling me Dame Lewis, although Jon says I’m more like a Baronetess. I have no time or inclination to learn all the titles and differences, and Ja… uh, a friend, said they are all different in each country and changed over time anyway. What does it matter now anyway, if it isn’t attached to something real like the land?”
“Indeed, the study of titles of nobility, heraldry and your personal genealogy can be an empty exercise in self importance if it’s just a vain attempt to find some way to elevate yourself with no real personal accomplishment or merit. Does your status then attach to something real as you said? If you’ll forgive me please, what was happening off Earth wasn’t of much interest to me until quite recently.”
“Well, my land. I have land at Central and more importantly cubic. The surface is harsh and exposed to risks. It easier to dig deep than on Earth. It isn’t much benefit right now but it will be. Right now it’s more obligations. I support Heather and help any way I can. We were allies long before she decided to go grab land on the moon.”
“Allies?” he asked. “At what?”
“In business, and then when Home rebelled and in war with North America. I owned the armed merchant the Happy Lewis with my brother. The hostilities started when we had to fight our way back from ISSII on the Happy. We took out the Chinese ship the Pretty as Jade and the USNA James Kelly. Later I sent the Happy to support Heather. When the North Americans tried to enter her territory to arrest a bunch of her people and take them back to Armstrong she need it.”
“And, with your help, how did she resolve that?” Ferdinando asked, nibbling on a sweet.
April blinked at his question like she didn’t believe it. “You really don’t know what’s been going on up here do you? She killed them. All of them. And bombarded Armstrong tit for tat. Took out their field control with a ten kiloton weapon and a ship sitting there after they cluster-bombed her landing field and burned a hole straight through the Happy Lewis for us.”
“Oh my… I obviously have some catching up to do. If your Heather holds her nation by the sword I must respect that. It’s all that matters in the end. Your Heather, are you intimate with her? Do you speak without formality?” he corrected at her odd expression.
“Well sure. We go back too far for that to change. She is all formal when she holds a court, but not between us or with Jeff.”
He nodded. “Then you are not just Doña or Baronesa, you are Grandeza too.”
“Ha! If I run out of titles I have an old boy in Tonga who calls me Pilinsesi. Our boat captain said that means princess. I liked that better because the princess is always well regarded in fairy tales.”
Then the pianist returned so April felt she had to be quiet again, but her theme changed a bit and instead of the lively numbers of her first set she toned it down to quiet background music you could speak over discreetly.
Sancha leaned close to her husband and April leaned in close too as it was obvious she wished to speak across him. “Might I ask why you addressed James as Jesse when you asked for the baklava?”
“Ah – he must have been too shook-up to introduce himself to you. He’s now Jesse Duval and his wife is Elena. If you knew them… in a previous life, it would be a kindness to forget that. Surely you understand?” she said, pointedly.
“Oh dear. I didn’t think to introduce us when I spoke to him. I’ll correct that. He was acting so strangely.”
“What my wife isn’t saying is we are not under the same pressures as Jesse and… Elena? They are actively wanted as criminals and I can see why they might feel the need to start a new life. We on the other hand were invited to retire as unsuitable persons,” he said with some anger. “We will never be charged with anything. That would be most uncomfortable for both the secular and religious. But one of the conditions for fading graciously away and being generously pensioned was not to raise a fuss among our peers or in the media. So we would rather not be interviewed or even the subject of paparazzi photos and speculation.”
“I believe he was looking around after seeing you because he expected your security to snatch him away. I think they are both constantly looking over their shoulders a lot still, not sure if anyone will bother to pursue them this far. One of my uh, sources, an intelligence officer really, said things in Spain appear unsettled. It makes me ask. Did you not pick a successor?”
“Anyone I picked would have been tainted by that fact. They are still watching everybody closely, terrified that they will turn young. Such a terrible thing!” Neither would I give them the satisfaction. It would have been almost a blessing upon their actions. Just like your Queen Heather, let the one who can hold it snatch it. I doubt it will come to arms but it is still a contest.”
“I’m evil enough that it amuses me,” Sancha admitted.
“Well, you know all the characters and can appreciate the inside information. You should write it as a play after it all runs out.”
Sancha looked shocked, but Ferdinando laughed heartily. “They’d deserve it,” he agreed.
“Thank you for meeting me,” April said. “I need to head home. I’m in the public directory, if you need any help acclimating to Home give me a call. I grew up here after all.” She had a sudden urge and patted Ferdinando on the arm before standing. That was probably against some protocol with royalty, but it felt right.
“Well, it’s a refreshing change to have someone offer to help us instead of seeking favors,” Ferdinando observed.
“I think it was sincere. She is amusingly innocent to think princesses lead idyllic lives,” Sancha said wistfully.
Jesse returned and offered a refill.
“No thank you. James, We are informed you are Jesse and Elena now. Be aware We are Ferdinando and Sancha now. You’ve always been such a good youngster. You conducted Our business faithfully. We have no ill will towards you. Your ‘accident’ is perhaps the best thing that has happened to Us. You may expect to see a lot more of Us. We may settle down here.”
Jesse looked relieved. “Thank you for speaking plainly. It will be my pleasure to serve you. In any way I can,” he made clear.
“Why don’t you offer the Cava to the chef?” Sancha suggested. “It seems a shame to waste half of it and he can use it in sauces and such.”
“Yes, and we are done for the evening,” Ferdinando added, laying a bank card on the table edge.
Jesse made a small negating gesture. I already marked your tab paid when Miss Lewis sat with you. We never charge anyone who keeps company with one of the owners here.
Sancha sat shocked. The young girl being an owner here was so far outside her experience she revised the opinion she was about to express to her husband. “Do you know, I think the rest of it might be true too,” she told him after Jesse was out of earshot.
“My dear, I don’t think we’ve heard the half of it.”

A snippet from April #6

Annette used to like rice. It had been an occasion treat and change of pace in their diet when she was growing up in Armstrong, the North American moon base. When her family escaped Armstrong and established residence in Central it became even rarer. In Camelot it was the main source of calories. They still had a huge stockpile of it from the Chinese. Like the peasants at home the administrators of the Chinese base, she still couldn’t pronounce its old name properly, had always ordered a little more than they used and stockpiled the rest. Even in the upper classes hoarding was a deeper cultural instinct of the Chinese than they would ever admit. Of course now it would stretch a lot further because the majority of the residents had elected to return to China. There had only been a dozen who chose to stay and that had removed so many absolutely essential people another dozen had been sent with Annette to keep the base open. Four from Central and six recruited easily from Armstrong and sworn to Heather.
It had been four months now since the new Chinese government had decided a lunar base was impossible to keep if they could not take armed ships past L1 and ceded it to Jeff Singh. The other Earth powers had not seen that as an obstruction to keeping a lunar presence, but the Chinese government had enough other troubles at home right now without needing the negative cash flow of a base that didn’t really return anything but propaganda value. The prestige of scientific achievement and demonstrating it to the rest of the world was less important while there were still doubts about who was going to rule their homeland.
Back in China there were not only recurrent pockets of trouble from those who did not favor a new regime, or at least not this one, but every minority region on the edges of their empire saw it as an opportunity to succeed. Neighboring states saw it as a chance to seize a little territory while their giant neighbor had bigger problems. That would at least be a buffer against China’s habit of nibbling at their border when it did get its house in order. The chaos of civil war meant the most important business in China right now was suddenly back to what it had been for millennia, producing the same rice she was so tired of already. It was suddenly much less abundant at home and more important again than a new com pad, electric scooter or exports to the other Earth nations.
Annette had also grown quickly used to the spaciousness of living under the surface of the moon at Central instead of in prefabricated domes and huts like at Armstrong. If anything the structures and amenities the Chinese enjoyed were inferior to what the North Americans enjoyed. Her mom had assured her it wouldn’t be long before they tunneled deep enough for the walls not to need layers of foam and radiant insulation. The rock itself would naturally be at a shirt-sleeves comfortable temperature just a few kilometers deeper. She’d had no idea at the time that she wouldn’t see that happening because she was away administering Queen Heather’s new territory.
When she protested she didn’t have the experience to be an executive her mom, Dakota, and Queen Heather had kindly but firmly pointed out that she was only a bit more than a year younger than Heather. They also were very candid in explaining that her inexperience made her the best of several choices to send because they needed the experienced people at Central. The handful they were sending along with her had specific technical jobs that would fully engage them and no time for administrative tasks on the side. It was sort of bizarre that being less qualified made her more available when there was a shortage of experienced people but she hadn’t been able to think of a reasonable argument against it, sitting there with the queen and her mom. It still seemed a conflict in her mind but they owed everything to Queen Heather and she couldn’t turn her down when obviously she needed somebody to do the job.
The advice Heather had given her worked better than she ever imagined. Heather had pointed out that her own experience was limited. She had considerable talent and ability with electronic design, and her association with Jeff Singh had taught her a lot about nanoelectronic fabrication, but she had no formal training in governance. Annette had always enjoyed history and read much more of it than was strictly necessary for her education. She still had a backlog of it to read on her pad if she ever got a few hours free. But she had never considered before, as Heather had explained, that many of history’s rulers didn’t have the luxury of training for the job. Many of them were focused on removing the previous regime and not all of them had any grand vision of what they would put in place of it if they won. Sometimes they were good at fighting but so unprepared to rule once they won that they did a worse job than the tyrants they threw out. The worst of them didn’t know when to stop fighting since that was their only real talent.
Heather said that there was seldom anything that needed an immediate decision. If it didn’t involve plugging an air leak, taking cover or shooting back it could probably wait a few hours. If it was that immediate people usually did what was obviously needed without requiring coaching anyway. If she wasn’t sure what to do she could solicit opinions from the locals. Chances were somebody would have an idea what to do. The trick then being that the best choice wasn’t always what the majority wanted to do. But an outsider had an edge there in not automatically wanting to do what had always been done, or what came easily to their culture. They had chosen to stay after China abdicated and had no reasonable expectation the new law of Heather’s kingdom would resemble Chinese law so she wasn’t constrained that way. She could also tell folks she wanted to take time to ponder it and most would take that for wisdom rather than indecisiveness if she projected the proper demeanor. At worst she could use the delay to call Heather and ask what to do, but she was warned not let it be a daily habit.
The key point Heather made was that Annette was acting with Heather’s authority. Nothing she did should undermine that authority. “You are my voice and hand in that place. Act it,” she ordered. She took  her own weapon off and hung it on Annette’s hips. “You only keep what you can hold,” she demonstrated with a clutched fist. “You have the authority and mandate to act for me. Demand respect as if it is me standing there. I will not second guess you or recall you easily. It’s not an easy task I’m sending you on. I’m sending you as much for your personality as intelligence or any experience,” she confided. “Everybody tells me you are even tempered and can admit it when you do make a mistake. I’ve come to value kind and calm over even being smart in people. Smart is wasted on some folks.”
“I’ll get another from Jeff,” Heather said, when Annette objected to the extravagant gift.
Annette had taken Heather’s warning about calling her to heart, calling her mom instead a couple times for advice. She’d only called Heather once when a couple had decided to separate. Effectively to divorce, although they didn’t have case law or decree to deal with it then. They did now. The vehemence of their anger and the irrational accusations of both parties left her doubting she could produce a good judgment. Heather had counseled her that she probably wasn’t going to make both of them happy. “If either of them is satisfied by your justice you’ve probably just found the reasonable one,” Heather speculated. It seemed to amuse her.
She’d found out quickly neither were open to any agreement and their hatred was creating problems for the entire community. Her settlement was first of all a written decree of divorce. It was the first official document of which she had made and signed hard copies to distribute instead of electronic communications or word of mouth. The couple could also not come to any agreement as to their property. She had to instruct them to make a list of everything they owned, minus personal clothing, or any items that were family heirlooms, and bring it back to her. She conducted these proceedings in an open court with video saved to the system so anybody could see how her justice worked. When they first returned a list she had refused it. They had listed such things as a tea service piece by piece. They hadn’t know yet how she intended to use the list and why that would never work. She patiently explained that things which were not useful divided had to be listed as a set. The everyday plates and silverware or cookware for example could be divided and still be useful to each of them, but something with heavily aesthetic value like a tea service had to remain together.
When they had a proper list she informed them each would chose an item in turn until the list was divided. Since neither wanted to give up first choice she flipped a coin for it. It was painful to observe and took longer than it should have but eventually they had everything divvied up. She refused to hear any arguments about who brought more assets to the marriage or earned more and ordered them to divide the cash they held in accounts back in China equally. They had formed a partnership and she considered that put everything in one pot, so to speak. If the chaos below precluded them doing that now they were ordered to do so when it became possible.
“What about our home?” the disgruntled husband asked, scowling.
“It is my judgment, that your conflict though technically resolved will not end now given your attitudes. You have both insisted on a public display that I doubt you understand has left many in the community disgusted with both of you. Your insistence others take sides has put others in untenable positions at their work or in serving others in this downsized community. This has to end. Therefore one of you must leave. I will provide transportation to Central, any of the other moon colonies or Home. Points beyond those are at your own cost and pleasure. Whoever leaves will forfeit any ownership of your home. There is no market for it as of yet or indeed any way to value it at present. Unless you can show a willing buyer with a cash offer and explain where and how the one remaining is going to live without shelter, it passes undivided. The fact you recently gained ownership of it was strictly a gift of your sovereign and Peer Singh. China in relinquishing sovereignty over the base gave complete ownership to Peer Singh. He could have as easily retained ownership of every square meter and structure and demanded rent of those who elected to stay.”
“We are not peasants!” the wife sneered.
Annette stifled the urge to chose the woman for exile based on that remark alone. She took a deep breath and calmed herself.
“Of the two, does one have skills which would be more difficult to do without or replace?” she asked the audience. There were six people physically present since it was past main shift, all responsible workers, and several more observing on the local net.
The one administrator, Feng, who had stayed over was acting as a manager now. He looked from one spouse to the other.
“Wo is a heavy machinery mechanic. He works on the rovers and some of the stationary equipment. It isn’t that hard to recruit from Earth because except for some details of lubrication and temperature extremes the basics are the same. Training them for vacuum safety is a bigger issue. Chao-xing is a nurse. Of necessity she is a nurse practitioner because our doctor went back. We still need a doctor. Better yet a surgeon. I communicated that to Mr. Singh when I agreed to stay.” He looked very unhappy, but didn’t come to any conclusion or say more. Annette sensed there was much more he wasn’t saying though.
“So, It sounds as if we could do without a mechanic easier than a nurse. The rovers may be vital to becoming economically viable but if there is nobody with medical training that’s a lack which might put us in personal danger. Right?” she asked.
“No,” Feng said, surprising her. “Most of what she can do that requires physical presence several others can do who have had emergency medical training. Stitching or gluing a minor wound, dispensing drugs. Many things can be done with telepresense by a physician in which she could assist. However most any of us could do the same with a little coaching. I’d hate to have to intubate someone and even with the best waldos and stereo cameras I’d hate to see a serious operation performed remotely, but I’d have a doc do that remotely before I’d allow Chao-xing to cut me. No, But the real reason I don’t want her around is because she is political.” He said the word with distaste. “Politics is what divided her and her husband. Didn’t you know?”
“Politics concerns me. The reasons for their break-up didn’t. You might say politics is the only reason why I’m here. I’d better hear in some detail how Chao-xing is political. Are you opposed to my sovereign’s rule?” she asked Chao-xing, directly.
“I am not interested or concerned with your politics,” she answered, radiating haughtiness. “When everything gets sorted out back home then it’s going to matter a great deal who we supported. And Chinese politics will concern themselves with you and the moon again when they are not distracted. A lot of these traitors will be dealt with then,” she said. She gave a significant look around the room, trying to be menacing.
“You, Chao-xing, are banished from the Kingdom of Central, Annette said in a clear loud voice. “If you show your face back here after your expulsion it will cost your life. I will make an exception for you and your ex and promise your passage to ISSII. There is an official Chinese presence there and they can have the joy of you. I won’t inflict you on others.”
“What sort of Chinese?” the woman asked. “If it’s traitors there you are sending me to be arrested or worse.”
“I don’t know,” Annette admitted. “I suggest if you wish them to repatriate you to Earth you control your mouth and try to be as neutral in your statements as possible. To me you’re all much alike. As you just said, I am not concerned with your politics. When you agreed to stay here you forfeited your Chinese citizenship. Be happy I don’t shoot you out of hand for treason to Queen Heather. I thought everybody understood that, but I can see the only safe course now is to ask everyone to swear a formal oath to Heather or face expulsion.”
“As if I’d swear to obey a barbarian,” Chao-xing sneered. “One who sends a woman to govern us.”
“Get this woman out of my sight before I do something I regret later,” Annette ordered Feng. “Call Central and ask them to send a hopper to take her and Wo away. If there’s anybody else who wants a second chance to leave you best go with them. I won’t have any patience with repetitions of this stupidity.”
“Come along,” Feng told Chao-xing and laid his hand flat on her shoulder. She turned her head and spat in his face.
In low gravity it’s hard to get the traction to strike. You tend to bounce apart instead of delivering much force. That’s why Feng shifted from a light touch to direct her to a hard grip on her arm. When he struck with his fist he pulled her to the strike with his other hand. She twisted but couldn’t get away and the hit was devastating with no block at all.
Annette was shocked. She’d never seen this sort of direct violence before and she was ready to tell Feng to stop even though she had just visualized and spoke of shooting the woman dead herself. That was somehow… different. It was obvious he didn’t intend to continue even before she could say anything. He gave a come-here jerk of his head to one of the other observers and in the low gravity the limp Chao-xing was easy to carry out. ‘She asked for it.’ Was her immediate thought, but it still rattled her. She hadn’t seen it coming at all.
The remaining four looked frightened, and she realized they weren’t afraid of Feng for his actions, they were looking at her afraid. Then she realized her hand was around the grip of the laser Heather had given her. She didn’t remember consciously reaching for it. “That concludes this business for tonight,” she told them forcing a frown and turned away before they could read the shock on her face. She couldn’t afford to show anything that might be taken as weakness now.

Various works in progress…

I actually have seven books in progress. When I have an idea I usually start a book by writing the first chapter. I also have a few books that are just a few paragraphs on what the main story line will be. A couple are well along. One at 70k+ words. This is one where I just have the first chapter, and I won’t get back to it for awhile, so don’t expect more soon. I’m thinking a “A Quick Clean Victory” for a title.

Chapter 1
“What are the numbers?” Commander Three Fingers demanded.
“Oxygen is about one part in five, maybe a little low, gravity is high, eight parts per hundred extra from standard. Spin is about seven-eighths of a standard day. The planet must have a big iron core,” the navigator/astrophysicist Blue mused.
“Temperature?” The officer asked gruffly. He wasn’t interested in abstract knowledge now.
“Well below the zero point of water freezing at the axis ends, all over the scale elsewhere. I’m seeing some areas at near half the scale to boiling, the terrain is rugged with large mountains and active volcanism on several continents. Temperature varies with altitude and proximity to the large bodies of water. It has a big tilt to its axis too. There’s more water than land, and it seems to be deeper than we can measure on passive scan out this far. Once we get well inside the orbit of that big moon I’ll get a reading.”
“Why don’t you sweep it with low frequency radar then?” Three Fingers asked, irritated.
“There is a technological presence on the planet. They may easily detect us, if I go to active scan.”
“Shit.”
“Worse than that, I detect neutrino emissions and artificial satellites,” Blue said, quietly.
“People?” Three Fingers asked, tense.
“Not our kind, nor Tigers, nor Bugs,” Blue assured him. “But whatever they are there’s a lot of them. I can already see surface artifacts.”
“Set for stealth running, no emissions, not even internal wireless,” Three Fingers ordered. The flight deck sounded with a brief buzz, as a dozen belt communicators vibrated, and displayed a notice that all com was restricted to hard wired.
“There’s no artificial radiation from other planets in the system,” Blue added.”I’d be surprised if they are advanced enough to detect such low powered emissions.”
“So would I,” Three Fingers agreed. “And the last thing I need right now is any more surprises. I wish we could just pass on to the next few systems, and not have to deal with them.”
“Chances of a planet on which we could survive are so low it would be suicide. We have limited life support, several critical systems without redundancy, leaks it is impossible to evaluate without going EV, and a lot of our spare parts were blown to hell in the beam hole blown through decks twenty-six and twenty-seven by that Bug cruiser. Most folks would say we are unbelievably lucky to take a clean through beam weapon hit and not break up. Have you ever heard of it happening before?” Blue asked.
“No, but odds were pretty slim we’d come out of jump fifty man lengths from the Bugs. They were so close the beam didn’t have enough range to spread. And the bridge record shows they fired faster than any biological reaction time, so it was an automated response. They probably never saw any need to program their systems to hold fire if the target was too close.”
“And we jumped back out on automatic too,” Blue reminded him needlessly. Their problem then had been that they couldn’t turn the faster than light drive off, and nobody had ever proposed such a problem occurring, much less a fix. They had finally cut the power panel to the whole ship, to let it drift, allowing someone to disassemble the drive controls, coasting dark and without any gravity. “The beam was probably still on when we disappeared. I imagine none of them actually saw us until later when they reviewed their cameras as to why their weapon fired, and why there was a sudden debris field expanding away from them. We appeared and left faster than your brain could register it. I just wish our weapons had been programmed to fire automatically too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Three Fingers assured him. “The tidal forces from jumping out that close will have warped and damaged the Bug cruiser badly. I don’t know about Bugs, but the tidal gradient would have been sufficient to kill or injure most of our crew were our actions reversed. If they didn’t have help close at hand, they might not have had sufficient crew functional to save the ship. Be glad they didn’t have it automated to jump out first if there was a ship too close.”
“Pilot, ease us into an orbit around the metastable point between the planet and the giant moon, with as little observable drive use as possible. Make it a big enough loop we are not silhouetted against the bright face of the satellite. I want to know some basics before we go in any closer. How many natives, some idea what they look like, and the level of their technology. Start accumulating data about their language, and if it has an acoustical component we can hear or speak. I’m exhausted. I’m taking a rest period, as should any of the prime team who have been up so long. I’ll examine your reports when rested, and we change shifts.”
* * *
“How many languages?” Three Fingers asked. Blue wasn’t sure he believed him.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve identified seventeen, but I really expect to find more.”
“This is insane. We don’t have the assets to deal with that many languages. They have world-wide travel, why would they retain isolated languages?”
“I have no idea, but here is something interesting. They use one language for air traffic control. The same language that is used at several widely separated, but large areas on the planet. We’re concentrating on it, because we can record their instructions to an aircraft, and then watch how it maneuvers.”
“That has promise,” Three Fingers agreed. He put a thumb along his jaw and his three fingers across his chin, deep in thought. The maimed hand still bothered Blue, after serving with him for years, but he forced himself not to look away.
“They have image transmission, in fact sequence video, which gives us a good idea how fast their nervous systems work and how fast they can react,” Blue boasted. “They are really similar to us. Upright bipeds with a similar face, but only one thumb, thinner, and the young feeding glands are weird, up near their arm pits instead of down on their hips. I’ll put a couple on the screen,” he offered.
After a few minutes study Three Fingers asked to make sure, “These are all the same race?”
“Yes, there is quite a wide range of physical size, pigmentation, and hair patterns.”
“I’d have said they are dainty compared to us, except for that fellow,” He pointed out a screen capture of a Suma wrestler, scowling with greased hair tied back tightly.
“Yes, he reminds me disturbingly of my mother-in-law,” Blue revealed. “The same hair too.”
“No wonder you signed up for the deep sky services,” Three Fingers understood at last.
“We have an approximation of their basic unit of length. Their man length is about two of their units called meters. They run an extra one part in ten taller than us – mostly,” Blue hedged. We have their numerals with some certainty, which are base ten, and enough videos had time counters we found there common short time unit is very close to our second. But it appears they count time in increments of sixty instead of a hundred. Don’t ask me why.”
“It looks like they have never had contact with another race, that’s to the good, because they won’t have technological weapons. By this cultural stage territorial disputes should be historic, and military weapons a curiosity in museums, if they’ve never faced anything like the Bugs.”
“Maybe…I’ve seen some strange things I can’t explain,” Blue admitted.
“Like what?” Three Fingers demanded.
“We saw several groups of ships like this,” Blue explained, putting an overhead view on the screen. It showed a number of surface vessels clustered around a big ship. “Look at the big ship closer,” he invited and zoomed in on it.
“Aircraft? Fixed wing aircraft on an ocean going vessel? Do they need them for refueling stations? Do they use really low energy density fuels? I can’t see this being economically viable. How big is that vessel?” he demanded.
“Half the length of the Protector,” Blue told him. “Greater than half our volume though.”
Three Fingers contemplated that silently a bit.
“However, they don’t store them all on deck, like we grapple our combat shuttles. They take them below decks on elevators and carry a variety of aircraft. Most of them seem to loiter around the ship awhile, and then land again. They will fly a big oval above the group at about a hundred-sixty man-lengths per second. A few times they would sprint off at three hundred man lengths per second. The thermal signature indicates they use air-breathing rockets.”
“That’s mighty expensive technology,” Three Fingers protested. Back on Home I, there were only a couple hundred fast couriers using that sort of engine.
“They have thousands of aircraft using that sort of propulsion,” Blue assured him. “Oh, and while we were watching, a small aircraft left this small island here,” he drew a circle on the screen with his pointer, ” and it landed on the big ship deck. It flew at over seven hundred man- lengths per second. As close as we can see it doesn’t have any wings. It must derive all its lift and control from the body shape.”
“There have been proposals to build such a thing from time to time,” Three Fingers acknowledged. “In theory it could be done, with exotic materials, but it would cost hundreds of times what a conventional aircraft would. The Bugs and the Tigers certainly have never made one, so we have little incentive to make one to match them. It seems like if you are going to that much expense, you might as well go ahead and build an orbital shuttle.”
“Oh, the neutrino emissions I spoke of? It is hard to localize, but it appears some of the ships are nuclear powered. It is an odd pattern, as if it is not just one fuzzy dot localized on the big ship but several nodes in the neutrino detector nearby. You know it doesn’t give a super sharp image,” Blue said.
“Nuclear powered wet navy? It just keeps getting stranger and stranger. We need to send some drones, maybe even a manned shuttle down to collect data. Draw up a list of things that caught your interest. Oh, and send a long range disk drone to get a close look at that big ship. If we ever make it back home, they won’t believe that without pictures.”
* * *
Well away from land in the Indian Ocean, the battle group around the CVN 147 George W. Bush looked for hazards to come to them from the north and west, from the Indian subcontinent or Africa. That didn’t mean they didn’t watch the entire horizon. The Bush was the last built of the three carriers still in service of the double hulled Clinton class. All the new ones were submersibles. It had three times the deck area of the old Ford class. It could launch its entire fleet of aircraft in fifteen minutes, since none of them needed catapult assistance, and it could land them on four capture lanes, staggered at three minute intervals. The elevators took the recovered aircraft down on the inside, between the hulls, to access three hanger decks.
“Cap three turn to one-seven-three and go to FMP. Climb to 28k meters. We have a radar return that does not fit any know aircraft or missile closing at five, five, zero knots. We wish you to make a visual in passing. Cap four, go to 30k meters on one-seven-four, and loiter for possible intercept. We are broadcasting the standard warning to turn aside before the three hundred kilometer limit.”
Battle Group Commander Higgins had splashed three intruders in the last two years, who had tried to see how close they could get. Two were unmarked which was disturbing, and one had Pakistani marks which he flat out didn’t believe. Three hundred kilometers was way too close to allow something to approach so aggressively on a direct line for his carrier, but it was published doctrine for peace time, whatever that was. If he had an ongoing attack, he’d open his exclusion zone to a thousand kilometers, and if that happened to overlap the tip of India or Shri Lanka, tough shit. He had eight thousand lives and a couple Trillion dollars in his battle group, and he intended to return home with them all safe.
“Cap three, come left slightly as you will pass at five-hundred meters on your current heading. We’d like to get that down to two-hundred. Activate your sight camera, but do not go hot on weapons. You may back off FMP after passing and come around.”
Cap three, Alex Davison, put a little pressure on his stick to the left, and then came back on course, flipping the switches for the gun camera.
“Passing in twenty seconds from…Mark!”
At a combined speed of around three-thousand kilometers an hour Alex wasn’t going to read any nose art on what went past, but he was very unhappy at what he saw. At his silence the CDC prompted him. “Can you identify the intruder, Captain?”
“It’s an anomalous circular aircraft sir, very thin in cross section, and silvery metallic, sir.”
“What?”
“It’s a frigging flying saucer!” he blurted out. Crap. It might be a flying saucer, but if it didn’t turn aside pretty quickly, it was going to be confetti raining down on the ocean. He reduced power and started a long easy turn to the west, staying well away from behind what he was pretty sure would soon be a target.
“Splash him as soon as he is a centimeter inside the limit,” the Director ordered. “I don’t give a damn if he is waving at us, green with deely boopers, he doesn’t get a shot at the carrier.”
“Cap four, turn to one-seven-one and descend to 29k meters. You are weapons hot, repeat, weapons hot. Fire upon target lock. You should have him in range already.”
“Roger, hot and descending,” Hal Roberts acknowledged.
From when he activated the targeting radar, until acquired the incoming craft was only about three seconds. He selected a missile that was designed for a head on shots, but once it was released to his designated target it homed on its own radar. A gentle squeeze of the trigger on his stick sent it on its way. It popped from his weapons bay with a lurch, and a slight shudder of the airframe as the port opened and closed to allow it not to drop, but be thrown out. It launched inactive, but stabilized and the engine started. It passed him in less than a half second. It was a measure of his confidence in the weapon that he hadn’t asked to fire two of them. In the time it took him to blink there was an exhaust contrail to infinity from his viewpoint, the actual missile out of sight. In another two seconds there was a hot white spark of light at the end of the white thread. “Splash one,” he announced.
“AWACS confirms debris falling. That’s a definite kill,” CDC told him.
Does that mean I get to paint a little saucer on my kill marks? Hal wondered.
* * *
“Shiny, you’ve slicked drones like that around Bug missiles before. What happened?” Three Fingers asked. He didn’t seem angry, just genuinely curious.
“Oh, I jinked hard,” Shiny said, nervously wiping the bald top of his head that gave him his name. “I have to say that missile could really turn, and it was making radio emissions, I think it had its own radar, besides the one on the aircraft.”
The commander looked at the weapons operator, still sitting at the drone controls, digesting that. “Who the hell could afford to throw away an expensive radar set, on every individual missile they shoot off?” He finally asked. He didn’t really expect an answer, but the tech answered very literally, “Maybe they are all filthy rich.”
“They were repeatedly transmitting the same sequence on several different frequencies,” Blue said behind him. “I think we need to prioritize the words in that transmission in building the dictionary.”
“Sure, go ahead,” Three Fingers allowed. “But I think you can eliminate, ‘Welcome Galactic Travelers’ from your phrase list.”

