Chapter 57

Third Mission, in star system RKO-289 aboard the FUP Shuttle Royal Yacht about to enter orbit around the planet called Thessaly, 2401 CE

Anticipating Task Force Bertram would enter a sun-synchronous orbit around Thessaly in four hours, I was excited—for several reasons, as well as apprehensive because of one other particular issue—and I was actively helping my enthusiasm win-out.

The spectacular show outside the shuttle, and seen on the view screens in front of me, seemed to try and disprove we were in the Big Black. There were five different inbound comet clusters we’d already passed in the last two days before the Task Force performed our final deceleration maneuver, and now there were three clusters visible ahead of our formation on this side of the third planet.

Like those clusters the Task Force had already passed, the groups ahead presented no hazard to any of us on the course taking us the remaining way to Thessaly. One swarm of 12 comets was only about 200,000 kilometers to starboard at 2 o’clock from our plane of reference with an 18 degree inclination. The comets in that cluster were so close together their combined outgassing created a substantial visible coma along with a glittering tail that presently measured 66,000 kilometers long.

Our earlier scan returns showed, that like most of their kind, the individual comets in the amazing display each consisted of a tight aggregate of ice, dust, and rocky particles. However, according to the final analysis of the scan data 32 hours previously, these comets also contained chunks high in iron-nickel alloys usually associated with meteorites. When my inner geek studied the findings, I felt my apprehension beginning to grow—and I knew the source of my discomfort. These comets were similar to the fragments that hit the Glenndeavor, and I’d not made time to investigate any of the data I’d downloaded concerning the status of the Skeleton Crews and what exactly they’d found out about what had happened to our beloved Ship. In fact, I’d actively avoided looking at any information those crews had reported. I didn’t want to know the condition of the Glenndeavor and have to deal with the loss all over again.

In addition, I’d told nobody in the crew about the availability of that information since I’d retrieved copies of those files from C-ELMER’s database before the Royal Yacht was detached to join Task Force Bertram.

It was possible the Skeleton Crews were able to make some repairs to the internal integrity of the great vessel and perhaps even get parts of the distributed power system and then the environmental systems back online to some degree. But whenever I did allow myself to ponder the Glenndeavor, my PAW continued to argue the Ship was a wreck, or C-ELMER would have initiated a return call to the evacuation fleet well before Task Force Bertram was dispatched on our mission.

I wasn’t aware of anybody else on the Royal Yacht having asked about the fate of the Glenndeavor either; and it had taken my go-anywhere see-anything codes to gain access to the Skeleton Crew reports in C-ELMER’s database as it was. With everything that had happened since the Royal Yacht dropped out of the evacuation bay, the fate of the Glenndeavor just hadn’t been a topic of discussion among our crew. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or something bad; I just knew I wasn’t ready to find out what the Skeleton Crews discovered when they went back to the Ship. There were too many other issues for me to focus on in the present to prepare for whatever confronted us once we landed on Thessaly for me to take the time to deal with what happened or was happening with my former Ship.

And that was the crux of the matter. At some point I’d started thinking of the Glenndeavor as my former Ship; if only in the back of my mind. In the front of my mind I was focusing on Thessaly and thinking about the third planet and the new home we’d make there.

Until the Federation relief force arrived, of course, my PAW added.

Well, all the legal precedents and possibilities Mister Straperlo brought to my attention when we were working together preparing a meal or over coffee and a checker game had my inner geek thinking as well. The Lieutenant had recently started ending each of our conversations on the topic by saying, “It’s entirely feasible, Mister Sitwell, but only after you put on that ring.”

Shaking my Kilo-covered head to try and reset the contents of my mind’s eye, I single-tapped the tip of my right index finger against the screen of my data pad. I sat inside the cockpit of Royal One after finishing my latest lesson, and had just started running another diagnostic on the ExoBio scanning software and the upgraded database. I’d installed and linked the suite to the sensor scanning system of the Royal Yacht so we could use the software along with the existing scanning software to analyze the return data for flora and fauna once orbit was attained.

Ry’s voice filled my right ear under my Kilo helmet, telling me the installation would work fine, but my inner geek was nervous, and lately had been operating in his third time’s a charm mode when it came to assuring a project was thoroughly tested and ready for use.

With my last static training module in what I now called my sled completed, I wasn’t in a hurry to exit the XL-5 as my inner geek wanted to review parts of the session so the memories wouldn’t fade—as if that might happen anytime soon. The breathtakingly thrilling exercise was generated and monitored by my name-friend, Ry. As our instructor pilot, he’d observed how Anika in Royal Two, DS Straperlo in Royal Three, and I—manning Royal One—had handled the controls of our assigned fluorescent-red craft while we maneuvered through several scenarios the AI provided along with the incredibly life-like images he fed us using our outside visual screens.

