Chapter 1

"Wake up, John," I heard, as someone shook my shoulder.

Bleary-eyed, I looked up into the near-darkness, and muttered, "Huh?"

"John, you need to wake up. The Captain needs you, right now."

I was now awake enough to recognize Sargent Rollins' voice, but not nearly awake enough to know why the Captain would 'need' the services of a fourth-class electronics technician whose sole qualification was that his mother was a hot-shot scientist with considerable talent, and even more considerable political pull.

I wasn't Navy, but that didn't matter. When the Captain said, "Jump," you did it, whether you were military, civilian, or a stuffed animal.

"Do I have time to get dressed?" I asked, as I hauled myself upright, and pushed the thin blanket off my legs. I was in my boxers, and not that athletic, so I really hoped the answer was 'yes.'

"Shaved too, unless you've already done that this month," came the teasing reply. Sargent Rollins had 'adopted' me, treating me as a nephew of sorts, while simultaneously driving me mercilessly to excel at the duties my mother's influence had thrust upon me.

Since we were in private, and I could get away with it, I flipped him off as I put my feet on the floor, and lurched upright, stumbling towards the 'head' to drain the lizard before dressing. Seeing me in motion, Rollins turned to leave the room so I could get dressed in private. As he did, he tossed over his shoulder, "Civilian dress, as formal as you've got."

I stopped in the doorway to the bathroom, stunned and curious, and croaked out, "Will a tuxedo do? I'm afraid I'm not equipped for white tie."

He nodded, and said, "The tuxedo will be fine. But step on it; the Craxill are waiting."

It was a good thing I was still half-asleep, or I'd have spent the next three weeks asking questions, starting with "How did you get into my room, anyway" and moving on from there. As it was, I had to concentrate on cleaning up as best I could, including brushing my hair into an acceptable simulation of order, before dragging my tux out of the closet and putting it on, cummerbund, cravat, and all.

I stepped out of my bedroom, into the main room of Mother's suite, to find Rollins standing patiently. He nodded approvingly, and said, "You do clean up well. Come along, I'll brief you along the way. As much as I can, that is."

He lead me out of the room, and down the corridor to the main crew passageway. This part of the ship was civilian country, so the bulk of the passageways were open access, with comparatively few crew-only passages. The idea was that, if things got ugly, the crew wouldn't have to push through a crowd of panic-stricken groundhogs on their way to fix it.

Once we were into the crew-only passageways, Rollins started talking.

"The Captain and Doctor Surivasiya are talking to the Craxill diplomatic team. There's apparently a last-minute ritual to complete before the treaty signing tomorrow. And you're going to be involved."

Oh, shit.

Earth's first starship had been unmanned. It arrived in Alpha Centauri as expected, found a complex stellar and planetary system, as expected, and returned enough scientific data to choke even the planetary network, as expected.

What wasn't expected was when another ship appeared within minutes of the Earth ship's entering the system, and started beaming greeting messages in most of the major Earth languages. Those greetings had been followed by an invitation to visit in person, to open negotiations to join the local trade group, to the benefit of all parties.

There had been the expected uproar when that news hit Earth's data web, but the consortium that had built the first unmanned ship started on a manned follow-up immediately. By the time the political uproar had settled down, the ship was ready, and the crew trained. It took six more months before the diplomatic and science teams had been picked, and my mother had spent every minute of that period consolidating the lead she'd established in her quest to be on the first interstellar crew.

Mother had never asked me if I wanted to come along, and at age fifteen, I'd never imagined I'd be able to. I'd been stunned when she told me to pack, and handed me the data chip with my training materials. You'd have to be a moron to live in my mother's house without noticing her political skills, and I had scored very well on the various intelligence tests she'd run me through over the years. For whatever reason, she'd expended every effort available to her not only to get a berth for herself on Mankind's first manned interstellar mission, but to get me one as well.

A more cynical child would have assumed it was the political equivalent of the conspicuous consumption of the old 'upper crust.' But despite Mother's lack of obvious parenting skills, I never doubted that she loved me, as best she was able to, and so I was more than willing to believe that her efforts were simply the latest, most extravagant example to date of demonstrating affection by buying the most expensive toy available.

I'd always been a quick study, and I had at least some hardware experience to go with my focus on software engineering, so the role of "Electronics Tech, Fourth Class" was well within my reach, even at the rarefied levels of the Space Service. Sargent Rollins had been quite obviously restrained in his predictions as to my usefulness in his department, but he'd calmed considerably when I got through my first week without a single screwup. My natural modesty hadn't cost me anything either. I wasn't shy, but I didn't have the need to prove my worth by explaining my superiority to all and sundry, either.

We'd had six months to train, then a month-long journey in normal space and "hyperspace," to reach the Alpha Centauri A Oort Cloud, where our hosts awaited us. Three months of 'first contact' protocols, followed by a similar period of negotiations, all leading up to tomorrow's signing ceremony. And now, if Sargent Rollins wasn't pulling my chain, I was going to be involved in jumping the last hurdle before the finish line.

The "local trade group" the aliens were offering membership in currently consisted only of themselves, but they were offering their own knowledge, plus that of a race they called the Hundmill in exchange for the knowledge we humans possessed. Trade in physical objects and materials would be rare, but they were quite convincing on the subject of how valuable an exchange of knowledge with another species could be.

The aliens called themselves the Craxill. They looked like nothing on Earth, of course, but there was a definite feline flavor to them, both in their fur-like covering, and the generally lean, muscular look they presented. They were mostly bipedal, with two legs, two arms, and a surprisingly humanoid body plan. Their culture was heavily focused on ritual and tradition.

We'd scored well during the initial contacts, when Suki Yamahara and her husband demonstrated a traditional Tea Ceremony, showing the Craxill that we understood the nature of formal ritual. Film footage of the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and the Honor Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers outside the wreckage of Washington, D.C., had also gone over well. When the Craxill learned that the bulky garments worn by both sets of guards were intended to protect them from the residual radiation of the Mideast War, it sealed the deal, earning us membership in the class of "Civilized Beings" as opposed to the "Clever Animals" that they'd feared we might be.