Last snippet of “A Depth of Understanding” April # 5

I’m going to skip a chapter and give you this one just because I enjoyed writing it a lot.

Chapter 7

 

The Fox and Hare was on the half G level. It was semi-industrial, without the nice carpet and indirect lighting of the pricy full G level. The business was still the Home Social Club, and it was a private buy-in club, but last year April presented the other owners with the idea of naming the actual store like a pub. She’d commissioned a sign to hang in the corridor, and got it approved after some modifications for safety. It was hung high and spring loaded so that if someone bumped into it, or a tall freight cart load smacked it, there was no resistance, it just swung out of the way.

The shape was nearly a shield, the name an arch at the top. The scene was just after sunset in a snowy glen, with the bare trees of winter behind. The colored sunset played off the snow, and a Fox and Hare regarded each other, their tracks in the snow. But they were semi-cartoon animals, the Hare with a German style clay pipe, and the Fox a checkered vest and wire framed glasses. On the bottom across the snow it said, “Wo sich Fuchs und Hase Gute Nacht sagen,” or “Where the fox and the hare say goodnight,” an expression she found much cuter than her equivalent English usage of the middle of nowhere.

Gunny and she were a little early. If their guests showed up they wanted to be there, even though she’d reserved six seats at two tables, and told the manager she’d have guests. Gunny was dressed nicer than usual, an unstructured jacket with lace cuffs showing from under the sleeves. She’d never seen that except in period movies. He had on an Ascot under an open collar, but she’d never seen one, and didn’t know what to call it. He could still surprise her.

April decided not to get dressy tonight. She wore all black with the full kit of Lunar armored vest and gadgets and weapons filling her belt, with the smaller of two real Japanese swords her maternal grandfather from Australia had given her. The longer one was too much trouble to bother with most of the time. She usually wore it over the shoulder, and it would be in the way in the crowded club. She hadn’t worn the black outfit in a couple months.

The only dressy things she wore were a massive gold anchor chain her brother willed her, enameled gold cufflinks that were a gift from a French gentleman, and a set of gold and canary diamond earrings that usually went with a different matching necklace. But she thought they worked with the rest of it just fine.

Gunny and she asked for the tables to be moved together. She took a seat to the center so her guest could be beside her. Gunny joined her for now, but indicated he’s let her grandfather sit between them when he came. There wasn’t much of a crowd yet, and the lights were still up a bit as the music hadn’t started.

She got an orange juice with ginger ale and twist of lime. If she drank any alcohol at all it would be mild. She wasn’t fully comfortable yet with Amos or his bodyguards, and she only drank enough to feel it if she was with well trusted friends.

They got the smaller appetizer tray while they waited, an antipasto with pickled veggies and hard boiled eggs. It had a few hot peppers and the eggs were deep purple. Gunny ordered some dark French beer she’d never heard of. It came in an interesting bottle with a little ceramic cap on a wire closure, and a castle on the label.

Amos came in with his two body guards, and he was half way across the room before she recognized him. He had on a collarless white shirt that buttoned to the neck, hiding all his tattoos. His hair that had been a wild tangle on the shuttle was combed back and dressed with something, and capped with a knit hat like a bowl that covered most of it. The body guards looked exactly the same, to where April wondered if Khakis and golf shirts were an unofficial uniform for their company.

April patted the table to her right, and Amos took the hint and slid in next to her. The one guard sat beside him, but the other went to the bar and took a pull down seat there. Why April couldn’t figure out, but it made it less cramped at the tables, so that was fine with her.

“Help yourself,” April said, waving at the appetizers. “I’ll get another batch run out and something for your man at the bar. What are you drinking?”

“A Mimosa like you have sounds good. Is your grandfather still coming?”

“I’m sure he is, or he’d have left me a message.” April caught their waiter’s eye and ordered more appetizers and laid her hand on her drink and asked for a big Mimosa for Amos. The server was smart enough not to correct her on what her drink was, just nodding. She was pretty sure if she asked for another for herself it would be the non-alcoholic version.  That was the sort of thing that was nice about Home. You could count on your server being bright enough to figure out you didn’t want your dinner companion knowing what you drank without a funny look or hesitation. The man at the bar got a smaller plate even before their next tray came.

“This is a little place,” Amos said surprised. “I wonder that it can sustain itself. Down on Earth you need at least two hundred seats, three hundred is really better, to make a club viable. I’ve invested in a couple restaurants and studied what makes them succeed.”

“This is a huge cubic for Home,” April told him. “To buy these rooms and the kitchen space, even on the half G level, was probably twelve to fourteen million dollars USNA. And that was before the population increase we’ve had. Prices have gone up even with a new ring being built. I’d expect it might be eighteen by now.”

“Wow, just the property taxes would be ruinous.”

“That’s Earth Think,” April said grinning. “We don’t have property taxes.”

“How do you fund public education and local services then?”

“There is no public education. You teach your kids yourself or you pay somebody to do it. As a matter of fact my mother runs a private school, and the local services, we meet once a year and vote a budget, item by item. If you want a vote you agree to be taxed to fund it. If you don’t volunteer to be taxed you get no vote.”

“So how many agree to be taxed? A dozen or so?” he joked.

“It’s running about eighty-five percent. But we have a lot of new people. I expect after they are here awhile and see a few Assemblies they’ll want a vote. It would be very frustrating to watch and not have a say. It’s not like it is that much money. It costs more to join this social club than last year’s taxes ran.”

“What about defense? Spaceships have to be really expensive. I heard about you folks telling the Earth countries that they can’t send any armed ships past L1. North America spends Billions every year on space defense. If you think you can dictate those kind of rules you must have some way to enforce it.”

“We have a militia. It’s like a volunteer fire department small towns have in North America. Last year we were shot at by a North American satellite. That’s why we moved out here past lunar orbit. The commercial shuttles that happened to be positioned best and free to act went to the sat that shot at us and heated it up until the fellow inside surrendered. He was interrogated and returned to ISSII. There were two identical satellites with rail guns, so two other militia vessels went and destroyed them.”

“Your private ships carry weapons?” Amos looked incredulous.

“Last I heard there were two or three Home vessels unarmed. That’s their business. As far as I’m concerned, that’s no way to travel. None of our ships are unarmed.”

“Who is this ‘our’? You’re not talking about Home there, are you?”

“You saw Jeff Singh and Heather Anderson who were on the shuttle with me. We have some businesses in common, and we operate a number of vessels that technically Eddie Persico owns, but we control and own the tech that they carry, and speak somewhat to what they’ll do. We have an Earth landing shuttle now that we own entirely ourselves. We came back up with you on a commercial shuttle, because we’d been on vacation, but we took our own shuttle down earlier. A commercial lift was cheaper than dropping our own shuttle with no load planned.”

Amos looked a bit shocked, like that was all he could absorb, so April asked if he wanted to see a menu yet or wait a bit?

“I’m hungry already. Let’s take a look at it.” That was believable because he’d been hitting the appetizers hard while they talked, and his drink was mostly gone.

The specials were Chesapeake soft shell crab with new potatoes, and braised lamb shank with ratatouille. “What do you like here?” Amos asked.

“I’ve had the grilled prawns and the shish kabob. We don’t have a grill in our apartment so I like char-grilled things. It takes so much air cleaning machinery it’s not worth the trouble in a private residence. I’ve had the Cobb salad and the cheeseburger, but I’m spoiled by a place I go to on ISSII that does a better burger and garlic fries. The oyster poor boy is OK, but I decided it’s not my thing. I’d rather just have the fried oysters without the bun and sweet potato fries. My grandpa always gets the seafood chowder, the red kind, so he’d recommend it.”

“The lobster is excellent,” Gunny spoke past her. “You won’t get any better fresh off the boat in Maine.”

“They’re pretty versatile. If you can tell from the menu that they probably have the ingredients you can ask for something,” April suggested.

Amos decided to do that, and ordered the fettuccini Alfredo, but asked the meat from a lobster be added to it. He waved the wine list away and told the server to give him something white and dry, that he wasn’t too picky. Gunny got the braised lamb, and April went with plain old spaghetti  and meatballs. Her grandfather showed up just in time to order his usual, Manhattan seafood chowder and a bread basket. He also just beat the lights starting to dim for the show. The aloha shirt he was wearing needed the dimmer lighting.

The small band went through one set before they took a break. When they stopped Ruby and her husband came in and took a table between them and the stage.

“Ah, there is my friend,” April said. “I knew she was supposed to play tonight, but I was starting to wonder if they’d cancelled.” Ruby was dressed simply in black pants and a white blouse. Her husband Easy was dressed in black pants, black boots, and a black silk shirt, with a cape over it all.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a cape, off of a stage set,” Amos said.

“I gave that to his wife to give to him,” April remembered. “I’d kind of forgotten about it. It must be over two years ago. I gave out about half a dozen of them, and I have a few in my storage still, but forgot about them. I should dig them out and finish giving them as gifts. I have to admit he looks really good in a cape. When he moves around and you see the scarlet lining flash it’s nice.”

“How odd. What prompted this sudden love of period clothing?”

“We were still under USNA law, and I wanted to start carrying a laser,” she said, hand going to the Singh laser she wore cross draw. “It was illegal to carry guns then, nobody did it, at least not openly. The law didn’t really address lasers, but I knew people would object. So I wanted to make it common to see capes so you could hide a hand weapon, and nobody would suspect that was why you wore a cape. But then we had the war, and before very long everybody was packing all sorts of pistols and knives and even long guns. Now nobody blinks at them.”

“What sort of act will your friend do?”

“She used to be a college professor, an expert on Medieval Music, and she plays harpsichord,  so she’ll probably do keyboard.”

“Does she teach here?”

“No, she cooks in the cafeteria,” April said, matter-of-fact. Amos just blinked. Twice.

April caught Ruby’s eye, to wave her over, but she made a ‘wait’ gesture. They got up then and went to the stage. Ruby sat at the keyboard and started flipping switches, reconfiguring it. The drummer and player for the cello joined them. The screen behind them dropped the environmental scene, split, and displayed a bass player and another fellow, off site somewhere. The second fellow had a long wooden instrument she didn’t recognize.

“Ah, a bassoon,” Amos said, so she didn’t have to ask.

The surprise was that Easy went on stage with her and stood, back to the audience and shoulders sort of hunched forward.

“I’m Ruby Dixon. This is my husband Washington Carter Dixon,” Ruby said in her mike. “Most folks call him Easy. He’ll do a dance interpretation of this first number. It’s an old TV theme for The Adams Family show.” The keyboard was in harpsichord mode as April suspected. It started in a modest little melody. Easy went upright on the first note and started a robotic sort of mechanical dance that turned him in an arch to face the audience. When the melody abruptly stopped the drummer struck twice across the edge of the drum, not the face, >CRACK< >CRACK<. Easy jerked like he was a puppet pulled on strings.

What made it funny was he got a really indignant expression at the disruption. When the music started again so did his dance, but then the pause and drum strike caught him again at an awkward moment and jerked him. The audience all laughed at the wordless comedy.

The music took a turn with the bass and cello and then the bassoon between drum strikes, and finally all of them together. It didn’t last all that long and the lights went down, the musicians on screen took a bow and faded out, and they left the stage.

A word to the staff got their Hardoy chairs brought over to April’s table and they sat down. Easy had his napkin from their table and patted his brow, a bit sweaty from the exertion of the dance. He swept the cape behind him to be cooler. April introduced Amos as another musician.

“The Ancient Astronauts,” Ruby said right away. “I know your stuff. You have training in classical music. I could see it in your composition.”

“Indeed, guilty as charged,” Amos admitted. “I don’t get outed very often though.”

“Oh your song ‘Sweeps’ had to have Mozart spinning in his grave. You stole shamelessly from him. It may be at four times the tempo and on a guitar, but it’s there.”

The waiter came and took their order. Ruby insisted they’d take dinner at their table and just have drinks with April until it came. It would have been crowded.

“Is that all you are doing tonight?” Amos wondered.

“After the other boys do a couple more sets then I’ll do a final number. That’s all for Easy for the night. Why, do you have a request?”

Amos looked surprised. “Can you sight read that well? Would you read off a screen?”

Ruby made a face. “I can sight read, but unless you surprise me with something uncommon I have it up here,” she said, pointing at her temple.

“Well,” Amos said, stunned. “Perhaps the Brandenburg Concerto?” he challenged, looking dubious.

“Sure, but it’s not much without a flute,” Ruby said.

“This is true, and a couple violins. Do you do piano too?”

“Yes, but not as well I’m told.”

“Do you know Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue?”

“I can do that.”

“If you can find a clarinet for me we can share it,” Amos offered.

“I’ll ask to borrow one. I’m pretty sure we can do that,” Ruby said grinning.

They went off to their dinner being served, and just in time as their own table was being served too. The spaghetti was good, but not as good as Heather’s mom made.

“What are you smiling about gramps?”

“I was just thinking I’m more of an ancient astronaut than this young guy.”

“You don’t look old enough to be April’s grandpa. You look more likely to be her father to me,” Amos said.

“Life Extension Therapy,” he explained. “I’ll never see seventy again. I had a head of gray hair, going white, and it all came back in like you see,” he said, running his hand over it. “The wrinkles have been easing away, and I just feel better.”

“I could afford it, but it would probably end my career and break up our band if I bought it. I’d be denounced by all the preachers and Malthusian fanatics. We could play in Europe, but we’d never be welcome in North America again. I just wouldn’t feel safe.”

April said nothing, but noted it wasn’t just shunning he worried about, but actual safety.

“Shame on you if you don’t die on time. Those Malthusians should off themselves to make up for selfish folks like me who live too long. If you look around when you’re walking the corridors here, you’ll see I’m one of the last who are getting treatments. There are maybe a dozen people on Home who look really old, and in five years I wouldn’t be surprised if there are none.”

“Ruby is calling you over,” Gunny pointed out to Amos.

“Ah, I guess this is my chance to make a fool of myself,” he said getting up.

They talked a little on stage, laughing and smiling. Then Ruby spoke in the mic. “This is Amos of The Ancient Astronauts,” that got a few hoots and whistles. “Their music is a little more contemporary, but we’re going to do a classic Gershwin piece, Rhapsody in Blue.”

Amos did a wailing intro, maybe fifteen seconds long, and then Ruby came in pounding on the piano like a thunderstorm breaking. They did short solos a few places with no more than a nod for a cue. When they got through they got the best response of all. The audience was too stunned to do anything at all for a bit. Then they all stood and made a lot of noise for such a small crowd.

“I think they liked it,” he said grinning when he got back to his seat.

“I saw Easy recording it. If you want a copy ask him for the file,” April suggested.

“That I will. I’ll send a copy down to the guys, to show them I can still play cold. Hey, can I get one of those Mimosas again?” he asked the waiter.

It was a very good night.

Snippet – 4th Chapter of “Family Business”

Chapter 4

 

The Small Fleet jumped into the alien system, all in a group, the Roadrunner carried by Murphy’s Law. It ungrappled and braked hard, staying in the fringe of the system at first. The Champion William and the Retribution took up orbit well beyond the world’s moon. High Hopes and Sharp Claws took up a circular orbit, inclined enough to let them map two thirds of the planet’s surface in detail, and a side look at the polar regions sufficient to their needs since the natives didn’t seem to use them extensively.

There were two large continents, one in each polar hemisphere, and one significant island between them in an equatorial sea. There was no land mass to interfere with cyclonic storms, and one raged right now in the equatorial sea opposite the one island. The island must see some tremendous storms with nothing to impede their growth.

Both poles had sea ice, but neither a polar continent such as Earth had. There was a iron core generating a fairly strong magnetic field, and the noisy star generated impressive aurora, but rarely down to the latitudes of the continents.

Both ships kept crews on defense stations, ready to intercept missiles or roll the ship for beam weapons. The natives had geostationary satellites, carrying quite a bit of traffic, but only a couple lower satellites, and nothing that looked big enough to be manned. They still had the tech to loft weapons to the level the two fleet ships orbited at if they wanted. They assumed nothing.

There were two large towns, of a size that would have a million inhabitants or more in any of their own cultures. One was fairly central to the bigger continent. The slightly smaller continent had a large city off center, but centered on the flat portion of the continent, the far east third of the land cut off by impressive mountains.

Both cities had large roads going east and west from them. They went straight, refusing to deviate around a hill or mountain. Indeed the smaller continent had an artificial pass cut through the mountain range. Two approach roads on each end showed that once the notch was dug to a new depth they laid a new road, and abandoned the old one and resumed digging there. If the original pass was similar to the others on each side it had started at six thousand meters or a bit more.

The current road had a high point of three thousand meters and a bit. The notch cut below it on the north side was currently about five hundred meters lower. They had no idea when they would switch over, and the artificial pass was widened generously as it was lowered. The engineers estimated they had been digging the channel for four or five thousand years. It might continue another ten or twelve thousand years before it was level with the plain. The crew was large, much of the labor done by hand, and the excavating equipment small for such an undertaking from a human viewpoint.

The gap in the mountains was already so large it had a fan of vegetation on the lee side where the rainfall was greater due to the air pushing through. The entire west side of the range was covered in dams, as the art work they’d studied had suggested was important to them. They appeared to be for water conservation and agriculture, there was no power distribution associated with them.

Apparently opening a level road was more important than the climate change they had to know cutting a full break in the range would create. The road continued on past the mountains, straight to the far sea and a port, but without the build up along it and secondary roads radiating off north and south that the west side road had.

The bigger continent had a similar road, but it was easy to see it didn’t have any barriers to compare to the other continent. Nevertheless it cut straight through any hill or valley. They were cut or filled in with a stubborn single mindedness. The surface was still brick, no large slabs or seamless surfaces.

Both large cities showed light at night, but nothing on the scale an Earth city would. There was electronic noise to indicate they used electric motors. The sole city on the equatorial island showed some lights at night too, but less than the grand cities. The rural areas were near as dark at night as wilderness. If they ventured forth at night it was without traffic signals or street lighting. Though they did spot a few vehicles using electric headlamps.

There didn’t appear to be any satellites emitting navigational signals, but there were radio beacons in the few active harbors, and the two cities had airfields that appeared to be lit up for a specific aircraft coming in, not all night. They counted the airfields and large aircraft parked at them and concluded there were only about two hundred airplanes on the world. If any were for passenger use and not freight they didn’t have the custom of windows. None appeared to be transonic. They used very efficient scimitar curved propellers that allowed them to push the Mach.