The three XL-5s were secured to the deck down the center of the Cargo Bay passageway the whole time we were training. However, Ry was governing the feedback loop he created by feeding each craft with the necessary data and visuals while monitoring our responses and our control inputs. So the gauges, meters, readouts and what we saw in our external view monitors mimicked what we would experience while sledding through the atmosphere of an Earth-Norm planet using the artificial gravity gradients that could be created by each of the crafts’ anti-grav systems. The only thing the simulations lacked was any G-forces we might experience doing the real thing, but only if we turned off the inertial dampeners for some reason. Trying to relax in my XL-5 as I experienced the last of my adrenalin rush, I felt like I’d just played the best VR game I’d ever experienced and I found it hard to wait for the real thing.

Our next scheduled XL-Five lesson would be our first solo flight sometime after the Royal Yacht made planet-fall. The three of us now had the 10 hours of minimum training necessary, as well as Ry’s electronic signature on our new sled pilot learner’s tickets, for the three of us to make that next step once we were on planet. I knew each one of the remaining eight crewmembers was eager to finishing their last session of ground training under Ry’s guidance before the Royal Yacht completed our scanning mission orbits and our landing site or sites were chosen, and the Task Force finally landed on Thessaly.

As XO of the Royal Yacht, I’d first thought to use flight training in an XL-Five as attaboys and attagirls for the rest of the crew. After talking to Anika, Ron Aisins, and Ry, I decided our mission on the planet would be better served if everyone aboard trained to fly the evacuation vehicles in their unconventional atmospheric roles.

“Royal One,” I heard Anika’s excited voice come through the audio-bud in my right ear as I luxuriated back in the pilot’s couch looking around the interior of the cockpit. I hadn’t even unstrapped yet because I didn’t want the feeling of simulated flying to end. Also, I had to admit, this acceleration couch rivaled the bucket seats in Marine donks, and now I wasn’t just a passenger while Anika was my chauffer! “Royal One, you better be answering me,” my small wife’s voice told me.

I nudged open my psychic link with my Polka Fireball, and I could tell she was feeling extremely horny after experiencing the thrilling scenarios we’d just successfully finished. Anika was also wound-up now she’d completed her 10 hours—she was looking forward taking her craft on a solo flight once we were out of the Big Black, back on solid ground, and had a deep sea of atmosphere over our heads. Our link told me that my younger wife was determined to take me back to our quarters immediately and fucking all the folds in my gray matter flat!

“Why are you not coming out of your cock pit, my naughty husband?” Anika’s breathy-sounding voice tickled my right ear through my communication bud. “You are not being bad boy, congratulating your czlonek with your bare hand, are you? Come out here and let me be doing that—right now!“

With two flicks of my finger on the comm-console of Royal One I selected Anika’s private comm channel and said, “G4 Blaugelt-Sitwell, I’d never risk shooting even a drop of cum on any of the surfaces in this fine machine. Frankly, I’m shocked you’d even think such a thing--

“Wait, Nika; did you rub one off in your cockpit?” I asked her over our private comm channel.

Hearing Anika sputter in my right ear I said, “I’ll be out soon. Head to our quarters right now; as XO of the Royal Yacht, I need to debrief you.”

“A-firm-ative, Sir!” Anika’s excited voice barked over our private channel. “But be hurrying!”

You know, my inner geek told me as my PAW chuckled from my lizard brain, that Ry’s monitoring everything we say.

I just shrugged as he used my eyes to glance down at the data pad held in my left hand.

Seeing the diagnostic progress bar at the bottom of the pad showing a bit of green at the left edge, I locked the surface and pushed the flat device into the cargo pocket on the left thigh of my duty blues. Now, there was another thing I was looking forward to doing. Since I’d successfully finished my 10 hours of static training and study, Ry had said he would allow me to add some of the code-monkey tweaks I’d been thinking about to the control presets in the preference settings I called up each time I entered Royal One; making it my own. I’d already worked out the programming for four of the seven different ideas I wanted to implement, and I’d hoped to download those into the craft’s operating system right now. The next three students weren’t scheduled to start their last static training scenarios for another 30 minutes, and I, along with Anika and Straperlo, was officially off-duty.

I’d figured that I’d be able to get two of the tweaks installed and tested before Mister Kyler arrived to claim Royal One. But now I knew Anika had other plans in mind, and I did want to be a good, attentive husband. It seemed the closer the Royal Yacht got to our goal, the less off-duty time everyone had for in-depth personal business with their significant others.

