Chapter 61

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

Overall, I wasn’t really surprised that my Juliet is such a superb shuttle pilot when it comes to EDL procedures and execution.

Now, everyone in the crew knew exactly where we would be building our home on the eastern side of the great river. And accompanying that information, along with the orders Juliet received from Task Force Command, was a satellite map showing the territory the Task Force would secure—and now we were going to go down and have a look for ourselves and smell the fresh air.

Strapped into the right hand seat, I could hear RY’s voice in my ear-bud. I’d started listening to him before the Royal Yacht began our transition from the thermosphere into the upper mesosphere above Thessaly. It was his suggestion to give me an ongoing commentary of our progress to keep me ‘occupied,’ as he put it; and I agreed, but not wholeheartedly. I told him I didn’t want to be told our shuttle’s speed or velocity at any time. I informed RY that I’d want to know altitude; rate of descent, which my inner geek argued was an indicator of velocity, but I shut him down; and pitch, yaw, and roll information was fine—just no speed data. And in addition, I didn’t want to know the temperatures of any shuttle surface, or of our anti-grav units either.

As the Royal Yacht headed down through the mesosphere, RY offered very few critiques concerning Juliet’s piloting skills, saying those instances were more a matter of style rather than execution. He talked me through our entire descent, and he continued praising Juliet’s abilities as my wonderful, sexually aroused first wife brought the Royal Yacht to a safe landing near the shuttle, Bee Hive.

I didn’t even need to sigh with relief. Looking over at Juliet I felt a huge, enthusiastic smile break out on my face, making me aware of the dimple in my chin. When she met my gaze, I told her I would ride anywhere with her, anytime she wanted to take the Royal Yacht somewhere. The look she gave me in return, truth told, nearly set underwear on fire!

Earlier, after we dropped from the mesosphere and entered the upper atmosphere, I could tell that my illogical fear of burning up was behind me. And I fully blame that fear on my PAW’s constant blathering. As the Royal Yacht continued descending on course, my curiosity became fully engaged once again. I avidly listened to everything RY told me about our Shuttle Commander’s control of our vehicle; and the next piloting action Juliet needed to take; the progress of the second Task Force shuttle, the Bee Hive, which had gone ahead of the Royal Yacht in our EDL order of execution. I did ask myself why Juliet’s orders included the term ‘execution,’ when talking about our EDL maneuvers? Why didn’t I think to ask RY to not use terms like that in his commentary? Everything else was great!

Once the Royal Yacht passed over a huge front of cumulonimbus clouds, the scenes in my different view screens and holographic display really got interesting. According to RY’s commentary, the altitude of the Royal Yacht was 12,100 meters and descending when our shuttle crossed over the northern coast of Thessaly. I learned our command pilot held the Royal Yacht at a steady descent rate of 1980 meters-per-minute. And there it was! I’d asked RY not to be told any velocity data—my inner geek can do the math! But I guess I was all right with the information, I wasn’t panicked and the shuttle wasn’t coming apart around me.

According to the crew’s pre-EDL briefing from RY, and now with his voice in my ear-bud, I was certain Juliet was following our specified south-southwest course for this intermediary leg of our flight. I also was aware, depending on any vehicle’s spot in the long train of Task Force ships breaking orbit and entering Thessaly’s gravity well, that each ship’s EDL required a uniquely modified course. Some of the basic maneuvers would be the same, and the IP, or Initial Point, for the last leg of the route to our landing zone would be the same as well.

I relaxed a bit more in my seat, becoming enthralled with the view. From this height, I could see almost 400 kilometers in any direction I picked. With only occasional-to-light cloud cover, I marveled as the mid-morning sun illuminated the terrain far below along our flight path. I knew that right now I wouldn’t see anything moving, other than the Great Eastern River and the occasional cloud, on or above the surface without really zooming in on a particular area.

And why do that right now, I didn’t want to miss the big picture, so I was content to take in all the major terrain features in sight. There was the blue of the northern sea until we passed over the northern coast, and now I could see the blue of the visible lakes and rivers, the dark greens of river valleys and plains, the greens of forested foothills, the greenish-browns to browns and dark grays where trees and vegetation didn’t cover the highlands, and the white of snow-capped peaks off to the west. I couldn’t deny my growing anticipation and excitement; and at our rate of descent, I’d be getting a much closer look at the terrain the nearer the Juliet flew us to our landing zone.