There were a few dozen very small aircraft that might carry six or eight passengers. All apparently of the exact same design. Most of them were parked near the two big cities, and they only saw two at distant fields. One however was in a very rural area, without even farmed fields, beside a large building they suspected was a palace. There were about three dozen such elaborate buildings, most again near the cities.

The two cities were most strongly characterized by storage. There were elaborate facilities for the shipment and storage of grain. They were on roads, but they apparently never invented the railroad. The few Human farmers assured them the row on row of curricular buildings could be nothing other than grain silos. There were regional storage facilities too, but nothing like the two big cities.

The city on the main continent was different in another way. There were apartments, large residential buildings, the main city had and a much smaller facility of two buildings in the smaller city and island. In the smaller city it was almost all small residences, and one palace, though many appeared to be for extended, multigenerational family groups. They had a commander of the small group of trained ground troops on the Murphy’s Law although they all held other daily duty posts. They could be assembled and deployed as a group if need be. He was a Fargoer Marine, Canny McDonald.

“Barracks,” he informed them, after barely glancing at the photo.

“Why so sure, so quickly?” Gordon wondered.

“Because you have a unique structure here that tells me who occupies those apartments,” he said, tapping the offending structure a kilometer away from the big buildings with his finger. There was a road directly from one to the other. “That’s a shooting range, and that small mound an ammo dump. Do a computer search and see how many identical structures you find on the settled parts of the planet.” The computer scanned their entire mapped area and came up with three. One by each big city and on the island.

“This tells me a great deal about them too,” McDonald said gruffly. “They have a line of target pits at about fifty, and hundred meters. There is a small group here, four pits, at two hundred meters. They either have crappy equipment, or can’t shoot for shit. My boys start training at two hundred meters, and the snipers are expected to qualify at a kilometer. The good ones, the artists, can shoot up or down hill, in a cross breeze and rain or shine, snow or heat at half again that distance. I’m really looking forward to seeing how these guys are kitted out.”

He stopped and thought a bit. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. That doesn’t mean we are invincible. We can put a squad of about twenty marksmen on the ground, maybe another thirty who know how to shoot competently, but not experts. Surround them with fifty thousand guys with bows and arrows, slings and spears, and they’d still overrun our asses and kill us if we have no line of retreat. Keep that in mind. We can’t fight a whole world for you. Not at the ground level you need to take it and hold it. Our very few heavier weapons wouldn’t matter. We just don’t have enough of them. Of course you can drop three nukes and this world is conquered,” he admitted. “But do that and I can assure you one of your own will stick a pistol in your ear and change the line of command. None of us would sanction genocide. Destroy that grain distribution system in the city and I’d guarantee much of the countryside would starve the in next year too,” he said cheerfully.

* * *

They decided to make a minimal video. With as little attempted speech as possible. There weren’t many words they were confident they knew. There, because of three instances it was used with pointing. A word that meant a group of some sort, but with no certainty it applied to any set number or gender or class. They were pretty sure they knew the numbers one through twelve, but not zero or more than twelve. They knew the name of a fruit that grew on a low bush, and the irksome word Teen, which might mean God, or be a title of nobility, or just an expression of allegiance, completely abstract and not attached to any person or group smaller than the nation. They were pretty sure it was one big worldwide nation and single political or philosophical party or church. The few who favored a religion were bothered there didn’t appear any building for assembly in any of the towns. What sort of church didn’t hold meetings? But there were no sports stadiums or playing fields either.

“Something is bothering me,” Thor announced the morning they intended to shoot their greeting video.

“The whole place is creeping me out,” Lee admitted. “What did you notice now?”

“There aren’t any cattle. They must be vegetarians, or only raise something small like rabbits or chickens. Our photos have good enough resolution I think we’d have seen anything as big as a pig. You certainly couldn’t hide cattle or horses. Have the computer scan, with particular attention to the wild area left like the far east side of the smaller continent. See if there are any wild animals left in the undeveloped areas.”

The scan showed deer sized animals, that kept to the wooded areas, never in the open plains, and on the far coast some sort of analog to a seal or walrus. In the civilized area there was nothing. Not even in what appeared to be managed wood lots. Every meter was groomed and managed and allotted down to the smallest area. There wasn’t any place left for what you’d class as wild. Gordon wondered if they even had weeds, or had managed to eradicate them too. He didn’t think he’d like that sort of world.

* * *

Lee was dressed as she usually liked. Sturdy pants, a soft loose top and a vest with pockets over it all. Full face spex, but at full transparency so her face wasn’t hidden. She had on a holster with hypersonic pistol and magazine carriers, as well as the fancy dagger Gordon gave her. She still liked the lighter six millimeter size, and she wore her favorite gold Byzantine necklace from Earth of gold and platinum. She of course wore her voyage rings and the prominent front earring with an emerald that declared she was a discoverer of a living world. Like most she wore a small pad computer on her belt without any thought to its being there. She wore the black band of the Little Fleet around her left wrist, tied in a fancy knot like gift wrapping.

Gordon wore his fur and a Sam Brown belt with proportionally large pistol holstered on the supported side. He wore a fancy engraved ax on the other side tucked in the belt without holster. His hand computer was clipped on his belt and he had a black silk ascot knotted around his neck. His voyage rigs were prominent, the front ring showing both a blue and a green stone, declaring he was a discoverer of both a water world and a living world. Not many wore any stones, much less two.

Ha-bob-bob-brie wore a wire necklace with his voyage rings slung on it. He adapted the traditional weapon of his race, a sword similar to a Japanese Katana, but about half again as long both in blade and handle. It was also straighter, having almost no curve. It was carried on the back, so the only thing seen from the front view was the handle sticking up over his shoulder. He also wore spex, clear and incongruous on his avian face, and a tiny purse slung cross-wise from one shoulder. He affected a black ribbon worn around his wrist with a small bow to mark his membership in the Little Fleet.

Thor joined them, wearing fur and nothing else but a wrist band, so there were two Derf. Just to make sure Lee wasn’t thought full sized, Alex Hillerman from their power plant and engineering crew joined them. He was dressed in a practical jump suit, with spex and no weapon. He had the usual computer and many visible pockets, and a black brassard on his arm. He was very dark black skinned and he kept his head shaved. Gordon wondered if he might not be mistaken for a different race than Lee, but didn’t want a mob in front of the camera. Humans varied so much even a third sample might not make it clear.

Their mapping complete, they abandoned the lower orbit and positioned themselves near the geostationary satellite the natives had directly over the big city. Gordon kept thinking in terms of capital, and firmly reminded himself that was an unfounded assumption. The Sharp Claws positioned themselves at the same level, some ten degrees behind in orbit.

They transmitted a picture of them all together on the flight bridge. The engineering department requested they shoot the video looking toward the back of the chamber, so that the details of all the boards were not revealed. Each of them pointed at themselves and stated their name. Then the each named themselves again, and Gordon and Thor identified themselves as Derf. Lee and Alex named themselves as Human, and Ha-bob-bob-brie identified himself as Hinth. They all inclusively identified themselves as people. They waited to see if the natives would respond. There was silence and no response for fifteen minutes.

There were two crewmembers with some talent with languages working full time on interpreting the transmissions of the planet. They let them take over the screen and attempt to get words they wondered about defined. They drew animated outlined figures and identified body parts, had them do simple actions hoping the natives would see what they were doing and respond. They ignored them.

“How about if we just move on and tell them in effect to kiss our hairy little butts?” Thor suggested the next morning when there had been no response overnight.

“Maybe they don’t believe the transmission?” Lee speculated. “Maybe they think it is an elaborate joke or a scam? Do they have sufficient image editing capacity to do a special effects short like a science fiction video with made up races and a fake background as complex as our flight deck?”

“We haven’t seen any ability to generate images,” Luke, a fellow studying their transmissions responded. “They don’t do avatars, not even simple stick figures, they don’t even do fades or titles with fancy text in 3D shapes. No arrows or highlighting or circling a choice with a line. My eight year old niece would be bored with the plain vanilla video they pump out.”

“I don’t think they have computers!” Lee blurted out. “At least not any decent ones…”

“They are probably wondering  how we draw stuff directly on the screen. They’d have to draw it in front of the camera on a white board, or a paper pad,” Luke said. “We just take it for granted.”

“Whatever they can put in front of the camera lens, that’s it?” Lee asked horrified.

“Maybe put some of the words we see captioned on the screen and see if they offer any drawing to try to explain it? If they don’t want to go the other way, with us drawing, time to change something,” Luke suggested. “If it’s as authoritarian as Ming thinks they may still be waiting for permission to speak to us. We may get a big rush of replies all at once when they get a go-ahead.”

“As long as they’re not shooting at us, keep sending things, give them another day or two, let us know if you make any break through. If they don’t respond we’ll be thinking on what to do in a couple days. If they refuse to talk, well it’s their planet. They don’t have to answer the door,” Gordon said.

* * *

“They are answering, very tentatively and limited,” Luke said a few hours later.

“We’re making some progress,” Luke reported two days later on. He looked haggard.

“They started talking?” Gordon asked.

“One word at a time. But on three channels. It’s slow. You know ‘Teen’?

“Oh sure, that is a big one, so we have to get it right.”

“Tentative translation is king. We got a drawing of a pyramid of stick figures. The one on the very top, all alone, is circled and labeled ‘Teen’. We’re capitalizing it now.” Luke brought the picture up and showed Gordon. “Do you see what else there is, besides being on top?”

“No collar?”

“Got it in one. They didn’t say anything about that, they just drew it that way. Figure the collars are slave collars, or might as well be. The Teen owns everyone. More to the point, the Teen owns everything. We drew exchanging objects, trying to explain trade. They can’t trade. None of them own anything. If they have anything it’s because the Teen gave it to them to use, but it was and is his, they just get the gift of its use from his kindness.”

“That makes trade kind of tough,” Gordon admitted. “Even if he gives us something, he can change his mind and take it back. We have no standing to form a contract.”

“Exactly. And the meteor bombardment they suffer constantly from all the system trash has a price on their society. They explained in pictures that about two thousand years ago they detected a rock coming in and evacuated as many as possible from the town where it was headed. It still killed about twenty thousand they couldn’t get out in time. They are pretty much obsessed with that, and that’s why they have radar. They developed it for identifying incoming rocks and asteroids. They know a world killing rock is a possibility, but their tech has been at this level for at least eight thousand years if we understand them correctly. They seem a bit fatalistic, and have no real idea of getting out there and controlling anything from hitting, instead of just trying to get some warning. That explains a lot of the oddities of their architecture. Most homes are build behind a wall and berm on the east side where meteors tend to come in against the planet’s rotation. Really important people are housed well underground where it is safer. Even roads have shelter walls and berms a vehicle can pull next to when there is a shower.”

“And yet they can put up geostationary satellites and have radar.”

“They do, and it is awkward expensive tech for them, and takes a great deal of their wealth. They do it with tech not much better than Humans had right after the first atomic war. That’s another thing. They not only don’t have any but the simplest computers, we see no indication at all they have any idea about atomic power. Certainly no detailed ideas about atomic structure, or any modern theories of particle physics. Figure no quantum theory at all. Just classical mechanics and chemistry.”

“Given what we are learning about their social structure, I’m not sure I want them having better tech. They make much better neighbors behind a tall fence.” Gordon decided.

“The crazy thing is, they see the Teen’s total ownership as the only way to have peace,” Luke said. “They informed us that in olden times, before there was one Teen, men all constantly fought over who owned what, and everybody suffered war after war. But notice, with almost complete control of their society, they choose to keep it mostly agricultural, instead of developing tech and pushing further into space.”

“Farmers are easier to control,” Thor suggested. “They may not be thrilled to find out we still war.”

“They don’t look that aggressive, do they?” Gordon asked.

“They have a nasty passive aggressive attitude. They wanted to know who Lee and Ha-bob-bob-brie belong to, because they were wearing something around their neck. They wanted to know when we were going to bring the ships down so the Servants of the Teen, that’s what the emblem on the bus said, can inspect his ships for the Teen.”

“When they serve peppermint ice cream in hell,” Thor suggested.

“They also want to know how we got here. We’re pretty sure they saw the Roadrunner go through the outer system and then disappear. That’s what they seemed to draw for us. They know nothing goes faster than light. They stated that to us a fact, not a question. So they are very uncomfortable seeing how fast our ships are compared to chemical rockets, and they don’t even know how to phrase the questions they need to ask about our transit time between stars.”

“There’s no way around it, we simply can’t let these ownership assumptions go unchallenged. They would be perfectly reasonable to say we didn’t object to them later, if we just ignore them now,” Gordon told them.

“I expect they are not going to want to hear it,” Luke warned them.

“Be as polite as it is possible to be, but make clear that while the Teen is on top of the pyramid at home, we are not under him, and if we wear a collar or necklace it isn’t because we are owned. We own ourselves. If they can’t treat us with respect as independent people, peers, we will go away, because we can’t do trade with them as slaves. The Teen’s power doesn’t reach to the stars,” Gordon said.

“That is stretching the limits of what we can say. I know we are going to have to back up and do some words again, one at a time. It may take more than a day to express those ideas.”

“We’re not in a rush, I’m sending the Retribution and The Champion William to look over the outer system in more detail. They really aren’t needed here. Advise us when you feel you’ve made some progress again,” Gordon requested. “We won’t juggle your elbow and hurry you. It’s rather important these things be translated accurately, rather than quickly.”

“Oh, I’m curious too,” Gordon asked. “Do you have a name for the natives? Do you know what they call themselves? Or have you coined an expression for their race?”

“They just call themselves their word for people. It’s probably more important that they have never referred to us as people. They don’t even call us other people or outside people. Near as we can figure they just call us other – in the singular form,” He looked embarrassed. “Because of the flat cleft nose and how it twitches all the time, we started calling them Bunnies. I know it doesn’t fit anything else about them, but when you sit and look at their faces all day it seemed obvious.”

“We won’t make that official just yet. Hear me?” Gordon asked him sternly. Luke just nodded.

* * *

“Gordon, I think you and Thor need to see our latest exchange,” Luke said six shifts later. They joined him in the end of the dining area that had become their make-shift translation and communication center. Luke and his partner had recruited another crew member, and they were both seated against the wall, looking distressed and leaving it to Luke to make the report to their commander.

“This is the last conversation with the Teen’s men charged with talking to us. In reality they were charged with issuing us orders. I’m afraid the fact we would not accept those orders put them in a no win situation. Their personal survival was probably in question. Watch.”

The English sub-titles were auto-translated from the transmission. There were three of the natives seated before the camera, and others came in and out, laying down documents and picking up notes the three made.

Luke speaking: “We will not land. Stop asking. We expect (see literally) you take our (literally, not Teen) ships if we land. Teen is your Teen. We have no Teen. We no want one.”

First native: “If Teen not own everything (unknown word) to far stars – Teen owns almost nothing. One star in all the (unknown word) heavens is nothing. Either he owns all or our law and (peace?) is (unknown word, may be curse) nothing (zero?).”

Second native: “We have no way (hand literally) (to? variation on word) make them land. What you suggest we do?” (Face of native is very contorted. This may indicate great stress.)

First native: “Tell it to Teen.” (His face assumes similar contortions. This statement may not have been a serious suggestion, but identifying sarcasm in a new alien language is chancy.)

Third native: “We are doomed (dead?).”

First native: “Tell Teen this!” (He rips off collar. Second native jumps up and snatches it from his hand, and grabs him in a head-lock from behind.)

Third native: (Looks at struggling pair. Then looks at camera lens.) Says: (three unknown words. Camera feed cuts off. Carrier signal follows quickly.)

“That was about a half hour ago,” Luke explained. “We haven’t been able to get a signal again. The volume of traffic to their satellites went way up for a few minutes, and then dropped off hard. I’m afraid we made a mess of it.”

“Do we have a current video feed for the big city?” Gordon asked. “That’s where their studio is right?”

“Yeah, just outside the city. Near one of those palaces. We have a telescope on them, recording. We figured we’d want to see later if they moved vehicles or changed defensive posture in response to anything we said. I’ll bring it up on the big screen for all of us.” Thor said.

Nobody wanted to say anything. There was a good wind blowing across the city. Plumes of smoke drifted in narrow lines from the area of the studio and the nearby palace, that seemed to be burning even more robustly than the studio. Vehicles were going down the road away from the city in a clump, they’d never seen so many before. A number of vehicles also seemed to be on the shoulders of the road nearer the city, burning.

One of the large barrack structures was burning, and there were a large number of vehicles around the burning palace. One of the bridges across a river that ran through the city seemed to be missing, just a stub left on each shore. The other bridge had a jumble of vehicles piled in the middle, one actually hanging over the rail. There were a half dozen big fires across the city, in buildings whose function they hadn’t identified.

“Boy, am I glad they don’t have nukes and stuff,” Luke observed. They sat and watched the smoke spread for awhile in silence.

“Doesn’t that seem a bit of over-reaction?” Thor finally asked in a strained voice.

“To you, or me,” Gordon agreed. “I mean, we carefully never said anything to indicate we would interfere with their system, or that we even wanted them to change. We just refused to submit to it.”

“Apparently they are so invested in the idea the Teen’s ownership must be universal, that to be shown it has limits destroys the authority of the whole system,” Luke theorized. “They never asked us how our system worked without a Teen.”

“You said you made a mess of it,” Gordon reminded him. “I can’t blame you for this. Even if we sat back and studied them for years, there is just no way we’d have known they were this close to the tipping point of their system collapsing. All on the basis of a few words we said to them. The only safe way would have been to sneak away and never try to talk to them, never even run a ship through like we did the Roadrunner. It’s ridiculous to assign yourself guilt over such a crazy reaction.”

“I hope the rest of our civilization agrees with you,” Luke said. “Otherwise it may become the law that we can’t speak with an alien civilization. Not even approach their system if we detect signals from outside.”

“On the other hand,” Thor said, looking grim, “imagine the Bunnies figuring out a jump drive and bursting forth upon the other populated worlds, announcing they own everything and demanding the peasants all line up and get slave collars. I don’t see that as any improvement. It’s not like contact with the Derf and Hinth were totally trouble free. But nothing so widely violent, so quickly, and the Elves and the Beavers never had a hiccup,” he said, naming the two known aboriginal races, who still were uninterested in any real close contact.

“Call The Champion William and the Retribution back from the outer system survey,” Gordon ordered. “Anything more we say, even if we could contact them, would just be digging ourselves in deeper at this point in my opinion. I’d like for us all to rendezvous outside the orbit of their moon. We’ll continue looking for other worlds. We’ll discuss whether we should stop on the way back home and see how things settled out, or leave well enough alone.”

“Aye, aye,”  Thor agreed. “But I’ll continue to record, and leave a small satellite to continue surveillance after we leave. I doubt they can spare the resources to come up and interfere with it. Especially with things are in turmoil. When we pass back by it’ll be interesting to see how things progress, and how long they take to stabilize.”

By the time they broke orbit and left, the other city was burning. Then somebody pointed out that some of the dams on the second continent seemed to have burst. Nobody had much to say. At least nobody suggested destroying the records and hushing it up.

Chapter 5 of next April book

Chapter 5

 

The next morning at breakfast April thanked Gunny again for supporting her at ISSII.

“It wasn’t so much supporting you personally, as I agree we can’t let the Norte Americanos slide back into ignoring treaty provisions and limiting travel to Home. They will just keep picking away at it if we let them. We can’t spare the funds or personnel to put an observer at every USNA exit point. It might precipitate another war to try. So it’s really up to all of Homes citizens to object, if they see somebody trying to detain a Home traveler.”

“I’m going to address that next Assembly,” April vowed. “Not to ask a vote, or suggest  anyone be obligated, but just to make an advisory announcement.”

“Not everybody has the nerve or ability to get in the face of customs agents. I saw the necessity of that. However, taking such a hard line with the guard later was more than was necessary. That was twice in a day you put yourself on the line, at risk. If you keep that up the odds will catch up with you. I think the second incident was more a matter of temper than principal.”

“You’re right, what can I say?”

“That’s sufficient. I was glad you didn’t call out Amos though. He is well known down below, and even if you were technically correct on custom, I think it would have been bad publicity. So far your image has been pretty positive with the common Earthies. If the politicians and security people hate you, well, there is a huge public undercurrent against them too.”

“Yes, I keep hearing that, but I don’t see it.”

Gunny shrugged. “It’s hard to explain if you haven’t lived there. They may be evil, but they aren’t stupid. The ways they have to control people have been carefully refined, especially the last hundred years. Most people don’t see any hope of getting public support if they openly oppose the government, so they don’t speak out publically. While the government has been quietly perfecting repression the people have invented all sorts of ways to resist. There is much more sabotage, wrecking, than is admitted. That gives some an outlet for their frustrations without open rebellion. I never saw any advantage to rebellion. I guess I was part of the repression, since I kept Wiggen safe.”

“But Wiggen was an advantage for us for a long time. She was moderate enough not to want to attack us, when everyone else were just arguing how to time our destruction.”

“I’m still not sure we are far enough away to not be a target. When we were attacked last year and your dad acted to move us out here L2, it seemed a long way away compared to Earth filling half our sky. But Earth is still there even if it looks more like a marble now. It still isn’t just another pinpoint in the heavens. I’m glad actually the halo orbit lets us monitor the Earth traffic directly. If we were ever tucked in all the way behind the moon I’d worry it was possible to sneak up on us and we might not see them coming until they came over the lunar horizon.”

“Always being in line of sight lets Jeff have direct command of his weapons. I’m more comfortable with that than working through relays,” April admitted.

“I was there you know,” Gunny said lifting an eyebrow. “You and Heather have the control codes too, not just Jeff, unless he took them back and you didn’t tell me?”

“No,” April said, embarrassed. “I just figure if they get used Jeff will do so long before Heather I would release them.”

She looked at Gunny distressed, and he was smart enough to keep silent when she was so visibly thinking something over hard.

“Jeff has some real issues from when he had to bomb the Jiuquan spaceport,” April revealed. “Not that he wouldn’t do it again, because once they had captured his ship there really wasn’t any other choice but to destroy it. If the Chinese had been given time to take her apart and reverse engineer everything we’d all be dead by now without a doubt. But he really had no idea the yield on that weapon would be enough to take out the adjoining town too. He wasn’t faking that. He might have been able to destroy it beyond any data recovery with the lighter warheads we had, but he just couldn’t take the chance when it was a matter of Home’s survival, when he had one big enough to vaporize the whole area even if they were already taking stuff off the ship.”

“What do you mean issues?”

“He sits and has crying jags. He has bad dreams. I finally got him to get some medication to help the PTS before we went down on vacation. I think taking a break helped too, but he is not like some of the Earthies paint him, indifferently depraved, like is a qualifier in Earth law for a murderer. If anything he is too smart, and only too aware of all the innocent individuals harmed.”

“Is he safe to retain control of his systems?” Gunny asked, frowning.

“Would you want somebody holding them who it wouldn’t be bothered to use them?”

Gunny nodded reluctant agreement. “OK, sometimes there are no good choices.”

Across the cafeteria at the order counter the fellow Matt Wilson and his two kids were getting breakfast. April called them to Gunny’s attention with a tilt of her head and a raised eyebrow. “You mind if I call them over?”

“Not at all. Those kids didn’t argue in the shuttle when I told them to go strap in, I would expect a lot of Earth kids to balk when a stranger started giving them orders. I was impressed.”

Matt herded the two little ones ahead of him. When they all had their trays he turned to the seating. April waved and invited them to the chairs opposite her and Gunny with a sweep of her hand. He nodded and started their way with no hesitation, so he must not think her a trigger happy lunatic.

“Miss Lewis, Mr. Tindal,” he said formally.

“Gunny is fine.”

“And I’m happy with April.”

“Thank you, for myself, but my children are trained to address older people respectfully.”

“I wouldn’t think to sabotage that,” Gunny agreed.

“This is Iaan and Jenifer,” their father introduced them.

“Welcome to Home,” April said, looking at the kids to make sure they knew they were included in the greeting. “Are you visiting or immigrating?” she directed at the father.

“Immigrating, if I can manage it.”

“We have a labor shortage, so you should be able to find something.”

“I’m hoping to not have to look for a job. I’m a writer, and circumstances are such now in North America that most of what I’d earn would go to my ex-wife for the rest of my career, so I had no real future there. It wasn’t the best of times to leave either, but I came to realize it would never be a better time to leave, so I bit the bullet and did it.”

“And yet you retain the children, despite having the minority of the income. I’d have expected your wife to pay child support,” Gunny said. It sounded like a question though.

“At the time I had no income. But my quitting my job to write full time was the reason my wife divorced me, although it was at her father’s urging. What can I tell you? It was California, with a female judge, very good lawyers hired with her father’s money, and the kids were not something that fit her proposed new life. She spoke frankly about that in front of the kids, so it’s far too late to shield them from that.”