Since finding out that the third planet in system RKO 289 was partially settled by human’s from old Earth once we’d established radio contact with some of them, Task Force Bertram had discovered a lot; but nowhere near all the information we wanted to know about the people on Thessaly. One of the things we didn’t know was how their ancestors managed to build at least three spaceships the size of Artifact 289 and leave old Earth without telling anyone who let the information leak or recorded it in some personal data file, or without the colonists’ spaceships being noticed by the governments around back then as they left the system.

Ry and my inner geek both agreed; the size of the ship in orbit behind Thessaly’s larger moon indicated it could only have been built in space. With the ship’s spherical design, its size, and using the technologies known to be available at the time, the vessel could not have lifted off the planet. Ry and I had deduced where in old Earth’s solar system the ships could have been built without being noticed. My new name-friend and I decided those possible locations were either in a geosynchronous orbit on the far-side of Jupiter just beyond the rings or, closer in, on the far-side of the circumstellar disc called the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The closer location would have easily provided a wealth of resources that available technology could have harvested and processed to make the hull and many of the interior fittings. However, the builders of the ships would have had to have devised some way to hide the infrared signatures their work produced. Historical records showed that Earth stations like the Herschel Space Observatory monitored the asteroid belt from time to time back then. Historically we knew the commercial exploitation of the asteroid belt started in 2086 EAD so that industry might have helped hide the construction of space ships out there, and 14 years later was the first mission to Alpha Centauri; a joint venture by Russia and India. Also, subspace drive technology was not available to any private ventures with deep enough pockets to afford that new tech until around 2104 EAD.

From sitting in on the second of our regularly scheduled holo-conferences, I knew at least one of the Marine commander’s officers and four other ExServ officers in Task Force B were excited and salivating. They were thinking and talking about what might be found once a security force and survey technicians as well as transportation could be spared from our present mission to travel to and board Artifact-B, as the spaceship in orbit behind Thessaly’s larger moon was now called. It would be awhile before the Marine flight sent to reconnoiter Artifact-A orbiting the fourth planet would arrive at their destination. And whatever they did find would be anticlimactic compared to what Task Force Bertram had already discovered while preparing to fulfill our primary mission of securing a safe site for the rest of the evacuation group and for all of us to call home until a relief force arrived.

I’d decided that someone was going to have to get aboard Artifact-B before I was going to start spending any time getting excited about what might be on the vessel. It was obvious to me that since we found human beings on Thessaly, and there was no record of them departing Earth or that solar system in any records available to the Task Force, that their ancestors had somehow succeeded in getting away from old Earth unnoticed, and that fact alone represented a stager amount of capital and covert manufacturing being somehow available to their ancestors.

In that same holo-conference, I’d discovered there was a group of three officers in Task Force B and about five other crew members who were history buffs who’d obviously followed the same line of reasoning as I did. Their being scattered around various vessels of our formation hadn’t stopped them from trying to figure out two points. The first point was what organization or collection of individuals might have funded the massive endeavor that got the colonists here, and why they did so surreptitiously? What did they have to fear or hide?

The second point was how the colonists’ ancestors efforts managed to stay out of the recorded annals of that era? While ExServ had come across other Pre-First Diaspora colonies outside Federation space, almost everything about those other groups were found in the historical record; except where they finally made planet-fall—at least, so the historians had thought.

From the limited, and heated, discussions about those two issues I’d observed in the holo-graphic grid while sitting beside Juliet and sipping coffee, it seemed to me each person in the history buff group had pulled out their favorite conspiracy theory from the time, dusting it off, and were trying to make the present facts fit their assumptions.

Captain Bertram told us he was having his communications officer place the complete text transcripts of every radio contact that the Task Force was having with the colonists, along with copy of the original audio file, and a summary of every radio communication on ForceNet. He said he’d already done the same for all the original radio transmissions we’d pickup since discovering we were not alone here in the 289 system. Along with official use, Bertram was allowing access to those items by any crewmember in the Task Force who might be interested in reviewing those records while off duty.

We then learned from Captain Bertram that his last communications with the Council had been short. First, he told us, they demanded to know who we were and where we came from. When they were told we were a Task Force from the Federation of United Planets’ Deep Space Exploration ship Glenndeavor, on a humanitarian mission, they asked us what the Federation was, and since we spoke English, they asked if we were from Earth? The Captain said that as soon as he’d explained that answer, he could tell the Council representatives were shocked by the number of members represented in the Federation. However, they soon recovered and wanted him to reveal the nature of our humanitarian mission.