I’d decided before we started down that I was not going to rely on just my wonderful memory and my understanding of where each tribal territory was located on either side the Great Eastern River. I wanted to not only recognize a general area where their estimated boundaries might be located, but I intended to be sure, so I’d have a better understanding of the types of terrain and vegetation distribution found in each of those unique geopolitical areas.

Hearing that tenth-of-a-credit word, my paranoid ass-wipe nearly doubled over laughing, while my inner geek immediately took offense. I told myself this proved my point: I didn’t want any guesswork involved, or my inner geek trying to kibitz and making me miss any part of the experience.

Using my code monkey expertise, I tweaked one of the targeting functions in the Royal Yacht’s video scanning array as the Task Force’s EDL rotation began. That was 48 hours ago, when the Marine Armored Assault Shuttle, ASS-8 started down for the surface following its predetermined flight path.

Our Marine contingent insisted on having two days to scout the landing zones, set up defensive positions, and establish observation posts before the first ExServ vehicle even began its EDL. So I had plenty of time to make my hack and test the results using records from AAS-8’s actual EDL, which RY obtained. Now my tweak was ready and waiting; my view monitors would display terrain overlay outlines, updated in real time, showing any part of a tribe’s estimated territory that came into view—based on the overlays RY used in his presentation.

When the crew first learned that there would be Marines from the Task Force on Thessaly for two, whole, days before anyone else was allowed to even start down to the planet, the already noticeable tensions aboard the Royal Yacht ratcheted up a few more notches! I’d noticed a good six weeks before, that moving from the living environment found on a ship as large as the Glenndeavor into the living environment on a shuttle the size of the Royal Yacht, while big for a shuttle of that type, eventually produced in me and the rest of the crew—except for RY—what I’d heard called Cabin Fever, Shut-In Syndrome, and even Temporary Inhabited Spatial Frustration Distress.

Using my enhanced virtual reality toys I’d brought along when we cleaned out our quarters, or playing with those that were part of the shuttle’s entertainment package, helped for only an hour at a time. I only tried playing VR games with my mates once before I quit considering VR as an option; I had more important things I could be doing with my time. Suiting up and performing an EVA, while seriously challenging and them reaffirming my sense of the cosmos I lived in and my relationship to the vastness of the Big Black, did nothing to relieve my sense of the finite range of space I could roam once I was back inside the Royal Yacht. And the two times I did an EVA I wasn’t the one to float out into the All Alone to snare any of the XL-5s. It was Kyle Kyler who did that, so I could wench our three newest crewmembers into the Cargo airlock; and save the XL-5s!

Our shuttle Commander, and Corporal Aisins, proved that routines and training was one way to keep everyone focused. Off duty, everybody found hobbies, worked out, did extra training, and had frequent sex to relieve some of the tensions experienced by living in such close quarters.

I was given a quick heads-up by RY. Refocusing my pondering mind’s eye on now, I was ready when Juliet put the Royal Yacht into a steep bank to the right—starboard! But I wasn’t ready for what happened next!

I suddenly realized I was feeling the effects of the planet’s gravity! I’d not been aware when the shuttle’s internal gravity field shut down. And that space rat, RY, hadn’t said anything to me!

My stomach did an unsettling flip-flop as the deck rolled 60-degree up to my left while the nose of the Royal Yacht maintained its decidedly downward pitch. Swallowing some of the flavored saliva the hard candy in my mouth continued to generate, my gut and sense of equilibrium recovered. Sitting uphill from my seat as the Royal Yacht continued the steep-banked, turning descent, Juliet looked down at me. She gave me a momentary brilliant smile, her green eyes danced with life! Seeing her unfettered joy made my heart flip-flop as well, but in superb way.