“Giving her two thirds of any royalties I earned was to punish me for quitting my job as an insurance adjuster and doing what I wanted. They all assumed that I expected to live off her father’s money, and when my first three books sold really well it wasn’t welcome, it just pissed them off. Her dad sees all writers, poets, musicians and artists as lazy leaches avoiding honest work, unless they have been dead long enough to satisfy him. Bach, or Hemingway, or Paul McCartney for example, all get a free pass.”

April and Gunny were stunned to silence for a bit. That he’d speak so bluntly in front of his children did say they’d heard it all before, or worse. And they didn’t so much as twitch at hearing it again. Finally April worked up the courage to ask, “What does your father-in-law do that he can be so disdainful of creative people?”

“Ah, interesting question. He’s a lawyer too, but not the sort that does divorces, he does corporate law dealings with finance, and things like mergers. Things society needs to his mind.”

“Home doesn’t have lawyers,” April told him.

Matt was sipping coffee. He dropped the cup long enough to say, “The horror,” sarcastically and went on with his breakfast.

April was trying to think what that would do to a child and their lifelong attitudes to hear they were unwanted and see their custodial parent attacked. She frequently thought Earthies were barking mad, but this was a new level. Sometimes she’d felt her mother was distant, and sometimes that she’d favored her brother, but she’d never outright rejected April. She’d have asked other questions, but the two kids sitting there listening still made her not want to offend their sensibilities further. So she changed the subject.

“We have at least one writer I know, Ben Patsitsas, who writes mysteries.”

“Sure, I’ve read some of his stuff. I liked it.”

“There’s a bunch of guys, some retired, some self employed. Most morning, a bit later, there will be a cluster of them sitting close to the coffee. There might be three or a dozen, any given day. I don’t recognize your name though. What do you write?”

“I write romances, so far they have all been historical romances, but you wouldn’t recognize my work because I write as Molly Wilson.”

Jenifer looked up from her pancakes and smiled. “It’s lots of fun to tell your teacher your dad is Molly Wilson.” Her brother nodded amused agreement. “Especially when she’s a big fan.”

The two seemed unusually comfortable with each other. April kept expecting a frown or a nasty crack, but there was no sign of sibling rivalry. Instead they sat touching hip to hip. She had the sad thought that she wished her brother had been like Iaan when he was alive.

“Ms. Lewis, are there many children our age on Home?” Jenifer asked. “Will we be able to make friends?”

“I remember my mom told me recently there are still less than a hundred children on Home. She runs a private school, and the last we talked she had eighteen students. They all study in a room in common, because there aren’t enough of any age to have grades or classes like an Earth school. There were even less kids when I was growing up. There will only be a few kids your age, but most of my friends growing up were older than me, some adults even.”

Iaan and Jenifer exchanged a look that was a little alarm, a little consternation, and Iaan spoke for them. “On Earth, if we weren’t afraid to have an adult as a friend most of the time they  would afraid to be our friend anyway. I never had a teacher I’d have called a friend. They all had an obligation to snoop on us for the government, and some of them were pretty good at it. If they tried to be a friend somebody would have thought it was a bad thing. They’d probably get a warning on their record that they had an inappropriate relationship with a student. We had a teacher who played basketball at the city park where some of his students went, and when it was hot, he not only wore short sleeves, he took his shirt off. They kicked him out of the park and made him transfer to a school in a different county.” His sister nodded solemn agreement.

“My brother was older than me,” April told them. ” He was three years older, but we did all sorts of things together. We didn’t always get along, but when you don’t have that many people to do stuff with you learn to get along. That’s a big difference about Home. If you treat people as disposable you run out of people who will have anything to do with you pretty fast. That applies to adults doing business with each other too. It isn’t like Earth where if you get upset over some little thing and want to ignore somebody there are lots of other people to chose from.”

“Do you just have one brother?” Jenifer asked.

“I did. He made a few mistakes, and got with the wrong people a couple years ago, and his ship blew up while it was going around the moon. I wish we’d still been close when I lost him, but we were having a lot of trouble with each other. Now I’ll never have a chance to fix that.”

The brother and sister looked at each other. You could see them imagining the same situation for themselves. Jenifer put her hand around Iaan’s elbow like she was going to make sure he didn’t get away. It was kind of touching.

“The lady there that made your breakfast, Ruby, has been my friend since I was your age. She and I traded information lots of times. I knew when stuff like sani-wipes or gloves might get bumped back on the shipping schedule, and she seemed to know every time somebody changed jobs or was dating somebody new. I’d make sure she got stuff she needed before it ran low, and she knew who could drop stuff off at people’s cubic for us, or who would print stuff for my brother and me.” She smiled. “That was back when we didn’t have a print shop you could walk in and had to get somebody to run it off their private printer. Things are a lot different now. I’d come by and when she had a break we’d sit at a table and chat a bit. We’re still friends, and her husband is a good guy to know too. He works outside flying a construction scooter mostly.”

“When we went to public school none of the cafeteria ladies were allowed to talk to us. They would tell us if our lunch choices were outside the guidelines, but never just friendly chat. In fact the last school I went to we weren’t allowed to talk at lunch. We still would sign and point and do stuff like split up something we hated on a couple trays so the monitor didn’t see us throw away too much. You got written up if you wasted too much,” Iaan explained.

“I can’t see how that is much different than being in prison,” April said.

Iaan laughed out loud, shocked at that. “You couldn’t say that either! If you did you’d be labeled antisocial. Of course I guess the guys in real prison are already so solidly antisocial it wouldn’t matter what they say. I mean, what else are they going to do to them?”

“Stick them in solitary?” their dad asked.

“Yeah, like detention,” Iaan agreed, frowning at the new thought.

“And your parents wouldn’t have been upset to know you were visiting with a service worker?” Matt asked.

“Not at all. You might have to reconsider how you regard people here. Some of the things that were true on Earth may not be here. There aren’t a lot of stupid people on Home, even if their job description sounds menial to you. Even for something like corridor maintenance and cleaning, or supply and delivery, they screen for work history and psychological profile. They have more applicants than positions so they can be picky. People with degrees accept manual labor to get up here. You don’t get weirdoes, stinks, and thieves. People who can’t get along or manage to hide a problem end up back down on the mud ball pretty quickly.”

“Now Ruby, as an example, is pretty sharp. She grew up in Detroit, spent some time as a loadmaster in the air force, and was a college professor teaching Medieval music before she came to Home. But if you called her Doctor Dixon she might smack you with a spatula. She’s always been very insightful about people and what motivates them. I’ve learned a lot from her, and she was never shy to tell me when I was out of my depth.”

“OK, things are different up here. That’s why we’re here, but I can see it’s going to be true of a whole lot of little things I hadn’t planned on being different,” Matt admitted.

“It’s true, we are getting more people now who are self selecting to come to Home, instead of being hired. But there are still a lot of barriers to really undesirable people coming in. If you don’t have a job or a sponsor it takes quite a bit of money to live here until you can establish yourself. You have to be smart or lucky or ruthless enough to get that much money. Things on Earth are making it harder all the time for an average person to accumulate much wealth. That’s why you are here right? They were going to make it hard for you to make an honest living.”

“Yes, I don’t know if you’d classify me as smart or lucky, but I could see every time I made more money they were going to take more. I’m moving my book sales to other countries, and the new ones I’m already working on will never have any connection to the USNA. They simply won’t have any handle on me to collect the money the court awarded. They may try to block my North American sales, but almost everyone now can circumvent those sort of controls if they want to. There are all sorts of black markets and grey markets and bartering.”

“I’m trying to understand how the Earth economy works. My partner Jeff has me studying economics, and I read the news feeds and some of the private journals, but nobody will speak frankly about how the underground economy works, or how big it really is. If you’d explain the real mechanics of it to me it would be very helpful. I can trade you help with how things work up here. Does that sound beneficial?”

“Yes, but I’m trying to understand, how is it that Jeff assigns you something to study? Are you both in some sort of a study group in school? He looks quite a bit older than you. And are you planning a career track that will use economics?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“I’m not in any formal school right now, except a Japanese class at the University of Kyoto. I don’t think I’ll ever not be studying something. I’m studying to get my lander certification, and I’ll have to put some hours in to qualify on the specific type lander I have access to. When I went down to Earth the trip before this one, I suggested strongly to Jeff he start a bank while there was a window of opportunity on Home. By the time I came back he’d formed it, and was gathering a clientele and doing transactions. He’d just started coining a local currency, the Solar, and if I wanted to be of any use to Jeff and Heather to actually help run the thing I needed to understand economics. Since it was my idea in the first place it seems like it would be pretty hard to refuse to help run it. We three do a lot of business together, and they always pitch in when I need something.”

“How can you contract to do business? I mean, how old are you?”

“I’m sixteen, but I’m an emancipated adult. If I look young to you, well I’ve had Life Extension Therapy, and it pretty much all kicked in before I was fourteen. I probably won’t look much different until I’m past twenty five. I’m content with how I look. If anybody has a problem with it – it’s their problem.”

“She’s the girl who was in Hawaii last year dad. They tried to hush it all up because it’s super antisocial to dress like her, and she disappeared from Hawaii and nobody knew where she went or anything, and then she showed back up here, and was in the gossip boards and stuff again. But my friends in Europe and Australia all send me pix and stuff the net censors block. I got ’em all on my phone. I’ll show you sometime if you want,” Jenifer offered.

“Don’t believe everything you see about me,” April begged. “If you want to know if something is true ask me and I’ll tell you honestly. OK?”

“OK, then tell me please, how can you eat such a big breakfast? You had twice as much as Mr. Tindal and you’re half his size.” Her dad looked horrified at the question.

“My parents bought me some genetic modifications, and I’ve added some myself later. My metabolism can run quite a bit faster than normal so I eat more. It lets me do some things like run a lot further than other people.”

“That’s really personal stuff, Jenifer,” her dad told her.

“Well she said to ask!”

“If there is ever anything I ever don’t want to answer, I’ll just tell you. Your dad is right, I have some stuff I keep private, just not the same stuff he might guess. Now down on Earth lots of people thing gen mod people are horrible, and a lot of people think Life Extension Therapy is bad too, but nobody thinks a thing of it up here.”

“This is a whole lot better than the breakfast at school,” Iaan told them. “And there’s no compliance officer counting our food groups.” He blinked and looked at his empty plates and his sister’s with a funny expression. “And I didn’t even think about throwing any of it away!”

* * *

“You were unusually tactful with Mr. Wilson,” Gunny said later, out in the corridor.

“Compared to my – usual self?”

“Well, you could have felt he was attacking your friend Ruby when he suggested service workers were not fit company. You do tend to have a certain directness.”

“I’m remembering how Lin told us how careful they had to be hiring people for the boat. It is probably the same in North America. Desperate people do bad things. If Lin is careful of his boat and crew how much more is Matt going to guard his kids? But we’ll nudge him along to see it’s Earth think, that he can ease off on a little bit. At least I hope we don’t get more weirdoes and criminals than we can weed out, so Home stays different than Earth.”

“I’m sure we’ll have some native criminals. Some people are just born defective, and the Assembly will have to deal with them. I’m just not sure how yet. You can hardly exile somebody who was born here. Where would we send them?” Gunny asked.

“Good question.”

“You should know, I elected to pay taxes so I can vote.”

“Good, that’s one more sensible voter.”

Another snippet of next “April” series book.

Chapter 4

 

They docked at ISSII and never went in spin, staying in the zero G mast, just moving down to another dock that had a screen showing a shuttle to Home in twenty minutes. The well inked man and his two bodyguards joined them, with one of the guards standing right at the hatch the entire wait, obviously intent on having first choice of seats when they boarded.

The guards handled themselves with enough finesse they had to have some previous zero G experience. The musician was a little more awkward, but was sensible, not trying anything fancy. He showed no discomfort, so either he had a natural ability to tolerate the weightlessness or he had the good sense to take the offered pill.

They were switching carriers, so their luggage was delivered to the dock. April didn’t bother, but Gunny broke the Tongan customs seal on his bag and put on a belt with a matched brace of 10mm pistols and a magazine carrier. He was after all on duty.

“Isn’t that a decompression hazard?” the  body guard near them asked, worried.

“Not with low velocity frangible ammo.” Gunny didn’t tell him the left gun held armor piercing, just in case. He’d really try not to use that one.

The flight crew arrived early and opened up the shuttle. Two ladies, both middle aged, and both with that smooth tight face and easy movement that said they had life extension therapy. April couldn’t put a name to them, but she’d seen both before. They had on the grey uniform with a stylized rocket logo of Larkin Lines. April was happy to see that, they ran a tight outfit.

They filled the luggage locker full as most orbit to orbit travelers didn’t have the volume of bags they’d brought up from an Earth visit. The musician’s body guards looked happier now, being able to pick their seats. Then they sat for awhile because there were three paid seats empty, and they had ten minutes until their published departure time.

It was down to the last thirty seconds before two kids hit the hatch fast, and utterly confident like birds landing on a fence, and the older one, the boy of about ten crossed over his sister and stuck his head in the hatch to the flight cabin. “Our dad is coming.” He assured the crew. “He just can’t move as fast as us so he told us to go ahead. They didn’t like his papers getting out of the North American Sector and wanted to argue.”

April’s face clouded over in a frown. “Are they aware you are boarding a Home vessel?”

“I don’t think they ever got around to talking about where we’re going, not while we were there, dad seems to be on the don’t fly list,” the boy told her. “We just jumped past them through the gate and what are they going to do? They can’t keep up with us either, and it looks really bad to try to Taser a couple kids.” The little devil grinned at playing that advantage.

“It’s stupid,” the girl declared. “We’ve been up before. We’re the same people.”

April got out of her couch, “The three of us,” she informed the crew woman, “are the partners of Singh Industries, with who Larkin Lines does a great deal of business. I’d appreciate it if you would declare a ten minute hold to local control. We will indemnify you for any loss or fines you receive for the hold.”

“I’m quite aware of who you are. I’ve seen you speak in the Assembly. We will tell local control we are holding until our passengers board, and hang our weapons boom out in case they don’t understand we are upset,” she hurried back into the crew space.

“Thank you,” April called after the crewwoman, she turned to Gunny, “I need a pistol,” she demanded, open hand out.

“I made sure your bag was on top,” Gunny said, getting up and going to the locker. “Get your own, because I intend to go with you.”

“You are not obligated to guard me when I seek trouble.” April admitted. Gunny already had the customs tape cut and spread the bag open. April pulled out an aikuchi and stuck it in her waist band, and then the laser, not bothering with a holster, just taking it in her hand.

“I want to.”

“Thank you,” April said. The brother and sister still hanging by the crew hatch looked shocked at this turn of events.

The lights flickered and there were various sounds as the vessel detached from station utilities, which wasn’t normal with the lock hanging wide open. Gunny closed the bag and stuffed it back in the locker. “You kids take a couch and belt in. When we come back we may want to leave quickly, and you are one less thing we need to sort out.”

“Yes sir,” they said in unison, and moved quickly to the furthest open seats.

Gunny went out the lock, with April close behind. There were two customs and immigration agents approaching down the mast with a man between them.

“Are my kids aboard?”

“Aboard and strapped in, ready to depart,” Gunny assured him.

“We did not release them to board,” one of the agents said, angry.

“Read the departure screen,” April told him. “Where is this vessel going?”

The man looked at the flat screen on the boom bulkhead. “Oh, shit…He didn’t tell us he was going to Home,” the agent complained. “He had a NA passport.”

“You don’t have a departure schedule at your duty station?”

“Yeah, but there are four shuttles in count to leave. Only this one is going to Home.”

“Now you know. Is there any further problem?” Gunny asked, not especially friendly.

“No problem,” the fellow agreed. He and his partner had holstered Tasers, April had a weapon in hand, and Gunny two visible. That may have helped keep the conversation simple and brief. They turned to go.

“You have my passport,” the fellow objected, holding his hand out.

He was sullen, but the customs agent put it in his hand.

“Do you have anything else they held up, any luggage?” April asked.

“No, I anticipated problems, so we decided not to burden ourselves with anything we couldn’t fit in our pockets. Thank you for your help. I owe you. We are the Wilsons, I’m Matt, could I have your names?”

“I am April Lewis, this is my hired man Mack Tindal, call him Gunny. Strap in and we can talk later, we’re past departure time. They know better than this,” she complained to Gunny.

When they came in through the lock the crew woman who had agreed to a hold was braced in the hatch opening to the crew cabin, feet on one side, shoulders against the opposite flange, she had a short barreled twelve gauge nestled in her arms, watching the lock carefully.

“They say we’re clear to boost,” Gunny told her. “Don’t trust them to mean it.”

“I won’t. Would you close and dog the lock, please?” she asked and closed crew access and they could hear it seal shut when the dogs clunked.

“Lock closed,” Gunny reported at the intercom before he was the last to strap in. The crew undoubtedly had sensors on their board, but it didn’t hurt to confirm it.

The little girl, not much younger than the boy, maybe a year, spoke to her dad when he strapped in seat ahead of her. “Dad, she’s the one the teenagers all copycat, and upset all the teachers and mall cops!”

The grapples withdrew with a distant thud, and they got a gentle push sideways with no delay. A couple more turns and pushes, and the speaker came alive. “Nobody is giving us any trouble. We will ramp to a very modest third G burn in fifteen seconds. Local control approved our altered departure with no comment. Thanks for flying Larkin Lines,” she added automatically.

* * *

At Home the musician and his guards hustled out the door quickly, they weren’t in any hurry, following them down the short north mast. Their business associate Eddie and April’s grandfather met them at the bearing portal to spin. It was a huge contrast to the mob that greeted her last return from Earth. It was the middle of main shift and April’s parent’s would both be working, and Heather’s mother had a very hands off approach to raising her children, so nobody felt slighted or ignored.

They all logged on at the security station, touching the ceramic plate of the DNA reader. Nobody was fussy enough to ask a wipe down before using it, but several of them used a sani-wipe before putting on fresh gloves. The plate was silver impregnated and had an ultraviolet lamp flooding it, but people were paranoid, they were incubating some strange diseases out of the African continent that were worth worrying about.

Eddie was babbling on to Jeff about getting landing rights for Dionysus’ Chariot in Australia, and Barack was bending her grandfather’s ear about something. The three ahead of them were a little slower in zero G and they were going to catch up before they got to the elevator. The musician pulled a granola bar or a candy bar out of his pocket and opened it. He crumpled the wrapped and tossed it ‘down’ to the floor, but there was so little spin here it rolled up the curved bulkhead on the air currents.

“Hey, you dropped something!” April called out to him. When he looked she pointed to the wrapper  still slowly climbing the surface counter-clockwise.

“It’s just trash, the clean-bot will get it,” he said, with an honestly quizzical look on his face.

“There is no clean-bot in zero G. The hand rails get wiped down weekly and the bulkheads get a wipe-down maybe every six months. Your trash will float around until it gets sucked into an air filter, or somebody else picks it up and takes it to a trash receptacle, because we don’t want to live in a pig sty like an Earth city. I’m informing you what local custom is,” she said pointedly. She was still irritated from the customs people breaking the free travel agreement, and not in a mood to let anything slide.

He’d turned around and April hadn’t stopped. It would have been OK, but his security man thrust himself between them and held a hand up to stop April. He wasn’t very graceful in zero G, and he ended up stopping his own motion by pushing off of April’s shoulder.

“How dare you lay hands on me?”

“I doubt the young lady is a threat to me Ron, I think you can back off.”

“They’re armed, and I see a hazard,” Ron insisted.

“There is a hazard, but you have no idea what it is,” April told him. “If you will promise to keep your hands to yourself in the future, I’ll ignore your ignorance.”

“I didn’t really intend to make contact, but I’m just doing my job. You can’t press in on my client like that when you are arguing. I’d have stopped you getting closer in any case.”

“You aren’t capable of stopping me if I decided to get physical with your client, or you, but you have no idea of your limitations. You will apologize or you will meet me here tomorrow morning and give me satisfaction. You have the choice of weapons, or if you come unarmed we will fight bare handed.” April was horrified, it was like some strangers voice saying this, but she was taking out every diminutive statement and insult built up in memory out on this final disrespectful act.

Eddie behind them muttered an indiscreet, “Oh, shit.”

“That’s easy for you to say with armed security standing behind you.”

“Hey, I’m standing back watching,” Gunny pointed out. He even took his hand off the rail and showed his empty palms to the guy before taking a grip again. “I’m supposed to deal with criminals and assassins, if she wants to duel that’s her’s to see to.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’ll duel with you, nobody does that anymore.”

“Indeed, I’m sorry to be the second person to advice you of local custom,” her grandfather said, “but if you refuse to meet her she will post notice, and you will be permanently expelled and barred from Home. The matter has come up before and is well established by the Assembly. Are you certain you want to kill this man?” he asked April as an aside.

“No, I just want a little respect. But what other way do I have to get it? I refuse to just brawl here with him until he yields, and if I had struck back at him when he pushed me it would have drawn in the other fellow, and then maybe some of our group. I won’t have them laying hands on me and bringing their Earth Think into Home corridors until it’s like living on the slum ball.”

The musician Amos jerked like he was slapped at slum ball. “Joe, you handle yourself better in no gravity, would you grab that wrapper for me, please? I’ll at least give Ms. Lewis that much satisfaction.”

“Thank you,” April was quick to acknowledge.

“Would you consider letting the matter slide with my man?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Ron, I won’t urge you to do anything either way. I’ve been happy with your service. If you don’t want to apologize I’ll pay your early passage off Home. If Joe wants to go with you I’ll find other security locally or do without.” Amos appeared more concerned than upset. He took his recovered wrapper from Joe and stashed it in a pocket.

Ron looked back and forth between them frowning. He took a deep breath. “I apologize for bumping you. I’ll try to not do it again. If I do please understand it’s just clumsiness in zero G. I’d really appreciate your assurance you won’t hold it against my client, since it’s true, I don’t know local customs.”

“Not at all, it was strictly between us, and as far as I am concerned it is like it never happened now. Let’s start with a clean slate,” she proposed.

Ron gave a tilt of his head that was almost a bow, acknowledging it, and kept his mouth shut. He went out front of Amos, to be away from April, trading places with Joe without any consultation. Joe picked up on it and fell back, so they weren’t totally clueless.

At the elevator Amos stood waiting with his brow furrowed. “Might I offer to take you to dinner sometime soon, by way of further apology, and to ask you more about Home?”

“I’ve been looking forward to going to go to dinner at the Fox and Hare tomorrow. If you’d like to join us at 1900 hours come along. It’s a private social club, and they won’t present a bill to our table, but you are welcome to be our guest.”

“Should I leave my security?”

“Whatever you wish. It’s a small place and if we sit together they may need to sit at an adjoining table, but they’ll be close enough to watch you. I suggest you go see Zach at the Chandlery near the cafeteria, and get spex like your guys have,” she said, touching hers. “They make getting around, like finding the club, a lot easier. Can you come Gramps?”

“I wouldn’t miss it, but after dinner I’d like to be excused to go off to the poker room.”

“What sort of poker?” Amos asked, interested.

“Oh, it’s just a friendly local game,” April’s grandfather explained. “Usually a fifty-hundred spread with a pot limit raise. If you suggest a bigger game with thousand dollar ante or more you may get enough guys to have a game, but most of them are going to beg off and have their own.”

“That sounds interesting. Do you have to be a member to play?”

“You can be my guest if you want to play. We’re not too stuck up to take your money.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Eddie grumbled.

April was surprised. Not that Eddie would play, but that he would lose.

Family Business Chapter 3 snippet. (Thinking about April too.)

Chapter 3

 

The new system was quiet, like only an uninhabited system can be. There were some low frequency rumblings of a gas giant, quietly having minor indigestion in the depths of its atmosphere. One star held a tiny rocky planet so unbelievable close it was uninfluenced by the other star. Then there was a larger gap and the next planet wobbled around its suns in the grip of both. The orbit insured it had radical changes in climate at short intervals, and was inclined far enough it never lost sight of one star behind the other. Neither star was particularly noisy, one not very different than the other.

The first planet showed from afar as having a carbon dioxide atmosphere, dense enough to hide surface features from optical examination. They weren’t done doing a passive examination and hadn’t used their radars yet. The second planet out was larger than Earth, very dense, a high argon atmosphere, and had a surface gravity of about one point four-five G. High enough it would not likely be colonized, because the long term health effects would be horrible. The temperature ran to the high side too, nothing below 45°C more than twenty degrees from the poles. It had considerable volcanic activity, and surface water, although not near as much as Earth or Derfhome. Even Hin had more surface waters, though dispersed better.