Bertram told us from his holo-grid that he’d explained about the Glenndeavor being evacuated before the ship was struck by comet fragments which could not be destroyed or avoided. The Captain related that he’d told the Council our humanitarian mission was to find a secure landing site or landing sites on the Continent we referred to as Charlie, which was the same landmass where they were located. Bertram said he didn’t give anyone from the Council time to respond before explaining to them why we had to pick a site there, as well as quoting excerpts from the Federation laws and the relevant precedents dealing with the situation now facing the Task Force.

Then Captain Bertram said he’d asked for their assistance with our humanitarian mission. He reported he also suggested that by forming a cooperative relationship with us, since we were representatives of the FUP, the Council would have a lot to gain in the form of new knowledge and new technologies as well as off-planet trade opportunities.

Captain Bertram said he’d been shocked when the leader of the Council spoke up, telling him that despite what Federation law might argue; the Council and the Council alone controlled the entire planet. However, the Captain said, they didn’t offer any proof to validate their assertion one way or the other, and the Council also never mentioned any intent or ability to back up their claim with military force before they abruptly ended the transmission.

Captain Bertram said us he was surprised when, fifteen minutes later, the Council hailed the Task Force, wanting to talk to him. He told us that a man who introduced himself as the Council’s head negotiator said that the Council could understand our concerns for the crews on the evacuation ships that we claimed might come to harm if we couldn’t make land-fall on their world and on their continent. Then the man informed Captain Bertram the Task Force was hereby advised to make course for the fourth planet, which he told us was named Cetvrta Planeta before terminating the broadcast.

My paranoid ass-wipe thought Bertram should’ve referred to that person on the Council as the Head Ultimatum-ist, because there hadn’t been any real negotiations between the Council and Task Force Bertram at all!

I wondered why Captain Bertram didn’t seem to be upset in his cubicle up on the grid of participants floating in the holo-field above the end of the galley table. In fact, he seemed relaxed and wore a grin on his dark features.

As the rest of the participants collated his words and I got up to get a pot of fresh coffee to refill Mister Straperlo’s and my mugs, as well as tea for Juliet, the Captain spoke up again. He said, since the Council didn’t want to help us, we were lucky that the Task Force now was talking to two other groups of colonists that said they were independent of the Council. However, to raise them on radio, the communications team had to switch frequencies and boost power because it appeared some individual or group located in the general area where the Council’s transmissions originated had started jamming the 820 megahertz frequency band within minutes of the negotiator breaking off contact with the Task Force.

It was then that the rest of us participating in the holo-conference learned that one of the two groups the Captain had managed to contact was more than happy to talk to us while suggesting a sequential list of alternative radio frequencies he should migrate to as well as the sequence if someone attempted to jam the radio frequency presently being used.

After preliminary introductions, Captain Bertram said he explained the reason for the imminent arrival of Task Force and our plan to orbit around their planet. As the conversation continued, the Captain learned this new group called their territory Aotearoa I Roto I Nga Whetu, which translated from their Maori language into something like New Zealand in, or among, the Stars. Their two representatives told the Captain their government would be more than willing to talk to him about helping with the humanitarian mission of finding landing sites or a landing area on their continent where we newcomers could stay until help arrived. As a token of friendship, they ask if Captain Bertram could send them a brief summary of the history of New Zealand starting from the year 2000 AD to the present. Once they received the summary, the representatives told the Captain, they’d be quite happy to talk with any representative or representatives of their new friends in depth and discuss our further needs and ways their government and people could help.

As a sign of their good intentions, they said, they’d told the Captain that according to their records, we’d find the gravity on Thessaly to be nine-tenths that of Earth. My inner geek immediately reminded me to inform Anika of that fact, hoping her firing range simulator could be adjusted so all of us could practice, especially with our rifles at distance, with 90 percent gravity affecting the ballistic characteristics of our bullets. I felt that fact wouldn’t hamper our pistol groupings. My PAW wondered if that meant I was going to carry extra ammunition so my combat load would feel the same. I shut him up and went back to listening to Captain Bertram talking, but not before sending a quick text message to Anika about the information.

According to Bertram, it had taken right at an hour to provide the Aotearoans with the summary they asked for, transmitted in an old-fashion compressed data format suggested by them. An hour after that the Captain was hailed by our two new friends. During that conversation, the Aotearoa even told him they referred to the Council as the Matatoka, which was Maori for fossil, because the Matatoka was what remained of the original governing body from the founding of Thessaly. They said the Matatoka continued to be reluctant to acknowledge any of the other governments that formed since the founding, or the fact that nobody outside their territory listened to or obeyed the Council anymore while the Council still allowed their people to maintain trading ties with people and businesses in other countries.