The world was likely a source of ore of some sort, having so much activity and water in its crust. However, a quick conference decided they would make a note of it but press on without doing a formal surface survey or leaving a claim marker, because although having free surface water the extreme range of climate and high surface gravity made it unlikely it could be Terraformed to a condition it could be colonized. It would require an exceptionally rich ore body to induce someone to mine it by remote control from orbit. Before leaving a high powered sweep of the system with radar showed nothing unusual. They picked another system on a line straight away from their home worlds and jumped. This time the two DSEs and the Sharp Claws, the rest bringing up the rear.

* * *

Eight more jumps while running two shift days left everybody tired, and they all orbited a giant among gas giants in different orbits, taking time from the usual duty stations, scooping fuel to top everybody off, and declaring a day you could break out personal intoxicants and do what you wished for recreation. The few stuck working were promised the same freedom in two days, with a recovery day in between.

Their next target system was barely over two light years away, so the Sharp Claws withdrew from near any of the gas giants and deployed a huge antenna, listening to hear if their close neighbor had any signs of a radio using civilization. If they did they must be on the hand held walkie talkie level. After six days refueled and refreshed they jumped to the near system.

There was a rarity, a water world worth at least a quick survey, a world with most of the surface commonly in a temperature range humans could live without special suiting. The surface gravity ninety seven percent of normal was sweet too. They landed two shuttles, ascertained it was sterile for sure, and left a marker in orbit claiming it. The five year limit on reporting it might work against them on this voyage. Nobody planned on an expedition being out so long that might be a problem. The chances somebody else would follow their route and file a claim when the five year period expired seemed slight though, more likely they’d be the claimant even if they were late.

If they didn’t find more valuable worlds in the next year or so they might consider sending the Sharp Claws back to register this world. It was worth at least several million each to their crews. They also didn’t carry any inoculating materials to start the world on the path of Terraforming it, and making an oxygen atmosphere. An entire ship load of such materials, algae, grasses and lichens, would take years to put measurable free oxygen in the air.

The soil samples and salts in the sea water indicated there would be common ores for colonists when it came time to go look for them. The crustal plates were still active and it had an iron core and magnetism. The axial tilt and orbital measurements indicated it would have a stable climate, steadier even than Earth.

* * *

The next system had an unusually large star, somewhat noisy, and in a phase where it was showing quite a few sunspots. Several people predicted it was at least somewhat a variable, based on a few similar systems surveyed. There were a couple rocky inner planets with no real atmosphere, a couple small gas giants, but two extensive asteroid belts and a great deal of loose debris all over the whole system. Nothing stood out as useful or worth studying for scientific reasons.

They did a high powered radar scan of the system fairly early, while they’d still have time to read the echoes. The returns from the asteroid belts would be complex. Gordon and Thor were video conferencing with the other ship commanders, picking a target system for their next jump.

“Anomalous return on radar in the asteroid belt,” Navigation broke into their conference with that message. Almost immediately he added. “Make that two extremely bright reflections, well separated.”

“Not a powered source, like a transponder?” Gordon asked right away.

“No, but it is unlikely to be a natural return. It would take a very unlikely corner shape in the face of a metallic asteroid to bounce such a signal back.”

“Can you steer a high powered bean on the points of interest and find out more about them?”

“I can map their size better, but they are both over four light-hours out system from us. I’d suggest moving one of our ships to investigate rather than wait over eight hours for what little clarification a second sweep will give us.”

“Sharp Claws, are you prepared to do quick burn and head out there to see what they found?”

“We can boost in fifteen minutes if we can take time to close up the galley for hot meals and secure duty stations for a two G boost. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes, do it, and don’t break any legs or damage equipment pressing an arbitrary dead line.”

“All hands, secure for acceleration in fifteen minutes,” they heard the Derf Captain announce on ship com. His customary human name was Frost, as in Robert Frost. “We shall ramp up to one G as soon as the horn is sounded. Secure all personal possessions and configure your duty station for acceleration. At five minutes a second horn will sound and you will be prepared for two G acceleration. Only special duty stations will be permitted tethered vertical personnel outside an acceleration couch. Off duty crew must be in their bunks. You are expected to have bottled water and urinals. Acceleration will not be eased for anything but the direst emergency. Heavier acceleration or an abrupt cessation of  drive are both possible unannounced. All department heads acknowledge when prepared and report any failure to conform and why.”

“Thank you, Sharp Claws, you are our eyes there now,” Gordon sent to them.

“Do you think we should disperse further or take any defensive measures?” Thor asked.

“I think whatever bounced our signal back was there from the moment we entered the system, and hasn’t given us any trouble. I expect some sort of artifact, but honestly no alien presence.”

“Alright, let’s just stand our normal watches and wait to see what they report,” Thor agreed. “I’m glad you didn’t rush us all out there though, I like having one ship poke it’s nose in for us.”

* * *

“Commander Gordon, we have images of the first object. It appears to be entirely passive. It’s just an old fashioned corner reflector. It’s only about a meter across, and it doesn’t have any sophisticated geometry to boost the signal when it is oriented unfavorably. It is anchored to a fairly large asteroid with a stout mast. I’m assuming something about the asteroid makes it worth finding again. We don’t have the testing equipment of one of the DSEs, but I can test a few points with the laser and see what sort of emissions we get. If anything looks interesting we’ll cut off a sample.”

The image they sent was well lit with a flood lamp. The reflector was crude, thick sheet metal just tacked at a couple points with a rude unpolished weld. The surface was aged, the metal smoother deep in the corner and frosted by micrometeorite abrasion nearer the edges. There were even a few visible pock marks where larger grains struck it, and one actual hole four or five millimeters across drilled right through the metal.

“Before we go check out the other site I intend to cut off a piece of this reflector. I’m not a hundred percent sure that’s what you’d want, but I’m going to chance it on my own initiative rather than wait for orders at the speed of light lag both ways at this distance. I hate to waste a full shift waiting for instructions. Several people have said this has to be old, as in thousands of years old. I’m going to put a sample locker for this on our outer hull. I don’t want to take the piece we cut off in atmosphere and ruin it by contamination for some sort of testing.”

“This just in from my crew out there. The rock shows it has very high cobalt content. I’d say it was marked as an ore source, but nobody every came back and worked it. If it is fairly homogenous we’re looking at a several million kilograms of cobalt. I’ll get a sample and move on to the next location. I expect to find another marker just like this one.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Gordon transmitted to them. “Your sampling procedure is exactly what I’d have done. If you find an identical reflector on the other asteroid no need to cut into it. Just sample the rock. I’m sending The Champion William and Murphy’s Law around the star to do a radar survey of the opposite side of the system. I’d like to know if there are more reflectors outside our viewing angle here. Since we’ll be several days doing that there is no rush to get to the other reflector at high acceleration. Take your time to avoid stressing your crew needlessly. I’d add that my personal guess is the erosion on the reflectors indicates a time frame of hundreds of thousands of years, not just thousands, so we have a mystery here why the miners never came back.”

“The fellows who cut a chunk off the reflector say it’s pretty pure titanium,” the Sharp Claws transmitted. “I’ll leave the other alone until I hear from you. We’re looking forward to hearing your take on it and instructions. We’ll plan to leave for the other soon after getting your transmission. Until latter, Sharp Claws out,” he ended.

“That reflector is crude, it isn’t designed to fold up and be carried aboard a ship,” Thor suggested. “I’d say it was made on site, as a field expedient. So, yeah, they marked them to find again easily, and never came back. Why? Did they find an easier source to work, or closer to home? Or was the ship lost and never reported their find, or did something bigger happen to their entire civilization?”

“Maybe we’ll find out as we go deeper,” Gordon hoped.

In the end they found five reflectors. One was on another cobalt rich rock. One they weren’t very sure about, but it might have been the vanadium content. Two were thick with native silver, and they mounted their own claim beacons on those rocks. The entire body of asteroids warranted a closer examination given the richness of the alien finds. They did a close fly-by of both rocky inner planets and a couple sizable moons around the gas giants. If there was a alien base or machinery anywhere it didn’t show up on radar down to a half meter resolution. It was a mystery.

* * *

They did their first five ship jump into the next system. Everything went smoothly with all of them in a circle less than a kilometer across. There was nothing of interest. No alien reflectors. No rich asteroid belts or worlds worth claiming. This continued for five jumps until they took another break. Gordon wondered if they might have found something by jumping to one of the other systems accessible from the one with the alien artifacts. But it went against their established doctrine to stop and investigate a globe around one star. They still intended to continue along the same general heading, going as deep away from Human and Derf space as possible.

The next system along their approximate line of flight was a bit over seven light years away, that was on the fringe of their detection ability, but Gordon had the Sharp Claws standoff, far enough from any natural emitters in the system and wide enough from their view of the star to examine the next system. There was a lot of unnatural noise, some suggesting audio and several frequencies suggesting video, but not clearly, and not on any scan rate or pixel count used by man.

In conference they decided to avoid giving away their present location as it gave too obvious a vector back to their home planets. Several wondered why there was no evidence of an alien presence in this system, one jump away from an occupied system. Several suggested they might not have star flight, others pointed out that Survey System 418 was not much further from Earth then this next jump, but manned ships never attempted it. They always jumped in from one of two other nearby systems with greater stellar masses and a higher jump probability. Nobody wanted to risk a jump with even a one in a hundred thousand chance of not emerging. No one had any idea what happened to a ship that failed to display a quantum emergence, and nobody especially wanted to find out the hard way.

They all did two jumps to a system off at about ninety degrees from their establish line of flight. They looked carefully and with caution, but neither system showed any signs of having been visited.

The Roadrunner was temporarily equipped with extra sensors and cameras, radios and recording systems. Mostly from the DSEs. She’d jump in, coast through on a long slow look at the system, and then take an exit line that went on to a different system on the far side of their entry, and minimized their drive signature as seen from the planet. It might take three or more jumps into virgin systems and a week to get back to them, but it seemed worth it to them to stay somewhat unexposed. They would do a minimal survey of each system they transited to rejoin their fleet, but stop in none. They expanded their crew to four pilots, all qualified to bring her back, so they never had to drop boost and rest.

* * *

Waiting was the hard part.  Eight days later there was a familiar burst of uncommon particles, decaying and making a electromagnetic chirp as Roadrunner rejoined their universe from its indeterminate state. They were very happy to see her, and happier yet to hear her quickly sent signal instead of an alien ship.

“We have no indication we were detected,” Sharp Claws reported. They were wrong, but they had no idea. “There were radars active in the system, but none of them changed mode or steered a beam to examine the Roadrunner closer.” The system was dirty, full of lots of small objects and the planetary surface subject to a constant rain of small meteors. The radar was to give warning for the bigger more dangerous pieces.

The recordings were interesting. The video took awhile to figure out. It was analog. There were additional signals that had to be audio. The scan rate told them something about the native’s vision. It wasn’t hard to estimate the frequency of the sound track. The real bonus came with the understanding that the other channel was a universal text captioning service, on a separate display. They appeared to have one language.

The natives were bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical and had binocular vision. The eyes seemed big compared to Humans or Deft, on a par with the Hinth. Their hands were three fingered with double thumbs, as were their feet, much more dexterous than Humans or Derf, but having nothing on the ability of Hinth to use their feet, even though the Hinth appeared to have less delicate and suitable feet. Watching them shuffle and deal cards dispelled any idea Hinth feet were not very capable of subtle manipulation.

They were close coated with a fine fur down their backs, ranging from tan to black, but semi nude from the chin to crotch, with very fine hair. There was much variation among individuals. They wore clothing but didn’t appear to have as strong a taboo against nudity. Part of that might be because their genitals were carried tucked away in folds neatly, and it was hard to tell at a glance if one was male or female for sure

The hair on their heads was just as short and fine as on their backs, but they had tufts of hair on the face, more prominent in the males, which looked somewhat like a set of mutton chop whiskers on a human, running from upright triangular ear to chin. Those tended to be a lighter white or yellowish color than the body hair. The nose was broad, cleft, and active. The females carried mammary glands, but the nipple tucked in a fold by the hip, not by the arm pit. They looked sleek, and carried a thin long tail.

There was a lot of display of what they took for status symbols. There was a profusion of hats, some simple knit affairs, some with ear holes, to elaborate hats with molded shapes and decorations. The clothing ranged from full jumpsuits that appeared to be serious protection for professions doing manual labor to frilly decoration. The one item everybody wore was some sort of collar, even if otherwise naked. Some fancy with studs and jewels, some simple chains or elaborate jewelry.

“The videos are odd. I don’t know what to make of it. There isn’t anything that looks like advertising. There are short local stories, but they aren’t man in the street type videos with normal stuff happening in the background,” Thor said.

“How do you know what’s normal?” Gordon asked.

“Good point, but I’ve seen broadcast news from Humans, Derf and Hinth. These folks never have traffic behind them or crowds in the city. They all look stiff and uncomfortable in front of the camera. And I’ve noticed already anytime one says “Teen” they give a little jerk of the head almost like bow.”

“OK, we need to figure that word out. I’m going to make this available to everybody in the whole fleet, and see what people get from it. I want everybody to give me ideas, and assign a numerical probability. For example, this video looks to be in front of a field, and the one fellow points off  camera and says something. Is he pointing out the way to town or showing which way his livestock took off or what? Ten percent probability or ninety? Don’t be afraid to reach a bit.”

* * *

Three days later they had their first conference. “Give me two items first,” Gordon requested. “I’d like any item on which a large number of people had consensus, and I’d like anything an individual assigned a higher probability than ninety percent.”

“We have forty-eight people who concluded that anyone wearing that dark orange color is some sort of official, with some mentioning government and some identifying it as a religious order. Thirty two people noted that in three scenes the wearers of orange are the only natives we see carrying weapons. In two videos they carry swords, and in the third they have both swords and two of them have spears.”

“OK, the color is some sort of emblem of authority. Are the weapons authority emblems or are they functional? These people have radar and geostationary satellites. Am I to believe they don’t have guns? Or at least bows and arrows? Something that acts at a distance?”

The com gave a ping. Jeremiah Ellis from engineering on the Retribution wanted to speak and was connected. “There are very few frames that show mechanized vehicles, but this one video shows orange wearing natives arriving in a motor vehicle. I’d guess from the smokestack at the rear it is a steam powered vehicle, but note the exhaust is quite clean as it arrives. It may be turbine powered. The thing appears to be damn near as big as a city bus, and it has pneumatic tires. Notice the artwork near the front door,” he manipulated the image to expand it.

“The shield shape suggests military origins for the symbol, and note the two figures on each side. One has a spear held straight armed tilted away from him, which may be a parade pose. The other figure has a weapon held the same way, but it is shorter and has a distinct butt stock on the ground. He also has a pouch hung, which could be for ammunition, and lacks the sword the spear carrier has. That’s a musket or rifle or I’ll admit Mrs. Ellis raised one very slow son,” he challenged.

“What do you think the objects above the figures are?” Gordon asked.

“I’ve run it past my engineering section, and we get some sort of fruit for the cluster of ovals, think something like grapes, the lines behind it being some sort of trellis or carrier, and everybody agrees the arch of rectangular shapes between the solid irregular masses is a dam between rock masses. There are no openings or castellations to suggest it is a castle or fortification. We have consensus it’s a dam.”

“Thank you, has anybody else analyzed this art?” Gordon prompted.

“I would have never figured out the dam, because I’ve never seen on in real life,” Thor allowed. “But I figured the words on the top edge are important. Three words would suggest a motto or unit identification, the first and last words I can’t identify yet, but the center word is the ‘teen’ we see everybody bob their head when they say it. It matches up to the captioning.”

Gordon got a request to speak, and connected to Propitious Harrington on the Murphy’s Law.

“Every video scene in which we see a street or road it is laid with brick. That sort of road is very enduring, cobbled roads on Old Earth are still in use that were built in the Roman Empire era. But they are very labor intensive, some of them having bases laid down six or seven meters deep. There appear to be no utility poles even in town, so they either bury them for aesthetic reasons, or their technology is deliberately restricted in how it is distributed. There are cultivated fields in quite a few videos, so they are an agricultural civilization, but we don’t see anyone carrying anything you could take for a computer or phone. Also, the population level in a long static society suggests tight control of reproduction.”

“Obviously they have video screens, or there would be no point in these broadcasts, but there is no scene in any of it showing a viewing screen. Either they are rare and communal, in a sort of theatre, or there is some dislike of showing a screen on a screen. There is no scene of a street busy with vehicles either, I’m starting to suspect they have a lot of the same technologies we have, but for some reason they aren’t commercialized and widely distributed the way we do,” he finished.

“Gordon, please note we have one statement, from one person, with a hundred percent handle. I think we should examine that. Nobody else had such certainty about anything,” Thor explained. “I’d either like to know why or find out what duty this person is charged with. Such absolute certainty honestly frightens me. I’m rarely ever that certain about anything.”

“Ming Lee?” Gordon read off the screen. “Would you like to explain your assessment?”

“Yes, I’m the second cook on the Sharp Claws. Despite what Mr. Thor seems to think, I am not a crank or disturbed person. I simply have experience, strongly reinforced in my family, as to what these broadcasts are. My great-grandfather and grandfather lived in an area of China on Earth which was populated by an ethnic minority. The government kept very tight control, suppressing even the slightest expression of dissidence. I have searched and highlighted a number of files of similar human video productions I will attach right now as references. I suggest you watch them silently, with no translation or captioning. The resemblance is uncanny. What you are seeing in these broadcasts is revolutionary theatre, or propaganda. Even the dark orange color of authority is a coincidental match to the red of my homeland. I predict they will be authoritarian, and very difficult to deal with,” he finished.

“Thank you Ming, Mr. Jefferson?” Gordon allowed next.

“Even before Mr. Ming’s assessment of the honesty of what they portray in their broadcasts, we only have a view through their camera lens, and never got close enough to see for ourselves what is on the surface of the planet from orbit. I’d suggest we need some direct observation, perhaps even some closer looks from atmospheric drones, and try to establish some communications from orbit before risking physical contact.”

“This seems the course of caution to me too,” Gordon agreed. “If anyone disagrees and feels it is too stand-offish write out your thinking and submit it to these suggestions. I should warn you that if you are in favor of an immediate face to face meeting, we’ll take it as volunteering for such duty.”

Nobody seemed eager to be such a volunteer, and they closed out the session.

“We need to decide how we are going to approach this world, and compose a greeting and initial contact video formatted for their receivers. I’d like to do a few orbits and map the surface before we decide where we are going to direct our contact message. I find myself leery of transmitting it to the entire surface as we orbit. We’ll discuss this fleet wide against first shift tomorrow, and consider any further analysis of their transmissions that wasn’t considered today. That ends ship’s assembly,” he announced. “Let’s get some supper and let the B team carry the ball a bit,” he told the bridge crew.

New snippet of “Family Business” sequal to “Family Law” 2nd Chapter

Chapter 2

 

The Hinth proved a challenge to recruit. They didn’t do well alone. Ha-bob-bob-brie, who Lee had met on Derf home station, isolated himself after a catastrophe had wiped out his shipmates and family in an exploration gone bad. He’d offered his name and bared his face to Lee in camaraderie after hearing of her own loss of family. However other Hinth regarded him as insane to be able to live years without other Hinth companionship. In fact the first Hinth Gordon and Lee had interviewed had visibly shivered, and almost lost the ability to speak of it, trying to describe how abnormal it was.

Ha-bob-bob-brie they did hire, sane or not, but as crew on the High Hopes, and the best they could do for other Hinth was a family group of three, who would all remain together on the Retribution. The idea they would be close associates to the other crewmen and not wear the mask like at home took a bit to work through. It said a lot about how hard set the custom was that they still wore the mask, but hanging lowered like a Fargoer’s medallion of rank. All the marks and writing on their mask spoke to what and who they were, and they had no other way to show it.

If they ran into aliens they wanted be able to feed them video of three races standing on the vessel’s bridge together, sharing command. It would suggest they should be able to get along with these strangers too. Or that was Gordon’s theory. They might of course find it an abhorrent mixing, but if that was the case establishing good relations was probably a lost cause anyway.

The ships were all short crewed. In the case of loss to mechanical failure or hostile action they wished to be able to double up a crew and leave a vessel behind. If it came to that they would also destroy the abandoned ship to prevent its capture and examination. The Fargoers had a very hard time being persuaded to reduce their crew to the required level. They agreed in principle, just not in particular. Every position seemed to have a reason to be exempt from being cut.

The ships being short crewed worked better on a long voyage for another reason. The volume of food and other perishables they laid in was much larger than for a conventional voyage. There simply wasn’t room for the supplies and a full crew. They even had some hydroponics for fresh salad things, which no ship in living memory had used, but they were trying it again in both DSEs and the Retribution. The Sharp Claws had no room for gardens, even short crewed.

The ground attack nukes were unloaded, all but a half dozen, and their slots filled with ship to ship X-head missiles. Those were so expensive they took a sizeable hunk of Lee’s cash to buy, even trading in the ship to ground missiles for their nuclear kernel. But the newly minted Fargone models had both better guidance packages and warheads that could be altered in the last seconds before detonation to emit their x-ray beams in a shotgun pattern, or steered at specific angles to try to hit more than one target. USNA warheads had a set geometry, and you had to orient them exactly to put a beam on target.

Unless the USNA had made advances kept secret, these new missiles would give a significant advantage between two ships of the same size and throw weight to the Fargone equipped ship.

Gordon also had a secret weapon he’s ordered developed after his unpleasant fight with a USNA fleet in fringes of the Fargone system. He’d aborted his run out system knowing a fleet was waiting to ambush him, and fired blind at their potential emergent point before he’d diverted to another system on a jump that was far too risky.

He’d had the same weapons developer who created the ‘peashooters’ make him a jump drone carrying an X-head. He could fire blind down a jump track he was certain had an ambush waiting on the far side, or fire it after a fleeing vessel he had no chance of catching in a straight chase before it jumped out. It was an ugly weapon, with the potential to kill an innocent ship unseen if you guessed wrong. But war is messy and survival sometimes costly. He had just two of them on the Retribution.

The considerable computing power to allow the weapon to act autonomously and pick a target or continue a pursuit after making a jump, cost more than the nuclear explosive part of the warhead. To the point it seemed an extravagant waste to treat that much computer as a perishable asset. But unleashing a stupid weapon on the far side of a jump line was even less defensible morally. The hardest instructions to write were those that made the weapon abort a pursuit and self destruct.

With a planned absence of several years the crew could not be left to choose their own kit. Cotton underwear and socks, popular and low cost, wore out too fast and crew were required to buy extra longer lasting hemp or synthetics. Shoes had to have one or two back-up pairs depending on the person’s duty stations. Personal drugs and other consumables had to be stockpiled for the crewmen.

A generous personal mass allowance for recreational items, including video, music and even recreational intoxicants was an acknowledgement of how long they’d be gone. Fargoer’s all seemed to bring at least a half case of their excellent rum. The Purser assured Gordon from personal experience that the cure was worse than the disease. Denied any outlet crew would raid supplies to make alcohol, grow various weeds, and even assembly entire synthesis labs from spare parts and shop supplies. Some brought small trade items hoping they’d meet an alien race who would appreciate them. The expedition itself carried little, thinking it a very hard matter to predict. They could dip into stores to a certain extent if they needed trade goods.

Almost all the human supplies loaded at Fargone. Derf specific items came from Red Tree. Much of their food came directly out of Red Tree stores. The ships rotated back to Derfhome to load stores and back to Fargone as their refit and load for weapons became available. There was such a shortage of Hinth related items outside their system that a fast courier had to be dispatched to acquire more food, medical supplies, and personal weapons for the bird-like aliens.

The usual ship’s web package for entertainment and instruction was often five to ten percent of the English web. They needed a deeper resource if they dealt with aliens. They loaded near half of the English web and special attention for Derf and Hinth elements. They also had obscure texts and references for language and translation, including dead languages, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Their studies on stellar formation and planetology were extensive and up to date. The history of mankind was fleshed out in some detail, no matter how unpleasant the truth was.

Given the fact they might want to trade with any race they found, coinage in standard weights was brought along in copper, silver, gold, platinum, and palladium. They welded in the safe for the money right in the flight deck. It wasn’t that much volume, but it was a significant mass item. Their machine shops had extra cutting bits and the 3D machines extra stocks of exotics like tungsten and beryllium.

One point on which Gordon drew the line was the inclusion of a ship’s cat in addition to the regular testing animals. He had personal experience cats got in trouble on ship. Sometimes in inaccessible areas. He did allow a cubic meter stuffed with seeds of every plant that might be an item for trade.

Gordon went over the manifests personally. He was horrified to find there was no shared supply of brandy laid in, neither was there sufficient small arms ammunition in his estimate. There was the usual moon-hut and tent in the Deep Space Explorers, but no tenting or camp cots and such, if they wanted to bring the crew of the two war ships down to a planetary surface. All that was corrected.

Thor his second in command and weapons officer insisted they bring a couple hard suits with support gear and parts, such as shipyard workers wore for long shifts doing exterior repair. If they had some major damage to deal with along the way soft suits were neither as safe or comfortable as hard shell suits for heavy labor in high vacuum. They had better maneuvering jets and offered better radiation protection too. In the end the master manifest was so large it seemed a miracle it could all fit inside six hulls.

Admiral Hawking called him up after the Sharp Claws and the Retribution were both armed with the newer interceptor missiles and the Deep Space Explorers were doing a minor refit so that the short range defensive missiles they usually carried could be replaced with the military versions.

“Gordon, do you suppose you could be a good fellow and rotate your escort ships back to Derfhome now that they are stocked and armed?”

“We could. No reason the whole expedition can’t depart from there. But why? It’s not like you are short of parking space.”

“This is stupid, and embarrassing, but I have to deal with it. There are Captains in our navy all bent that you have such a formidable force parked around Fargone. Some of the idiots are complaining we should have a defensive watch on your movements, and park you much further from the planetary surface. It would just be much easier to have you rotate out than deal with their paranoia.”

“Are they aware there are only a couple crewmen on board and the duty crews are all enjoying the last of their leave on a world?”

“Yes, I pointed that out, and the fact you’d just unloaded almost all your ground strike missiles. They countered how slickly you suckered the North Americans during the war and captured their ships at dock without a shot. You seem to have gathered a bigger than life reputation as an exceedingly sneaky bastard. A pretty hard thing to do given your personal scale,” he quipped.

“Well then, I guess the crews can finish up their last liberty as well at Derfhome as Fargone. What’s one more shuffle back and forth? The local merchants, flooded with bonus money aren’t going to thank you I’ll predict, but I’ll broadcast a recall and make ready to move both escorts,” he agreed. “We shall wait at Derfhome for the Deep Space Explorers to join us and depart from there.”

* * *

“Any serious objections from the crews to being shuffled off to Derfhome?” Gordon asked Thor later, after he’d had a chance to pass the orders down the line.

“It’s the oddest thing. I thought they’d resent it. But they are taking perverse pride in the fact they are regarded as too dangerous to have around. Sneering at the Fargone crews, saying their brass are afraid of their little fleet. Even the Fargoers in the cruiser Murphy’s Law seem to have picked up this superior attitude, and have staunchly integrated with ‘Little Fleet’ as they are calling themselves. They’ve all taken up wearing a black brassard or neck cloth, since we don’t share any uniform, even the Hinth! And strutting like they are special forces. I asked, but damned if any of them will tell me who’s idea it was. At least they didn’t take up something even more provocative like the Jolly Roger. ”

“If you take the complaint literally, then it’s true,” Gordon pointed out. Thor just rolled his eyes. He didn’t say anything when Gordon had a black silk scarf worn like an ascot next shift. A day later he too had a black wrist band, rather than appear to reject his own crew.

The move back to Derfhome allowed Gordon and Lee to make one last visit to the Red Tree Keep. They didn’t have the time to travel by surface like their last visit. They set down by air car, and if anyone thought it too fancy they’d just have to swallow it.

Lee was shocked to see all the trees near the Keep dead, bare limbed in mid-summer, killed in the burst of radiation from when the USNA had landed four combat shuttles full of Space Marines in front of the empty Keep. The Great Champion of Red Tree , William had stayed to challenge them, and when they refused to surrender he’d triggered the weapon killing them all, himself included.

At least most of the grasses and weeds survived, but there was still a charred circle where the one pilot had tripped the self destruct charges on his shuttle after the Fargone supplied neutron bomb killed them all. The wreckage had been cleared, but the locals took up bringing stones to the scorch mark and making a cairn. It was growing to be a memorial to both William and the battle. Lee approved and found a stone she could lift and lugged it to the pile. That didn’t go unnoticed by the Derf. The Mothers said nothing either way, content to let the people follow their feelings.

The other three shuttles had been moved out of the way, lined up neatly further from the Keep, and all the dead soldiers buried. A crew was systematically felling the dead trees, saving the main trunks for lumber, and planting replacements that would take years to mature.

Gordon asked and was granted to recover the shuttles to the Retribution and Sharp Claws to be externally grappled and taken on their expedition. They only had room inside for human crews, but that was fine, a majority of their personnel were human.

As their departure date approached there was a steady stream of news people and academics asking to go along. The news people seemed to be of an opinion that they couldn’t operate  a video camera competently. The academics all seemed to be of obscure disciplines unrelated to any need they had as an expedition. They’d have welcomed a really good linguist or an historian dealing with the modern space era, but none volunteered. None of either group offered anyone who could fill a ship board job day to day in addition to their specialty to be exercised when they finally arrived somewhere.

On literally the last day, their number two cook and missile magazine technician for the Retribution announced he had sudden remorse for his enlistment, and didn’t want to be isolated from society for several years. The number one cook privately informed Gordon that the real reason was the fellow had acquired a new and very serious girlfriend the last week he’d spent on Derfhome. He’d also blown his enlistment bonus on said Honey, so they pretty much had to write that off. No point in being vindictive about it. He’d find out nobody on Derfhome would give him credit or take his contract with the squandered debt hanging over his head.

This would have required a rush recruitment, but the Mothers also decided on the last day that there should be one of their number in the expedition to watch their interests and provide a voice of law. That of course fell to the third and youngest Mother. She was young, fit, strong, and too inexperienced to be afraid. Best of all she’d come up through the kitchen. She could cook and they could easily teach her to sort and move missiles under way. They’d hoped she’d serve on their own Sharp Claws, but Gordon dashed those hopes citing necessity.

When the two explorers joined them in Derfhome orbit they had everything needed stowed aboard. The ships were all in the same orbit well above Derfhome station. Notice was given departure would be the next day, several shuttle lifts being needed to lift all the crew to the new fleet. That night there was much serious partying, and tearful sayings of goodbye. Particularly heartfelt weeping by several bar owners and restaurantuers.

Late the next day everyone was aboard. For a miracle nobody was absent and unaccounted for. The command ship, the High Hopes, had all five bridges tied in a tight little com net, nobody having a full tenth of a second lag to his signals. The Roadrunner grappled empty.

“We are departing orbit first,” Gordon announced, “with The Champion William to follow, then Murphy’s Law, and the Retribution. Sharp Claws will bring up the rear. That will be our normal order unless we find some reason to alter it. In deep space, beyond the frontier, we may send in the Sharp Claws first, as the fastest most nimble armed ship, before entering as a group. Unless I am really paranoid about a system, in which case I may even send in the fast courier Roadrunner, which would normally be carried grappled and unmanned on the Murphy’s Law. It is unarmed, but nothing here can touch it for speed.”

“We shall transition in sequence this first jump to a known system, Survey System 2723. It has no particular navigational hazards. We’ll go with thirty second intervals, spaced a hundred kilometers laterally. After comparing notes and transit clock settings we’ll jump to our last surveyed point, Survey System 2754. It has a gas giant and a few minor navigational hazards to anyone going deep in system. However, we shall transit the fringe and exit to our first uncharted system.”

“That will be our first exercise in coordinated jumps. We’ll do so with the same physical spread for safety during training, but making every effort to exit and arrive within the microsecond of each other. Eventually I expect us to have the capability to jump together within a kilometer of each other, even if for some reason one or more of us has a speed differential. Emerging together as one radiant point in a new system masks our numbers and size. The military does this all the time, there is no reason we can’t do so with the same nine nines probability of arrival a standard jump demands. I am pinging your clock and starting our run. See you on the other side.”

“The military does it two ships at a time and counts it a damn hot piece of piloting!” The navigator Parsimony Cho noted to his Captain Precocious Henry. “Does he really intend to have all five of us jump in a bloody fur ball together to show off to any natives we meet?”

“I doubt it Mr. Cho,” he said amused. “If I read our Commander right, I expect after we have the trick of five down, he’ll cut the Roadrunner loose and make us jump with it overtaking us a few hundred kilometers per second off our group speed so it sprints ahead on transition.”

“I suppose that’s why God and the Admiralty gave us three clocks,” he said weakly.

“Indeed, look sharply here! Our turn coming up and we don’t want to muff the easy one, do we?”

“No Sir! I’ll do us proud or dead,” the navigator promised.

* * *

Survey System 2723 hadn’t seen a ship emerge in twelve years. There was nothing of interest there, no rocky planets worth mining, no need to get fuel from its minor gas giant, no sensors left to watch the system, since it was a gateway to nothing interesting. Six bursts of mixed radiation marred it’s tranquility at regular intervals. The ships formed up in a parallel line, turned slightly and accelerated for an unremarkable portion of the sky, and disappeared together this time.

* * *

The fleet appeared in Survey System 2754 in one microburst of particles along a line. If anyone had been here since the original survey it wasn’t noted on the latest chart file. One clock of one ship disagreed with the count on emergence. Not a full microsecond by any means, but enough to wonder why. They took the opportunity to replace it rather than worry about why. They had a complete replacement set if need be, clocks were life and death.

“It shall be our habit, upon emerging in a new uncharted system, to coast dead quiet and inertial, simply listening for at least a quarter hour. Making every effort to catalog planets and radio sources.  This is another reason to make a close entry. We can communicate by com laser instead broadcast. If we encounter immediate hostile action we are all of course free to maneuver and engage in any manner necessary to our vessel’s survival.”

“If we should emerge in a system with an obvious civilization, especially radiating from different points in the system, not just one planetary body, then we’ll listen and record, and formulate a response. Likely we’d send Sharp Claws forward in system and try to establish communications. We might disperse somewhat physically, High Hopes and Retribution pairing off and taking some distance from The Champion William  and Murphy’s Law.

“Would you entertain a suggestion?” Bodacious Williams, XO of Murphy’s Law asked.

“Anytime and welcome,” Gordon offered.

“When we transition into a new system I think you should have two pilots strapped in the Roadrunner, ready to ungrapple and head back the way we entered. If we find a major outpost or inhabited planet it will remove any temptation to try to capture or silence us to keep us from reporting home. They will see the cat is out of the bag already, and have to deal with us on that basis.”

“An excellent safety measure. Captain Henry, make that your standard procedure for entry on the Murphy’s Law.”

Thor spoke up.”As we get deeper, make sure the Roadrunner navigation suite is updated with our most recent jumps, and at some point inventory and make sure they have food and supplies sufficient to take them all the way back to Derfhome too. I’d also suggest they do not demonstrate their full acceleration capacity unless it is needed to avoid interception.”

“Again, all good ideas, make it so please.”

Since the next system they entered would be new to their civilization, Captain Henry immediately ordered the new pilot of the Roadrunner to his command. Chance Ochocinco had previously served as number two on several fast couriers. He was delighted to step up to his own ship, and he had as number two the previous Captain Fat Ortega, who gave up the command of the heavy cruiser Quantum Queer to get his new berth. This was a measure of what people were willing to do to join the ‘Little Fleet’. Chance had no illusions that Fat didn’t have two decades of command experience on him, and he didn’t intent to waste that much expertise sitting next to him by being jealous of his authority. He intended to ask Fat’s opinion and recommendations at every turn.

“We shall enter a new system next jump, never seen through the eyes of any of our three races. I’d like to take the High Hopes in heavy, with Retribution and Murphy’s Law. If you do not see Roadrunner coming back out within a half hour, then I’d like The Champion William, and Sharp Claws to jump in together. We’ll pair up like this, practicing jumping in together in different combinations until everyone is comfortable. If you have any objections to your jump mate speak up. I will not force a movement against the Master’s will if he feels his vessel at risk.”

Each reported in turn they were good to go. They were on their jump line, and Sharp Claws and  The Champion William throttled back to allow the other three ahead.

“Tighten up, we shall jump at 1300+.6 hour to fourteen zeroes on my clock. That’s the smallest interval of our clock and we should have the meter per second differential inside single digits when we go. Double check your settings with two different officers, because if you get left behind the tidal stresses will kill your ship,” he reminded them.

At 1300.6 they ceased to exist by all appearances to the two left behind.

3rd Chapter next April boook

Chapter 3

 

Their  shuttle was a Mitsubishi, and April was surprised to see it looked old. She was accustomed to most things around her looking new, until she expected it without a second thought. Something like a landing shuttle tended to become obsolete before it wore out. It would be cut up and scrapped and the stuff like electronics sent to be hand disassembled for gold and copper, and then the assemblies shredded to an almost confetti fine consistency for recovery.

Their war with North America was a couple years back, but it was probably still forcing extended service from older shuttles. They had pretty well destroyed every small shop in North America that made the components like special tires and Buckey foam shapes. You could throw up an assembly building pretty fast, but getting all the pieces made again wasn’t near as easy. Europe, Russia and Japan had picked up what they could, but half the shuttles in service had been American. She’d helped remove a couple from service rather abruptly herself.

There were two staggered seats to a side, three rows deep, separated by a very narrow aisle. The head was on the left, straight in from the lock, and extra space between the right hand seats and the front bulkhead was the entry from the lock. It made the front right seats the most luxurious, uncrowded with extra foot room, something Gunny appreciated.

Gunny picked the first row aisle seat and planted himself in it, isolating April against the port, but leaving her first access to the lock, not that it meant very much with no pressure suits. Jeff and Heather sat behind, Jeff giving Heather the port seat when asked. Barak took the front port seat on the other side of the aisle. He was looking around with a dubious expression that said he felt the vessel belonged in a museum with stage coaches and steam locomotives.

After she fastened her carry on by her seat she came back up and looked for a manufacturer’s tag near the lock. It wasn’t in the entry, but beside the hatch to the flight deck. Instead of a peel and stick plastic card it was an aluminum plate, riveted to the bulkhead, with the model / date / build all stamped in the blanks. The numbers were placed carefully, but still crooked enough you could tell they’d been done with a hand held stamp and hammer, not a machine engraver.

The vessel was two years older than April. In space ships that was ancient. There was a clean spot on the bulkhead where an older intercom to the flight crew had been removed. The greenish phosphate covering was worn away next to it, where a thousand times a hand had braced there to press the call bar, and the holes were filled in by putting new rivets in them. Above that patch was a new intercom with a twenty five centimeter screen and no switches or visible speaker grill, just the tiny circle of a camera lens, and an audio jack. It displayed a virtual call button in one corner. The crew left it defaulted to off, not sharing a view of the flight stations.

There were shiny spots where the anodizing was worn off around the hatch collar, because a hand or a foot always went to one spot coming through the hatch. Recessed in the hatch ribbing was a small stick on white board, and it had dates and initials for the last time the seal was replaced, or the hinges lubricated and checked for free play.

About a year ago C.J. had written: Last service – retiring, and then after initialing it drew not a smiley face, but a little devil with horns. The three entries after that in a different hand were attributed to D.M., and the center one had a few Japanese characters. April assumed there were more permanent records somewhere, but it was interesting.

The acceleration couch she returned to had seen better days too. The cushion edge where you slid on and off was slumped, and didn’t spring back to its full shape. The plastic caps to the arm rests had the texture worn off until it was shiny. Nothing was unserviceable, and nothing was dirty, but at a glance you knew it wasn’t new, like looking in the door of a ten year old ground car. It also lacked any trace of the distinctive smell of a new ground car or spaceship.

A group of three men were at the lock,  so April sat back in her seat to clear the narrow aisle. It felt weird now, to not have the frame of a Singh acceleration compensator close overhead when on the couch. That made her wonder if Jeff had a timeline to sell them for commercial shuttles. She’d have to ask him.

The first fellow in the lock was young with close cut hair and dark spex. He was dressed in belted Khaki pants and a golf shirt. He wore Earthie style cross-trainer shoes, rather than the lighter more flexible versions station dwellers would favor. You couldn’t see his eye movements, but from how he held his head he was scanning the passenger compartment to the back corners. The fellow behind him was older and not typical. He was skinny with long hair formed in a loose braid with loose bits sticking out all messy, bare arms, which was heavily frowned upon in North America now as well as Tonga, and they were covered in bright tattoos, a double social no-no. The man behind him was a clone of the first.

“Excuse me, would you please clear this front row? He said to April and Gunny. I’d like to put my man right by the lock and sit beside him for security purposes.”

“That’s why she’s in that seat,” Gunny informed him. “I’m her security.”

The fellow’s mouth scowled, but made a silent sign to the rearmost, and they turned and went back outside.

“Wow, does that mean they aren’t going to fly if he can’t sit here?” April asked.

“Nah, they are going to go ask the airline to assign seats and force us in the back corner. I’m pretty sure ‘first come first served’ is a hard set company policy, and they will offer to sell them tickets for a later lift if they want to line up early and have the first choice of seats.”

Sure enough, ten minutes later they came back in, carefully didn’t look at Gunny, and went to the rear of the side opposite, putting their charge in the rear port seat. One sat beside him and one in front. The young guys seemed unhappy, but the tattooed man was unruffled.

They acquired an obvious beam dog, who looked horribly hung over, a very well dressed Japanese couple, and a fellow festooned with photo gear wearing a vest with more pockets than it seemed likely he could own enough junk to fill. They were full up, so the photographer took the last seat next to the security guy in the middle row.

In the hushed cabin, you could hear the body guard speak to him. “Our client would appreciate if you refrain from photographing him.”

“That might be a problem, if I knew who the bloody hell he is, Jack.” The fellow scoffed.

“He’s Amos, lead singer for The Ancient Astronauts.” The security man obviously didn’t believe he was unaware of that.

“Oh, then if he’s a public figure, you’re damn silly to think you can say he’s off limits, but I’m not a paparazzi , I won’t waste my battery charge on him. I think my kid listens to them, useless noise as far as I’m concerned.” That pretty much ended any friendly chit chat.

The flight crew came in, an Oriental lady, and a surprisingly small blonde Caucasian man. He had a FedEx hard shell pack under one elbow like a lunch box, plastered with all sorts of blue and green safety color biohazard stickers and not even the normal orange expedited stickers, but the special square stickers instead, that said HOT in big letters on a hot pink background. Somebody paid a fortune to lift that if it was hand delivered to ride in the flight cabin. Just in case you didn’t get the message, it was sealed by a crimped steel band around the whole box, instead of the usual plastic cable tie in the lock loops.

They got things sorted out up front, stowed the hot freight away somewhere, and the number two pilot, the Scandinavian, came back to the hatch and hung on the collar looking them over.

“Jefferson Singh?” he inquired.

“That’s me,” Jeff said waving. The fellow looked at Jeff hard, like he might be joking.

“You are listed on the manifest as a licensed lander pilot. Is that correct?”

“Yes, and my friend April here is an apprentice going for the same ticket.”

“What type are you qualified on?”

“Only for our own first of class shuttle, Dionysus’ Chariot.”

“Your own? You mean it is a Home ported vessel?”

“That too, but we and Ms. Anderson here with us, are the owners also.”

“I always like to know if we have any qualified people flying with us. You aren’t rated for a Mitsubishi D body then?”

“Not at all. I don’t even know what your board looks like. Our ship can do aerobraking like a D body, but we’re able to do powered vertical landings. April and I are both rated for orbit to orbit too.”

“Indeed,” That got a high lifted eyebrow. “Welcome aboard,” he said, which was safe enough and polite. He retreated to the flight cabin and dogged the hatch closed.

“We look too young to him,” Jeff said, not upset, but certain.

“They’re Earth based even if they are spacers,” April pointed out. “There’s still some Earth Think clinging there.” Jeff just nodded agreement.

The lift was normal to the point of boring, the old shuttle worn, but just fine in every mechanical particular that mattered.

First chapter of a sequel for “Family Law”

 Family Business

 

by

Mackey Chandler

A “Family Law” Novel

 

 

Chapter 1

 

 

It wasn’t like Fargone to be bureaucratic. They prided themselves on independence so it seemed unlikely the United States of North America or any other Earth power was pressuring them to not sell military supplies to Derf. The Derf had won the recent war, so it wasn’t a matter of not wanting to re-arm the defeated underdog and stir up new hostilities.

The missiles Gordon wanted to buy were no secret from him. He’d been the one to sell them the copies they used to reverse engineer them. Indeed he still had magazines over half full of the X head ship to ship missiles. They’d been very frugal with them during the war. He’d like to replace them, and alter the load out that was standard on the captured USNA ships. He really had no use for ground attack nukes. He hoped never to use one, much less the majority load out the North Americans favored.

On the other hand they were going deep on a voyage of exploration. Deep as in years away from Human or Derf society. So deep they had no idea what they would find, and more to the point who. Man had found two aboriginal races, and two technological societies already, close to home, the Derf and the Hinth both far enough along to take up space flight easily. It seemed likely sooner or later they’d find one who had progressed to space on their own. How friendly or territorial they might be was impossible to guess. But he wanted to be prepared if they tried to blow his dainty little butt off on sight.

In honesty he was irritated. Near a ton and a half of irritated carnivore with four inch gut rippers on his middle arms should have been radiating intimidation. Instead his personality was such that he got quieter and less visibly agitated the more upset he got. When he got to statue-like immobility it would be a very good time to try to defuse the situation. He wasn’t near that, yet.

His daughter Lee was also pissed. She was a loose cannon liable to say anything to the Fargone military commander they were going to meet. She was precocious, utterly fearless, which is easy to do at her age, but a cunning, calculating fearless instead of the usual teen inability to imagine her own death. At fourteen she was scarily able to imagine six different paths to your death, smiling pleasantly at you, while you were busy making nice-nice and patting the sweet little Earth girl on the head.

Indeed, she had once tracked a young Derf intruder through the woods back on his clan territory in falling dusk and been prepared to defend him from the interloper. Over a metric ton of six armed aggressive carnivore, equipped with a 20mm assault rifle. The pushy young cub had given him a hard time, challenging his territory, until matters had almost come to a head. Lee had changed the balance of that confrontation by the simple expedient of clicking the safety off her pistol from slightly behind the fellow in the quiet woods. The ‘Oh shit’ look on the kid’s face was a precious memory.

He was Derf too after all, in fact he had fifty years and about four hundred kilo on the kid. It never seemed to have occurred to her he might not need her help. In fact he’d point out – the entire Red Tree/Human war was over this one human child, and almost all of it was fought without her direct help.

The United States of North America had very stupidly broken their treaty over disapproving of his adoption of Lee. One cranky old prejudiced judge had taken her into protective custody when they were visiting Earth. The Nation of Red Tree did not take kindly to having their children kidnapped. The three Mothers declared war without hesitation, though it had been over a thousand years since they’d made war. They’d have declared war on every nation and world of all three races for one of their own. It was a matter of principle.

Gordon looked down at his daughter with a smile. The snarling grin he got back was no more comforting for being on a fifty kilo girl of fourteen years, instead of his own fourteen hundred kilos and four meter height.

“We really don’t want to plunge right in with an adversarial conversation,” Gordon pleaded. “Let’s stay calm and ask some questions, and find out what the real problem is.”

“Does this mean I shouldn’t remind him that removal of obstructing officials by assassination is a perfectly normal procedure in Derf politics?”

“It might be well not to mention it first. And if you didn’t jam your thumb under your holster flap like you just did now, it would add an air of genteel sincerity.”

“Why are we seeing someone from Ministry of War?” Lee demanded. “This is just a commercial transaction. We’re not asking credit. You have a ridiculous huge cargo of silver in the hold. That’s the basis of their currency, and an absolute necessity for them to import since it is scarce in the Fargone system. So it’s not that our money is no good.”

Gordon broke into song…”And we don’t care if your money’s no good. Just take what you want, and leave the rest. But they should never, have taken, the very best…”

“What’s that?”

“A song about an old war in North America. Money offered in war time is often worthless.”

“How can money be worthless?” Lee asked, scrunching her nose up.

“When it’s paper certificates and they won’t redeem it in metal,” Gordon explained.

“You’d be a fool to take them then.”

“Yes, but he told them to take what they wanted, probably his food, because otherwise they’d probably just shoot him dead and steal it anyway.”

“Do you think they know we are rich, so they’ll try to run up the price?”

“No, we’d still be meeting with the munitions manufacturer, or him and a Finance Minister. No, I’m afraid whatever the problem is, it will be political in nature.”

“You think they may regret selling you the three radiation enhanced weapons back in the war?”

“I doubt it, they haven’t made any noises about buying back the two we haven’t used.”

“I’m stumped then. I’m just going to sit back and listen for awhile, and try to hear how he sounds as much as what he says. You can try to pry it out of him better than me. You’re a hell of a lot more intimidating,” she assured him.

He wasn’t so sure of that. The official meeting them would know Lee was here because she owned two thirds of the Deep Space Explorer High Hopes, which was the lead vessel in their exploration fleet. She also owned the other DSE, Champion William, their escort the Heavy Cruiser Retribution, and a mixed bag of shuttles and fuel scoopers – outright. The Mothers of Red Tree had decided to send the destroyer Sharp Claws along in exchange for a share in potential discoveries.