At the end of their second radio conversation, the Aotearoa let Captain Bertram know once again that they’d be happy to help us find a home on Thessaly, no matter how temporary it might be. They said they’d also provide their practical guidance as we established that territory on what would be, to us, an unknown world filled with inherent mortal dangers for the uninformed. In exchange for that help, the representatives of the Aotearoa said they hoped we’d grant their people access to our data files on Earth and Federation history, as well as any medical and technical data we felt comfortable sharing with them. Once a formal treaty could be negotiated between their government and our commanders, their two representatives said their administrators would be happy to invite any scholars among the crew who might be interested, no matter what their specialties, to take up posts as visiting lecturers at their two major universities for as long as we remained on Thessaly.

The conference learned, in the next radio conversation between the Captain and our new friends on Thessaly, which the Aotearoa representatives told him that there were two other major governments on Thessaly, besides the Council, and at least nine other smaller recognized governing groups scattered along the West Coast and throughout the various island chains in the Great Salt Sea. However, the Captain said he was happy to learn from the Aotearoa, who preferred to be called Maori, that none of the other four major continents and the smaller islands around Thessaly had more than a handful of established trading settlements. And, he’d been informed by our new friends, each of those entities claimed self rule.

The Maori did tell Bertram that there were two other different groups of people we needed to know about. One group lived in what they called the Purple Mountains, the range that divided the West Coast of Continent Charlie from the rest of the land mass. Those people followed a lifestyle that many Maori scholars claimed represented Ultra Luddite values in the extreme. They said they called that group, Te Hinga, which the Captain later found out was Maori for she fell, or the fallen.

The Maori referred to the other groups as The Tribes. The Maori told the Captain the Tribes claimed recognized territories in the interior of the continent from the eastern approaches of the Purple Mountains range to the west bank of the might watercourse called the Great Eastern River. The representatives said that this group also had limited access to modern technology since there were no overland trade routes through the territories controlled by the Te Hinga.

The Maori said there might be other people across the water boundary of the Great Eastern River; but if there were, the Maori had no idea exactly who those individuals were or how or when they got there. Captain Bertram asked how the Maori hadn’t come to know about the people across the Great Eastern River, considering that the original colonists must have arrived on Thessaly as early as 280 years ago. The Maori representatives told him that over that amount of time it was impossible to track the wanderings of small groups of people who might have managed to avoid the bloodthirsty Fallen was they slipped over the Purple Mountains and then passed through the territories of the Tribes in their quest for land of their own. The Aotearoa representatives then said that they did have a select number of their own people who traded with most of the Tribes and mentored some of their members, but they didn’t say how those individuals reached the Tribes, what they traded with or for, or what kind of mentoring those people provided the Tribes.

It was the opinion of the Captain, as well as his officers who talked to the Maori, that there were subjects our new friends didn’t want to discuss in detail. The Marine intelligence officer said there probably was an ocean route from the West Coast around the southern tip of the Purple Mountains. My inner geek wondered why the Maori didn’t just fly over the mountains, unless the bloodthirsty people known as the Fallen had some anti-aircraft capabilities.

The Captain told us that he’d attempted to find out how many original colonists landed on Thessaly, but had been diverted by the Maori. He said he’d hope to find a number so population projections could be developed that could be compared to whatever numbers might be approximated from the scans the Royal Yacht and the two Marine AASs were scheduled to begin running once the Task Force made orbit around the planet.

His intelligence officers aboard the Lord Gort had advised him that even given 250 years of occupation, a viable colony should have developed a huge population and spread around Thessaly by now. It was suggested that several pandemics, or a large-scale attack or several attacks by pirates early in the history of the colony might account for the low population distribution and the lack of signs of widespread civilization. It was also mentioned that there might be some natural conditions on Thessaly that inhibited human fertility.

Captain Bertram said other radio talks with the Maori were scheduled and he would keep everyone updated to the content by way of postings those communications with the others on ForceNet. He then told the holo-conference that the other group the Task Forced had managed to contact was from the Nova Slavska Republika—the New Slavic Republic. Once introductions were concluded with their representatives, and our reason for approaching the planet explained, the Captain discovered that group was more interested in providing us with all the bulk food and other supplies we might need wherever we ended up making land-fall. According to the Captain, the representatives of the New Slavic Republic didn’t seem to care if our temporary home was sited on their continent or somewhere else on Thessaly, as long as we’d pickup the items from them and they didn’t have to ship our orders—especially if that site was beyond the Purple Mountains they’d said.