The High Hopes was the only ship not a war capture. It was the originally North American flagged ship, in which Gordon and Lee had gone exploring with Lee’s parents. That had ended in both triumph and tragedy. They’d discovered a class A world, which left them filthy rich, but her parents had died doing a survey of the new world, Providence.

The finder’s fees and shares on a class A world where men could stand bare faced meant they never had to worry about money for even extravagant living, but April, born to ship life, tired of planets quickly. In her opinion a slow global expansion risked running up against another star faring race who had been more aggressively exploring deep, and leaving them with a foreshortened frontier, and the loss of a lot of prime real estate. Her recruits agreed, and hoped to come back filthy rich on ship shares.

If they did run into somebody out there, it seemed likely they’d be more polite to a small fleet than a single ship. Besides wanting his magazines full of the higher performance ship to ship weapons, Gordon wanted the DSEs fitted with an entire extra reactor and a greaser – a gamma ray laser that had much higher performance than mundane petawatt optical lasers. They both already had an externally mounted, extremely high velocity ‘peashooters’ a weapon that very accurately threw a rice grain sized projectile at a substantial  fraction of the speed of light. One such pellet had left an Earth orbital fort an expanding cloud of plasma during the war.

The cab they were riding in left the fast left lanes and drifted down a exit ramp into the heart of the Fargone government campus. Nobody stopped them to check identities or inspect the vehicle. It was their own Fargone agency limo, and it would have never been allowed down the ramp if they didn’t have business here.

The open cart that they transferred to however had a driver. He gave them a gracious bow and indicated it was his pleasure to take them to Admiral Hawking, the head of Fargone Space Forces. The driver’s name tag indicated he was Propensity Jones, the Fargoers being given to a different custom in names.

At least they’d be dealing with somebody who understood what they were doing, and nobody suggested Lee hand over her pistol. As for Gordon, he was much harder to disarm. Even without the ritual ax in his belt, a Derf could make his way through most human building by creating expedient doorways.

The cart took them right to the Admiral’s door, and they were not trifled with by any Earth games such as making them wait to show status. The Admiral  stood to greet them, letting them see he wore canvas cargo shorts under what Gordon would have called a golf shirt. Fargoers were not much given to symbols of authority. He wore a medallion of rank around his neck on a stout chain, and would have expected quick obedience and respect if he were otherwise buck naked.

“Miss Anderson, Mr. Gordon,” he bowed as deeply as their driver had. He addressed and looked at Lee first, so he knew what the deal was there, and that was one less thing they could bullshit him. His name plate on his desk said Admiral Serendipity Duvochek Hawking. That was a very favored name for both sexes on Fargone.

Laying on his desk was a hammer, the square head of which was about three kilo of unpolished steel. The thick handle was carved of a dark native wood to be grippy, and there was a rawhide lanyard looped in the end and braided for a half meter. It was Fargone’s second highest military award. You had to be not only a marvelous bad ass and scary vortex of unlimited violence to get the first award, but you had to die winning it too, so they tended to be found hang on the mantles of clan houses.

“It is my custom to have a break for coffee and a few snacks about this hour of the morning,” Serendipity explained. “Would you join me in a cup and help me keep my blood sugar up and retain my good humor this morning?”

Gordon allowed he’d take a cup with a little honey or brandy. Lee suggested a mug with a shot of bourbon would be welcome. If serving alcohol to a fourteen year old at ten in the morning bothered him at all, he never let a twitch or hesitation cross his face. Maybe that was normal here for all she knew. It would give an Earthie all sorts of problems, their society going increasingly Puritanical. The age to buy alcohol in North America had been twenty-four for some time now.

“I can see written on your faces that you are unhappy Fargone put a roadblock in your supply plans. We are not intransient on it, or we wouldn’t be meeting here to discuss it.”

“Not a roadblock,” Gordon assured him. “A speed bump at most. We have plenty of copies of the ship to ship weapons, and we’ll simply go to New Japan to have them copied. If anything New Japan is ahead of Fargone on rapid prototyping and fabrication. We had major battle damage repaired there in four days during the war. Fargone may have the edge at present in actually improving on the design, but we can forego that to get what we need. In the future we won’t be sharing captured designs with Fargone since you don’t show reciprocity, so I expect the edge on improvements will go over to New Japan as they are the opener more accommodating society. Which is ironic given their reputation for being the more closed xenophobic society.”

“Yet such a supply switch would be an unnecessary delay. You’d have to keep your crews on hold drawing salary for another six weeks or so plus transit time.”

“Better that, than to let your supposed allies start managing you,” Lee assured him. “As to expense, we have the entire fifteen percent take on the leases and development rights and outright sales of the best class A planet to hit the economy in a decade, equal to something over five percent of your GDP right now and accelerating. In addition we have unusually large private land holdings for a prize crew, and could sell mineral leases or tracts of land to raise considerable capital. So we can carry our crews indefinitely without it being any particular burden.”

“You know Fargone has always followed a course of slow and cautious development,” the Admiral reminded them. “We don’t mean to get into a pissing contest with outside powers, especially fast growing ones, but we have only seen public releases about what your intention is in mounting this expedition. We have legitimate concerns that you will be representing three races and many cultures, including Fargone, to anyone you meet.”

“We hadn’t intended to storm through the Beyond like Cortez through the Americas,” Gordon assured him. “We are in it for the loot, but only what is laying about unclaimed. If we run into any intelligences you may assume we’ll treat them with respect. Pillage and burn, or bombard  and subjugate, wasn’t on our play card. It is Lee’s opinion our global expansion by its nature gets slower as it has greater surface area. If there is another aggressive expander out there they will meet us far closer than half way, and rightfully claim all the territory they bypassed in detail, and hold it reserved for their exploitation.”

“But how shall you present yourselves if you must negotiate with a new civilization, particularly a technological one?”

“As what we are, a family business,” Lee asserted. “If they desire political entities with which to seek treaties and relationships, then they will have to seek them out or request they send an emissary. We on the other hand can offer trade.”

“These theoretical aliens may not believe an armed fleet represents a family enterprise.”

“I think you are the one having trouble believing we are a small commercial venture. These aliens may not have much more use for governments than I do,” Lee said bluntly.

“If you mean you will only supply us if we put an official government commander in charge of our expedition, so it is not a private enterprise, then let me make it clear. Over my dead body,” Gordon said.

“No, no. I can see where you’d think that was the direction I was headed. Actually what we had in mind was far more moderate. We’d like to send a ship along with you.”

Gordon and Lee looked at each other. That wasn’t anything they’d anticipated at all.

“Not in a command oversight position?” Gordon asked.

“As an observer, subject to your overall command, except as any commander is responsible for his vessel both as to its survival and to refuse any orders he finds illegal or morally reprehensible.”

“Can your active duty military legally draw crew shares on discoveries?” Lee asked.

“That is something I have the power to regulate in ten minutes with my signature. Do you want them to have shares, or depend completely on Fargone to compensate them?”

“I think it is unreasonable to ask them, even if they are genuine volunteers, to serve elbow by elbow with others who may end up Billionaires, or Trillionaires, risking their lives and being gone from civilization for some indefinite time, but years certainly. If we even find one class A world, it hardly matters if the bonus is split two-hundred fifty ways or three-hundred.”

“I agree,” Gordon jumped in. “If there is not resentment going in there may be as they think on the matter and feel the burden of the voyage. I don’t want partners with conflicted feeling, who may decide they are being used badly.”

“So this is something you’d consider?” Serendipity asked.

“What kind of ship?” Lee asked, suspiciously.

“What would you have us send?”

“The baddest big assed heavy cruiser you have in service, and give the commander authority to pick his volunteers from your whole navy, and set anybody he doesn’t want on the beach without explanation. A fast courier grappled externally would be welcome too. I rode one of those and was impressed.”

“And send one high ranking civilian official of your government, so it isn’t just military minded,” Gordon added.

“All that is what we wanted and more,” Serendipity assured them. “I’ll see to it you have access to anything you wish to buy.”

“Next time, you’d get less suspicion, and easier cooperation, if you go straight to asking that we talk, before laying out what we saw as threats and obstruction,” Lee told him.

“All this originated above me, but I’ll pass that thought on to the architects of our government,” Serendipity promised.

New snippet of 5th April book

Chapter 2

 

“I’m thinking on what Lin told us yesterday,” April told Heather. “We’re getting none of that picture about what life is like on Earth from the news agencies. How do we know what’s happening on the street level? Sometimes I get hints about it from reports of ‘wrecker’ busting windows or shooting down electric wires. There was a whole bunch of fires in Baltimore a few months ago and none of the explanations in the news made any sense. I think it was all arson and they just wouldn’t say it. And last year there were way more forest fires than usual, but the weather was actually better, so there should have been less. Also the pattern seemed to be that a lot of those fires threatened well to do areas with expensive homes. But it’s hard to tell what is sabotage and what is coincidence.”

“Jeff has Eddie working on creating an intelligence network now. Tell them you want some hard information on how the average person is coping with shortages and regulations. I know a lot of the crop fires last year were set, after the cops destroyed guerilla gardens people hid out in the woods. If they can’t grow food they get pissed off and figure if they can’t grow it, they’ll keep the big industrial farms from growing it too. It’s just way too easy to drive by a field and throw something out the car window that will sit a couple days and then ignite and set the field on fire. You watch the weather report, pick a dry stretch and toss it to the upwind side, and it’s going to burn a lot of grain before they can stop it. They promised they’d guard the fields this year, but there are just too many fields and not enough cops. There wouldn’t be enough people to guard crops if they called the whole army out to sit and watch the fields,” Heather said.

“You’re right, I’ll ask Jeff and Eddie to pass that along to their people. They don’t need to spend anything to pursue it, just be observant when they are gathering other intelligence.”

* * *

“You seemed so dubious when I told you we’d teach you to swim back home,” April reminded Barak. “I’m glad you like snorkeling so much. It’s really pretty in the lagoon isn’t it?”

“It’s prettier than I ever imagined Earth could be from photos. And Tara has been talking to me about diving other places. He said the reefs in other locations are just as nice, but sometimes completely different coral and fish. He’s dived in ship wrecks and places where there are old buildings underwater. He was even telling me people dive in underwater caves, but he hasn’t tried that.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to be all closed in like that underwater.”

“It’s not much different than being in a pressure suit,” Barak said with a shrug. “He’s used a SCUBA outfit with a tank, but says a lot of folks now use rebreathers that let you stay down a lot longer. I figure Jeff could build me a rebreather that uses one of his miniature power sources. It could generate oxygen from the water, and you could stay down as long as you want. I just have to figure out how you could sleep wearing it.”

“I’ve been stuck in a p-suit for sixteen hours,” April remembered. “You can sleep in a regular p-suit, but I sure wouldn’t do it for fun. After that long you are so happy to wash, and scratch, and eat something you don’t have to suck through a tube, that you don’t want to ever crawl in one again. I’d say you’d need a helmet instead of a mouth piece for a start. And if you have a helmet it has to have some sort of collar and shoulder yoke to attach to. I’m not sure you wouldn’t just be better off with a full suit. What happens when your skin is in salt water for hours and hours? It has to be irritating.”

“You probably look like a big prune,” Barak guessed. “I’ll ask a bunch of people what works and what has been tried before. Thanks for all the ideas.”

“Just be safe. Nobody begrudges you having fun, but we’d feel terrible if you hurt yourself trying something reckless.” She reached across and ruffled his hair playfully.

“Thanks April. I’ll try not to be stupid,” he vowed, and for some reason blushed furiously.

* * *

“We need to catch the tide running outbound in the channel to clear the reef toward evening. If you want one last swim or any souvenirs, now is your last chance to get them,” Lin told them at breakfast. “I think you all know, but just to remind you, no coral, even broken old pieces off the beach, and no shells that still have the mollusk inside, or any on the endangered list, even if it was cast up on the beach and rotting. If you have anything like that it may be confiscated in Tonga and you could be fined, even if they can tell it isn’t from their waters.”

“How much time between when we dock in Tonga and our shuttle lifts?” Barak asked.

“We should arrive midmorning the day before your shuttle flight,” Lin said. “I wouldn’t suggest arriving the same day and trying to rush to the airport. If there are any complications you want the airline and officials to be able to reach you. We have reservations at a decent little hotel close to the space side of the field. If they can’t get ahold of you and confirm you are in the area they start to worry they are going to have an empty seat. I know you guys wouldn’t argue, but a lot of people will give them a hard time if they charge them for a reserved seat that goes empty. Some folks would try to do a chargeback and tie their money up. Just having a contact at a nearby hotel is reassuring to them.”

“Do you think maybe we can walk around near the hotel after we check in? Don’t forget, I’ve never been in an Earth city. The only dry land I’ve been on is the atoll, when Gunny and I set up his telescope. I’d like to see some buildings and people like in a video.”

“The area around the hotel is nice. If you stay in the area and don’t go off in the less desirable parts of town you can do that, but I want you to take my man Tara along. April, could you send  Gunny along too? None of us can carry weapons on Tonga, but there is safety in a group, and both of them look formidable.”

“Yeah, I want to go too, so Gunny is a given. That makes four of us so we should be fine.”

Lin paused just long enough he must be having second thoughts, but he just nodded. “I might even find time to come along myself. There’s an open market no more than two hundred meters from the hotel, and they have all sorts of hand crafts and things. I think you’d find it interesting, even if you don’t buy anything.”

* * *

The hotel room wasn’t that luxurious, although it was a suite with a large L shaped living room that had a balcony along one leg. The rooms seemed huge to satellite dwellers, and their boat, while big for a boat, had nothing on a regular Earthie building for size. Barak in particular had never been in an Earth hotel, so when he became concerned that his bag didn’t show up they had to explain to him that he had his own room down the hall he’d share with Tara, where he’d find his bag, and all seven of them would not be sharing these rooms to sleep. There was no mint on the pillow, but there was a restaurant and a very nice small pool inside. After having the whole wide lagoon to themselves it had little appeal.

Tara and Lin both knew Tonga fairly well. They didn’t argue with Barak’s question about seeking lunch outside the hotel. The poor kid was pacing he was so anxious to go. But in the end all of them went, a mob that April could tell Lin was not entirely happy about.

The street was crowded, the more so since it was near midday and the Tongans tend to eat a heavy lunch and take a nap from the heat of the day, so a lot of people were on break from their work. Most of the crowd looked to be locals, most in western clothing, but a few in the wrapped skirt. There were few hats despite the fierce sun, and nobody was bare chested like they would have been some other tropical countries.

There were a few street vendors selling food you could eat standing, but Lin insisted they go to a sit down restaurant. The place he pointed out was a roofed over slab with open sides, and the cooking area visible. It smelled wonderful. They picked a table next to the street to watch all the activity, and a young woman brought them bottled water and menus.

After much indecision Barak got grilled chicken, which was well charred on the edges, strongly marinated in both lime and something sweet. With that he got a sweet taro cake in coconut milk and a cold chopped fruit salad, some chunks of which he couldn’t identify. It was good but the drink appealed to him better than any of it, a slurry of coconut and watermelon.

Everybody got the chicken but Gunny, who went with a very un-Tongan pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw. But he ordered the local drink after everybody raved on it.

The market was jammed, the stalls each seller was allotted unusually small. They made up for this by displaying their goods vertically. There were carvings that didn’t impress anyone, some local wraps for men that Lin and Taro both bought, and a lot of western clothing that looked used. Some of it well used.

Gunny however, found a carver tucked in a corner who had much different wares. He caught back up to them with an object wrapped in paper, but shaped like a canoe paddle. The way he held it said it was heavy.

“It’s a Tongan war club,” Gunny said to Jeff’s raised eyebrow. “It feels heavier than aluminum, and it has some really good inlay work in it. I’ll show it to you back in our rooms.”

There were local fruits and vegetables, in stunning variety, the colors making April take some pictures with her pad, after buying some fruit she’d take back to their rooms. If any objected to her photography they didn’t say anything after she’d spent some money.

Some vendors had little bottles of vanilla, the fancy bottles seeming to be more important to the tourists than the vanilla itself.

There were a couple people selling elaborate panels of bamboo cut and arranged in geometric patterns. They’d have one full sized, as a backdrop to their stall, and a number of other designs rendered in miniature.

April pictured a section of that for her new cubic, but decided it was too big an investment to lift to orbit for something she’d get tired of eventually and want to change. If it was removed after awhile it would be big to have to store somewhere. But then they found  some people making mats called tapas, of the inner bark of the mulberry, dyed and patterned beautifully. That April could see in her new home. There were smaller ones, no bigger than a place mat, some with bright colors she suspected were for the tourist trade. The bigger ones tended to black and white and shades of brown.

One old man had a variety, but behind him was a mat standing rolled up vertically, only the one edge pulled open to show the pattern. It was a checkerboard of squares, three patterns repeating in a sequence April couldn’t quite figure out. One a swirl inside a border, one a pattern that reminded April of a Navaho rug she’d seen, and the last a solid pattern of dark and light parallelograms. It was of very thin fibers tightly woven and very fine.

April stood looking at it quite a long time, thinking. The old fellow could see where her eyes were going but pretended indifference, sipping on a cup of something. “Sir, is that rolled up tapa for sale, or do you just display it as an example of the art?” she finally asked.

He couldn’t hide the fact that pleased him. “It is lovely isn’t it? There aren’t many ladies who can do this level of work now, and there are a lot of hours invested in it. There are bigger tapas in the royal residence, and in the museums, here and on Samoa, but few commercially available even this big these days.”

“May one ask what you’d consider a fair exchange for it?”

“Let me think on that,” he countered, like he didn’t know to the centum. “You are a spacer aren’t you? You’d pay a lot just to lift it to your home.”

“I am. I already considered that. Some of my friends and I have been down to relax and enjoy the open spaces and the sun. We spent some days on an unpopulated atoll and swam and dove. We are from Home.”

“Ah, your country has a special relationship with Tonga. I understand most of the freight lifting from here goes to Home. That’s why we have so many Japanese lately, though I have to say we seem to get along with them better than the Chinese. We kicked most of them out in my grandfather’s time.”

“The Japanese built our habitat,” April told him. “My father manages the physical structure for them. But I am also a resident of Central on the moon, and if we can only get it sorted out to your King’s satisfaction, we’ll have Tongan residents there too.”

“Are you a subject of the new Queen that we hear about on the moon? I was shocked to hear of a new monarchy. Earth seems to be discarding their royalty, which we Tongans are not ready to do. They may not be perfect, but we see them as stable, unlike the mob rule some places.”

“She hasn’t used the word queen in my hearing, but the young lady in the teal shirt is the sovereign of who you speak. The young man with her and I and are close friends, business associates, and by her word, her peers.” She laid it on thick, hoping it helped the price if he was fond of royalty. She didn’t mention the idea had not thrilled her, indeed she was upset Heather didn’t drop the sovereignty after she felt it had served its purpose, and miffed she was Dame Lewis. She had a hard time accepting it at first, giving Heather a hard time.

“That’s good. Most of the mats of this quality are owned by the royal family. I am happier knowing it would be preserved, and not allowed to deteriorate like it could in a common house.”

“I had in mind to put it on  my wall, with other fine art.”

“You might seek help from a museum archivist, to hang it so it doesn’t get bent and distorted over time.”

That was good that he was talking like she already owned it.

“My home is in half gravity, it will only weigh half as much as usual here, so that helps to preserve it too.”

He got the oddest amused look. “Don’t you fairly bounce off the ground if you weigh so little? I’m trying to imagine it, but it seems odd.”

“You do step differently, and dancing has a much wider range, but you learn to shuffle along quickly, and sleeping is much easier when it feels like you are floating on your back.”

“That must be a marvel. I doubt I’ll ever get up to experience it. If you think the tapa suitable for your home, I’d offer it to you at thirty thousand dollars USNA, or twenty eight thousand EuroMarks, and an introduction to your sovereign.”

“Sure I’d be happy to do that, I’m April Lewis, what is your name?”

“I’m Papahi Fetu Helu.”

“Heather?” April waved her over, and she came with Jeff following along. “Heather Anderson, this Papahi Feta Helu. He is aware of Central, and your declaring sovereignty, he asked to be introduced. We may do some business together. This is Jeff Singh also.”

“Mr. Helu, a pleasure,” Heather declared and offered her hand.

He hesitated and looked surprised, if not shocked. “That is permitted? We may not touch the King in Tonga.”

“We are of a different custom,” Heather assured him. “It is not offensive at all.”

“Thank you,” he took her hand like he might break it, and gave it a single gentle pump. “I am honored, and glad to see your family too,” he added, including April and Jeff in his glance.

“We were close long before she founded Central,” Jeff added smoothly. It was unusually social for Jeff.

“I could see that from your faces. You never look away long before you check to see where each other are,” he said, with obvious approval.

Well, I never knew I did that, the old boy is perceptive. April thought.

“I’d be happy to have the tapa in my home,” April assured him. “Dollars or EM it doesn’t matter. Which would you like?” she asked pulling her pad out. She liked it too much to dicker.

“Ah, well Tongans don’t use credit much,” he said regretfully, “Just the big resorts and airlines and such. We have pretty much a cash economy. I’d send you to a bank, but you might have trouble getting that much cash without arranging it well ahead of time.”

“Perhaps you’d accept this?” Jeff asked and handed him a gold Solar coin.

Papahi frowned, unsure what this strange object was, and then jerked like it burned his hand.

“Ah, I’d like to, but you must not be aware gold bullion and coins are forbidden to us on Tonga. We can own gold jewelry, but it is tightly regulated, and hard to find anything for less than double the cost of the metal, three times for small items like rings and earrings. I suggest you keep that in your pocket so some excessively law abiding person doesn’t report it,” he said, handing it back.

“I saw a jewelry store back a ways,” Jeff remembered. “Might the jeweler buy this so we could trade?”

“Yes, but it will get reported. And it may make my sale come to the attention of the authorities. Most of our business is cash for a reason,” he said.

“Oh, OK I understand,” Jeff said. Cluing up that there were tax issues. “I think I might have a solution. Barak, there is a fellow back a few stalls selling tools. Would you please go back and buy a center punch or a screw set, an awl or an ice pick, and a hammer?” He went over to Tara and had a few words and Tara took off back the way they’d come.

They stood chatting with the merchant about life on the island, and life on Home, finding plenty to talk about and unstrained. Barak got back first.

Jeff put the coin on top of a post marking the stall corner and picked a point in the plain area of sky on the front art work. A smart strike of the center punch left a conical indention with a raised rim. He switched to the awl and drove it in further and he wiggled it loose and struck it a few more times. When he had a bump on the reverse side he used the punch there, and switched back and forth until he had a hole through the coin, with a bevel leading into the hole on both faces. The gold was just displaced, not removed, so it retained its weight.

Tara got back while Jeff was finishing up, and handed Jeff a small package when he was done. Jeff removed a very thin gold necklace, about a half meter long. The ends had a lobster clasp and a thin jump ring on the other end to engage it.

The ring wouldn’t fit through the hole, so Jeff put the ring over the point of the awl. He pulled a small case of dental tape from his pocket and looped a double thickness through the same ring. Pushing the awl in the post to anchor it he pulled on the floss until the ring was bent oval shaped. It fit through the hole now.

Jeff, fished the chain through the hole, forced the awl in the jump ring to force it round again, fastened the chain closed, and offered it to the tapa merchant. “Would you take this gold chain and decorative pendant in trade Papahi? If you can trade it for double the spot price or more, it’s twenty-five grams, worth considerably more than you asked.”

“I believe you’d say, that’s a deal,” Papahi said, taking the ‘jewelry’, and hanging it out of sight under his shirt. “I just need to get a shipping address for Pilinsesi April, and I’ll package this up securely and send it along to you.”

Walking back to the hotel April asked Lin. “What did Mr. Helu call me back there? ”

“Pilinsesi? It means Princess. I’m not sure their titles of nobility translate across well, but he said it very seriously. I’m sure he meant it as an expression of respect.”

Heather held it in as well as she could. But every once in awhile April could hear a giggle escape back there. She ignored it.

A snippet of the next April book – title still undetermained.

Chapter 1

 

The sun baked all the way through, to the warm deck beneath her. April felt she might melt, and slide off the arch of the bow into the sea at any moment, like a pat of  butter on a hot roll. She was in serious danger of fully relaxing, physically and mentally. The latter being far more difficult of course. She’d been sleeping that deep dreamless sleep, from which she’d eased so subtly, she wasn’t aware of waking up. Nothing jolted her awake. Perhaps the steady breeze had shifted bearing a bit, or the rigging had whispered against the mast.

The tightly woven hat over her face had a pleasant scent when hot. She had never smelled a field of straw being cut, to know it’s richer form. The drift of fine salt spray, from the breakers outside the atoll, added a sharp note to the earthy odor. But the wind wasn’t blowing enough to make the ship roll, sheltered inside the ring of coral.

“Dummmm, dumm…dumm, dumm…dumm, dumm,” sounded low and ominously to her left. She should never have shown Jeff that stupid old movie. She refused to reward him by responding, but he must have sensed she was awake. When the strike came it was just above her hip on the left. Teeth far less savage than a Great White nipping her, right where he knew it tickled.

The first time he’d done it yesterday, she’d shrieked so loudly, the man on deck watch had run from the cockpit to see what was wrong. She wouldn’t give Jeff the satisfaction today.

“That’s a one-time funny joke, Jaws,” she said from under the hat. “Go away and find some other prey.”

“Heather got hungry and went below for a bite. I think I’ll have mine right here,” Jeff teased.

“I’m hungry too. Let’s go down and see what’s on the cold buffet.”

“You’re always hungry,” he accused. Which was pretty nearly true. He wasn’t gene mod, and didn’t eat near as much as April. “I’ll go the long way,” he declared. By the time April took her hat off and sat up, she just saw his feet disappearing over the edge of the deck, followed by a >sploosh < and a few drops of spray that managed to climb back this high. She got up, considered diving in herself, and just wasn’t in the mood. She just sauntered back along the rail of the ketch, on the narrow deck along the cabin, to the rear deck and sunken cockpit. Stepping down onto a bench that ran along the side behind the wheel.

Jeff’s wet footprints  said he’d beat her to the cockpit and companion way below, despite having to climb up from the platform lowered off the transom for swimmers. She went in their stateroom and rinsed off with fresh water, stowed her hat, and put on a pair of shorts. Her mom had always been a bit formal about behavior at the table, and April just couldn’t bring herself to sit and eat totally naked, French boat rules or no. Jeff had no such problem, he had just splashed his face and hair with fresh water, and was drying it with a towel when she caught up to him.

April got to the food first, lifting the clear cover on the chill table and taking a cold plate. There were some cold salads, bean salad and potato salad, a pea salad with diced tomatoes and nuts, egg salad and ham salad, a beef roast and a block of white cheddar. Jeff caught up with her and started making a cold beef sandwich with horseradish and a pile of sweet pickles. April got a plate full of chilled prawns, with a cup of creamy hot sauce to dip them, a big dip of the pea salad, and a glass of the iced coffee.

Heather was already at the table, with the ship’s owner and one of the crew, eating a sandwich of some sort of fish salad. Not of canned tuna, rather leftover from the grilled fish that had been supper last night, pleasantly smoky. April hadn’t caught it, so she wasn’t sure what it was, except tasty. Heather was looking at the big flat screen, turned around to face the small upper galley from the main lounge. The atoll was a crooked circle in the middle of the screen, with white trim a couple places where surf broke on it. The Tobbiko was a white comma, off center inside. So small it was hard to tell bow from stern. The water varied from pale blue to green turquoise, and fell off into deep dark water outside the atoll.

“I’ve been sitting, watching the waves,” Heather informed them. “They aren’t simple. They especially aren’t just parallel, driven by the wind. There are interference patterns, just like you see with a laser in different modes. I had the drone open up the angle of view, and you could see there is a pattern of waves from the northwest and a weaker one from the south that mix with the main pattern of wind driven ridges from the west. I wonder why? Can there be wind on different bearings, off pretty far away, and the waves from that reach way beyond the wind?”

The owner, Lin, looked at Heather surprised. “The old Polynesians, so long ago we’re talking open canoes, used to read the waves to navigate. The islands both interfere with waves coming from behind them, and reflect waves striking the side near to you. A big storm far over the horizon can also send big rollers through the whole pattern, just as you thought. But the interpretation of them is complex. I’m shocked you’d see the patterns so quickly, and you with no experience as a sailor.”

“Oh, I don’t understand them,” Heather quickly demurred. “And I have the advantage of a viewpoint from above they didn’t have. But I can see there are patterns. I’ve looked at quite a bit of ocean from an orbital perspective, looking for ships, and the patterns disappear when you back off the view that high. You’d have to look closely at a bunch of different locations to start to understand it at the level you’re talking about. Those old sailors were pretty smart.”

“They had incentive,” Lin agreed, “The ocean is big, and the islands they were looking for pretty small. They couldn’t move against wind or current as easily as we can, and if they missed their landfall they might starve in the open ocean, or at least never make it back to where they were hoping for, driven to a strange land.”

“A fate we seem to be avoiding, happily,” Jeff noted. He took a bite of roast beef, piled so high on his sandwich he had difficulty fitting it in his mouth. “This is so good,” he said after chewing awhile. “I’ve had vat grown beef. They try to pass it off as better than beef on the hoof. It has good flavor, I admit, but there is something about the texture that is too uniform. It’s weird to say, but might be better if they actually made it a little tougher,” he decided.

“If we grow our own beef at Central it will have to be vat raised,” Heather reminded him. “I can’t imagine having enough cubic to raise cattle. With grass, like wheat, you can stack  trays on conveyer racks, five or six layers deep, with lighting on the bottom of the trays above, high carbon dioxide levels, and grow it pretty efficiently. A cow is just too tall to layer. It isn’t the volume of rock you have to remove and seal, it’s the volume of air to fill it that would be extravagant.”

“When restaurants advertise beefsteak down here, they always stress it is tender,” April reminded them. “I bet they used the tenderest tissue, from the very best kind of cattle for that quality, to seed the vat. Maybe you should look into acquiring an inferior line, to give some of it a little more bite, for when you don’t eat it as a steak. My grandpa said he had some Argentine beef back, when he was in the USNA military, that had to be cooked to death, and still was pretty chewy. I bet it’s cheaper too,” she predicted.

“That’s a chuck roast,” the crewman Able informed them. “It runs around thirty dollars a kilo out of Australia. The same thing out of Japan costs four times as much. The filet mignon off the same animal tastes just like vat raised, but costs twice as much as the chuck, Australian or Japanese either one. The off the hoof filet is so much pricier than vat raised, just for the snob appeal. Rich people like to think they are gourmands, and know wine, even if they abuse their palate with hard liquor and smoke. They might be hard put to tell something is from grapes, but they will pay for prestige.”

“Well, I appreciate your cooking,” April assured him. “I don’t know enough to critique it, but if I had something I didn’t like, I wouldn’t choke it down to avoid hurting your feeling. So far everything you’ve sat in front of me has been good, even a few things I had my doubts about, until I tried them.” That visibly pleased Abe. Lin had added him to his crew from their new base in the Aci Castello marina on Sicily. He’d been chef at a nearby hotel, but the long hours in the kitchen, away from the sun, had turned something he enjoyed doing into a burden.

April and her friends had never seen the Tobbiko’s new home port. They might never, if the political climate was tense. Their space habitat nation, Home, recently removed itself from Low Earth Orbit, and took up station in a halo orbit, between the moon and the far Lagrange point, L2. They’d been attacked repeatedly since independence, by both the Earth Super Powers, and removed themselves from being a close easy target. Once relocated, they had announced no Earth power would be permitted to lift armed ships past L1 on the Earth side of the moon. The Earth powers were still sorting out their reactions to that announcement. April wondered how long it would be until one of them tried to test their resolve, and ability.

They’d made a water landing in the shuttle Dionysus’ Chariot to meet the ketch Tobbiko, waiting three days to do so, because their shuttle was heavily loaded, and they wanted very calm seas to unload, and transfer expensive cargo to the ketch. In the ship’s hold, down below right now, was a great deal of electronic chips, some specialized crystals that needed microgravity to form properly, and a number of drugs that benefited from the same environment. Those same products could have come down on returning supply shuttles from Home. However there were markets for these items, at well above normal prices, in several countries that embargoed trade with Home, including the two largest markets in the world, China, and the USNA. Jeff, and some of his associates, were happy to sell the items at a hefty markup, added for their skill in avoiding customs seizures.

Gunny and Barrack finally crawled out of their cabin. They had been up very late stargazing. It was funny that it was easier to view the heavens directly here, than Home. On Home they could see better, but it would be on a screen, remotely controlling a telescope outside in vacuum. There was a huge element of enjoyment that was missing, if you didn’t point the telescope at what you wanted to see, and focus it, peering in an eyepiece. Something near impossible to do in a pressure suit.

If you were going to view it remotely on a video screen, you might as well just take a feed off a professional telescope, that could see much more. There was more of those sort of fantastic images on the ‘net than anyone could sit and view. Looking at a speck of light in the sky and then aligning a scope on it, and seeing Saturn’s rings and the moons chasing around it real time, had a completely different immediacy and enjoyment, unrelated to image perfection.

Gunny made a face at the cold buffet for breakfast, and went to the tiny main deck galley. He waved Abe back to finish his own lunch when he started to get up. “I can scramble a couple eggs just fine, Abe.” But he actually scrambled half a dozen, and dumped a couple spoonfuls of salsa in them too. Barack made do with cold beef and hard boiled eggs, on a bed of pea salad. Good thing, because Gunny wasn’t sharing.

The cabin was cooled, but not too deep a chill. They wanted to be able to go in and out without too great a shock, from cabin to deck and back. It was maybe twenty-nine degrees. The boat had a generous surplus of power available, since it carried a fusion generator, designed and made by Jeff, but promised for past service by April. The fusion power package gave them a competitive edge on other boats that relied on Diesel for propulsion when there was no wind, and every sort of fueled generator, solar cells or wind turbines for auxiliary power.

“Do you enjoy taking the boat out like this for yourselves, or is it just work, and you are anxious to get back home?” Barak asked.

Lin and Abe exchanged a significant look. Abe gave Lin a nod that said it was his to answer. “We don’t talk to you about port life, because you are on vacation, and we didn’t want to bring up unpleasant things. Things are getting rough on land. We have to post a watch overnight if we are at dock. There are people from other countries where things are even worse, who come to Italy, English and Germans and Romanians who can’t find work. At least in southern Italy or Greece, they aren’t going to freeze to death in the winter. But they will steal anything that isn’t bolted down. They’ll steal that too, if you leave them alone ten minutes with a wrench.”

“Doesn’t the government give them a little something to survive?” April asked.

“A little is right. Most of them are young men, and fewer young women. The women tend to stay home. They get a small allowance deposited each month to an account. But if their card gets used outside their home area for more than a week they get cut off. It’s the place they moved to that’s now responsible for them,. There’s usually a six month legal waiting period to get new benefits in Europe, but if not, there is usually enough bureaucratic red tape and indifference to delays it as long or longer,” Lin explained.

Abe changed his mind and joined in. “A lot of them leave their card at home for their parents or their own family to use. They don’t bother to DNA lock them. Some families may send a little of it to them in cash, if they don’t desperately need it, but some have nothing but what they can steal or find work for cash. Such work doesn’t pay much, because there are more workers than there is work for them. Some will work in a restaurant just to be fed a meal on their shift, and maybe a sandwich to take home.”

Lin nodded agreement. “We could have a dozen hands on the boat for practically nothing, but finding them who have any boat handling skills, or even who are trainable for such things as a cabin steward is difficult. They will lie about their experience, and unless you try them out at dock, you won’t know it until you are a hundred kilometers offshore. I couldn’t send them into your cabin in good conscience, because they’d likely steal your things, and I’d be afraid if we had two or three of them, they might cut our throats in the night and steal the boat.”

“Sorry,” Lin said, seeing Barak feeling his throat and looking entirely too thoughtful. “It’s bad enough we tend to anchor off in the harbor at night rather than stay at dock. We still put a watch out, but it’s much harder to sneak up on us in the open water. The watch can see an approach and call for help much earlier than at dock. When we are offshore we are freer to use the laser you gave us,” he said glancing upward, since it was mounted high on the main mast. “It would raise entirely too many questions if we used it at dock, and it left visible damage,”

“There have been two different weeks this season we weren’t able to get a charter, and we all agreed it was better to do some open ocean cruising, instead of staying at dock. Once we were in Florida, and it saved us marina fees anyway, but another time it was in Sicily, where we pay to keep a permanent dock, even if we are not there. Standing a watch at the wheel at sea is much less stressful than watching the dock for boarders, or small boats sneaking up to us,” and we can do some serious fishing to fill up the larder.”

Abe spoke again, “Since we have plenty of power, thanks to you,” he nodded at April, ” we put two commercial freezer chests down in the hold. We are able to catch more than we eat usually, and we have arrangements with a couple farmers. We buy a bunch of chickens, and pay them to raise a pig or calf, and buy the whole thing, slaughtered and cut up. Sometimes we trade some of the frozen fish instead of all cash, it cuts our expenses and adds a little variety to both their diet and ours. On land there are a lot of areas now where it is too risky to keep a big freezer, unless you can generate your own power. If the public power goes down and you lose a freezer full it’s a huge hit.”

“We all live a little better than we could landbound,” Lin asserted. “Although we lost a crewman because he was married, and he worried too much about his wife and son when we were gone. He finally quit and moved them all up in the hills to his parent’s house. It’s not as comfortable as in the city, but it’s safer. There was no way I wanted to start letting crew keep family aboard. Pretty soon it would look like a refugee boat, with laundry in the rigging.”

“So, none of the crew is married?”  Barak asked, thoughtfully.

“No, and the rate of marriage has gone down on land too. At least official, legal marriages. When the economy is bad enough people don’t want to make the commitment. Does that seem strange to you?” he asked Barak.

“Not especially, I’m just thinking about the crew from Home, who went out to Jupiter not long ago to capture a snowball. They are six unmarried crew, the oldest twenty-seven. They decided to either do all singles, or a crew of couples, but they couldn’t find three qualified couples who would agree to a three year voyage. They’re getting ready to send a second expedition already, before the first has returned, but it will be the same, all singles, and I thought I might apply if I can get my mom to agree.”

“How old will you be when it leaves?” Abe wondered.

“I’ll be fifteen, near sixteen,” Barak told him. “But the next mission will go faster.”

“In the Age of Sail, young gentlemen might be sent to serve as midshipmen, training to be officers at thirteen, sometimes even twelve years of age,” Lin informed them. “By sixteen they might be close to taking their lieutenant’s exam. They had to pass an oral examination before three captains, to demonstrate they knew how to handle a ship and command. It wasn’t easy, some never passed it to advance.”

“I didn’t get the sense things were so rough down here,” April said, concern written on her face. “I’ve done research for Jeff for our bank, and I’ve seen the numbers for sales and margins turn down, but employment has stayed steady, and pretty much everybody has the same thing as negative tax like North America, even if they call it something else.”

“They also all have price controls,” Lin said, “even if they don’t call them that. It always leads to shortages. Your negative tax may let you apply to the government distribution warehouse, but if you want oil it may be canola, instead of peanut or corn oil, and if you want milk it may be powder instead of Ultra. They may run out of wheat flour or rye and you have to take corn meal. It’s still listed as available, but they run out early in the month. If you get the prepared meals like in North America, then they can sneak the cheap stuff in even easier. It just slowly gets a little worse each year,” he said, frowning.

“It spills over to the commercial sales too. Last time we wanted to buy Diesel, when we were picking up some guests in England, it was fifty-seven EuroMarks a liter, priced higher for anything considered recreational use. The marina was limiting boats that weren’t based there to fifty liters. We were fortunate we had your generator and could beg off the sale at that price.

We made a show of waiting the tide, and taking her away from the dock under sail. There isn’t much on the water moving under power only, but military, and big freighters. A lot of the freighters now are fitted with sails or wings of some sort for auxiliary propulsion too. They’d rather come in a couple days later if the wind will let them save fuel.”

“But isn’t a lot of Diesel grown from waste bio-mass now?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, but if you add up the acres, there just isn’t enough waste to meet the demand. Even if you don’t factor in the energy costs to chop it up, take it to the tanks, and then to separate and filter it. Then you still need to transport it to where it is needed, although a lot is reused for agriculture, and never moves far,” Lin explained.

“Now, you can get a lot more feedstock in tropical areas. You grow directly for fuel feedstock, not just waste from food crops.  But the Amazon basin, and Africa both seem to be in a perpetual state of unrest. You spend a fortune guarding your processing plant from attack, or paying protection money to every local thug and warlord, as well as the central government in power. You may guard the plant, but they can keep the growers from bringing the feed stock to the plant. I don’t see any changes to that very soon either.”

“How long can it keep getting a little worse each year, like you are describing, before it doesn’t work at all?” April asked. “I don’t want us to get caught by surprise. There are still things we need from Earth that would be very hard to do without.”

“Like what? Lin asked.

“Copper wire,” Heather spoke up for April, right away. “Especially the sort reinforced with bucky tubes. Solder and fluxes, anything with silver or fluorine or boron in it, plastics, lubricants, cloth and paper of all kinds,” she looked at Jeff.

“Anything with big glass. Ports and rigid display screens, a lot of medical things like dressings and instruments. Needles, gloves, and IV bags. A lot of those things we could make, but people who make few hundred thousand units a month can make them much cheaper than we ever could. Big pieces of steel, especially the high end stuff that has to be high strength. Anything with beryllium in it, and yeah, silver like you said.”

“They know techie stuff better than me,” April admitted.

“I don’t think it’s going to be one big dramatic crash,” Lin suggested. “Prices will just keep creeping up, and selection and delivery will keep getting worse. You’ll just reach a point eventually where you’ve had to wait for wire a couple times, the price is really a hardship, and they will finally quote you a crazy price, and tell you that you have to wait months for delivery, and it will kick you over the edge, to make dies and draw your own wire.”

“That means we still have to find sources of copper, and other scarce materials in the outer system,” Jeff concluded. “We already have iron and a few other metals, and soon all the volatiles we could want. Nobody can stop us from scooping nitrogen from Earth, but a lot of these things we have no idea where we’ll be able to find them, out past Mars.”

“What about Mars itself?” April asked. “Has the joint expedition found any serious ore in their explorations?”

“The participants appear to have quietly come to some sort of a gentleman’s agreement to not publicize any such finds,” Jeff informed them. “I have word searched every public document about Mars, with particular attention to multiple word searches of any dealing with geology, and field trips to volcanoes, and prominent dikes.  Not a single one gets specific about any minerals, except generic descriptions of rock class. Indeed the only useful data is about the large number of iron meteorites to be found on some of the plains. I’m sure they mention those, only because they would consider it a desecration to see them as ore. A robot vehicle to follow a search pattern and scoop them up would be easy to do though. How many iron meteorites do they really need for scientific research? They’ll never cut and examine one in a thousand, but they act like each one is precious. It’s silly.”

“Well, couldn’t we go look for ourselves?” Heather wanted to know. “They don’t have any claim on the whole planet, do they?”

“There is a general treaty, signed back in the sixties, which basically says everything off Earth will be held in common. The moon has shown it is pretty much defunct. In particular trying to apply it to other star systems would be silly, and if we find planets with owners it will look as arrogant and short sighted as the Pope dividing up the western hemisphere of Earth, without a thought to the fact it already had indigenous owners. Mars base has sent out drones, but the furthest anybody has been from base is about two-hundred kilometers. They won’t take a flier beyond the distance they could be rescued in a rover.”

“You’d support prospecting there then?” Heather asked directly.

“I’d rather see if perhaps the pickings are better among the asteroids and satellites of the gas giants first, before we look for what we need on a planet with inhabitants. It is after all at the bottom of another gravity-well, even if not as deep as Earth. In particular I’d rather none of us make a commitment to Mars, one way or the other, as Spox for any of our companies, before we discuss it again. Is that agreeable?” he asked very mildly.

“Sure,” Heather agreed. April was nodding her approval.

Lunch had progressed to cold drinks on a bare table. It was the hottest part of the day, everybody was full, and nobody was in a hurry to go back on deck.

“What are our options to get materials, beyond the out system moons and asteroids, assuming Mars is out, and Earth no longer can lift what we need?” Heather mused.

“Well, Venus is useless at our present tech level. We don’t know much about Mercury. It’s been mapped, but the only rovers examined a tiny area at the poles. The solar flux there should make processing ore on site easy. Eventually, I think we shall visit other stars. If our technology is good enough to do that, then I expect high value cargo will be worth shipping, organisms if we find living worlds, things like gold, and indium, and iridium. It’s going to be awhile before we can synthesize them in quantity,” Jeff conceded.

“How about separating out the trace quantities of elements, like a few parts per million, in asteroids?” Barak asked.

“That might be possible, if we can vacuum distill an entire asteroid, or concentrate all the trace elements in one end of a bar by zone refining. That’s how a lot of semiconductors were first refined. Then there is mass spectroscopic separation, or chemically changing everything to various gasses, and reducing them by vapor depositation. Melting a free-floating asteroid shouldn’t be that difficult, but if you remove volatiles by raising the temperature past the boiling point of each element in stages, how do you capture the boil off?”

“Put it in a big ball and let it vacuum deposit on the walls?” Barak suggested.

“Possibly, but you have a dynamic system of a molten ball of metal that has to be kept at the center of a much lighter shell, or at least kept from touching it. And when do you harvest it? Do you stop after every major element is depleted and clean it off the shell? Or do you let them build up in layers and try to separate them later?” Jeff smiled at Barak’s look of concentration. “Think on it. If you come up with another obvious solution I’ll be delighted, and make sure it earns you some money too.”

“There’s all sorts of resources in Antarctica the Earthies aren’t using,” Gunny reminded them. “If they can’t challenge you militarily, and you need them bad enough you can just go take them.”

“As tempting as that is, I suspect it would precipitate a war, and not a short easy one. Getting a foothold is one thing, but conducting mining operations when you might get bombed at random integrals would be pretty tough. One hypersonic cruise missile every few months would be plenty to neutralize any profits. I’m not ready to be the monster who reduced the USNA and China until they couldn’t mount that much of a response. It would have to be a last resort, and it should be a  matter of our survival before we even considered it.”

“We could do a lot to adapt new tech, based on different elements,” Heather said. “We have lots of calcium, which is just fine for structural use and wiring in vacuum. But here’s no legacy engineering data. We just need experience using it because the metal corrodes so easily. So does iron, but we have a couple thousand years of experience working around that. I’d love to know what we could do with say calcium – scandium alloys, or calcium – aluminum.

“There’s just one thing I want clear,” Barak spoke up at a lull in the conversation.

“Yes?” Jeff prompted him.

“If you are going to go out there and land on moons of Jupiter or Saturn, and see all kinds of interesting stuff, maybe get crew shares on big mineral finds, I want a berth on that trip!”

“Nothing is certain, we’ll just have to see,” Jeff told him.

“Well, if you know you are going to do that when I’d be away getting Snowball II back to Home let me know. I’d much rather do a real landing trip than a snowball. I’d die to get back and find out I’d missed out on a trip like that.”

“I promise, I’ll let you know the very same day I do.”

Find my books on Amazon

Search for:

Recent Posts

• An unedited snippet of my WIP
• Improvements coming
• Unedited snippet of “I Never Applied for This Job”
• A Kindle Deal for December
• Unedited snippet of Family Law 8

Recent Comments

• Dave on Improvements coming
• Michael on An unedited snippet of my WIP
• Emmy on An unedited snippet of my WIP
• Emmy on An unedited snippet of my WIP
• Ricardo Venegas on An unedited snippet of my WIP

Archives

• February 2025
• December 2024
• October 2024
• September 2024
• July 2024
• May 2024
• March 2024
• February 2024
• January 2024
• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023
• December 2022
• September 2022
• August 2022
• May 2022
• April 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• June 2021
• May 2021
• April 2021
• March 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• November 2020
• October 2020
• September 2020
• August 2020
• June 2020
• April 2020
• March 2020
• January 2020
• December 2019
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• July 2019
• June 2019
• May 2019
• April 2019
• March 2019
• February 2019
• January 2019
• November 2018
• October 2018
• September 2018
• August 2018
• July 2018
• June 2018
• May 2018
• April 2018
• March 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• December 2017
• November 2017
• October 2017
• September 2017
• August 2017
• July 2017
• May 2017
• April 2017
• March 2017
• February 2017
• January 2017
• December 2016
• November 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016
• August 2016
• July 2016
• June 2016
• May 2016
• April 2016
• March 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016
• December 2015
• November 2015
• October 2015
• September 2015
• August 2015
• July 2015
• June 2015
• May 2015
• April 2015
• March 2015
• February 2015
• January 2015
• December 2014
• November 2014
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• July 2014
• June 2014
• May 2014
• April 2014
• March 2014
• February 2014
• January 2014
• December 2013
• November 2013
• October 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• July 2013
• June 2013
• May 2013
• April 2013
• March 2013
• February 2013
• January 2013
• December 2012
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• August 2012
• July 2012
• June 2012
• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011

Categories

• -Snippets-
• > Gallery <
• Ramblings