Then it hit me, we were beginning the aggressive maneuver another shuttle pilot in the Task Force had named the ‘spiral escalator;’ that naming occurred during the shuttle pilots’ pre-EDL teleconference briefing. From all the information RY was feeding me through my ear-bud, I knew we would continued down the spiral escalator until Juliet straighten out our flight path, still on course, as the Royal Yacht reached 3000 meters. This tactic was intended to minimize the chance that Task Force vessels would be seen by any unaccounted for tribe members in the extreme northern range of their territory.

In fact, the rest of the flight plan was routed, using convenient foothills and deep valleys, to ensure that any people, at the far edges of the three tribal lands that we needed to maneuver around, would not sight unknown flying objects in the sky and think to investigate. Everyone in the entire Task Force seemed sure that, soon enough, our neighbors would find out something was happening in the area we wanted for our own, and then they’d come sniffing around to see what was going on.

During the first rotation down the spiral escalator, I watched the forward view from the shuttle. RY told me later it took all of three minutes, 45 seconds for the Royal Yacht to swept around the section of the escalator covering the east-southeast to the south-southwest. Somewhere during that time, in the top portion of each of my displays, I saw a glittering blue ribbon of water! I knew it was the river all of us heard so much about; it seemed to slither in the sunlight through the terrain below toward the east. Just beyond that breathtaking sight was the first two somewhat meandering, thin red blinking lines overlaying the scene to the upper edges of my screens and indicating the northern reaches of territories claimed by two neighboring UP groups!

From our pre-EDL briefing, I knew that Marine Armored Assault Shuttle, AAS-8, landed on Thessaly a little over 48 hours ago, and I witnessed the resulting grumbling of my crewmates. AAS-8 carried 6th Platoon, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Mazon, which was reinforced by a heavy weapons squad.

According to plan, the Marine shuttle settled down on the rim of a plateau overlooking the broad, expansive plain that was at the center of the lands we intended to claim. Watered by a good-sized river and three of its tributaries as well as a lot of smaller creeks and streams, the plain—with its mix of forests, meadowlands, wetlands and lakes—contained the primary and secondary landing zones for our Task Force and all the ships, shuttles, and escape craft in our Evacuation Fleet.

Once the trailing Evacuation Fleet arrived, those ships would come down and make planet-fall in specified areas inside their assigned landing zone, which already would be secured by the Marines well before their first vessels made orbit. But, in the worse cases, a number of the smaller craft would have to begin their EDL immediately on reaching Thessaly do to lack of fuel. Those craft might come down anywhere short of our prepared landing zones. I knew the Marines said they’d be able to handle any water rescue scenarios that might develop if any craft making an unpowered EDL found their L was going to be at sea, or in some other body of water. But everyone hoped we’d not need those services.

I put those thoughts away and focused on what I’d learned from various briefings and some gentle behind the scene searches. One of the outstanding factors that made this site our best pick: the extensive cave systems in the limestone cliffs below the rim of the plateau above the southern border of the plain. Once all the shuttles in the Task Force landed, we’d be starting our work on all the projects needed to make this part of Thessaly our home. There would be not quite 10 planetary days before the summer solstice. With everything that needed to be done, before we knew it, winter would be on us, The caves would provide protection from weather as well as any predators on two or four feet that might make it through the Marine sensors, observation points, and the satellite network that would be seeded in place by drone shuttles before the rest of the Evacuation Fleet made orbit.

Captain Bertram’s advisors thought making the caves habitable would be better than everyone living through the winter in cramped shuttles, or trying to build enough housing from mostly green lumber harvested from the forest around us before the weather shut down that work. Taking over the caves and making them fit our long-term needs was one of the first priorities the combined talents of the Task Force faced.

That first would require driving out any animals that claimed the caves we wanted. Then teams would survey the cave systems before designs were drawn up. Using the design blueprints, other work teams would do the laser plumbing for drinking water, sewage, air inlets and exhausts, and to reach thermal gradients to help heat and cool the caves. There could be the need for enlarging stone rooms, cutting doors and stairs through the limestone, as well as smoothing and leveling floors. I figured there would be a mix of wood and composite material to help frame and build interior spaces. And I hoped I’d have more important duties to perform when it came time for others to make gravel, sawdust, and swing hammers.

RY let me know that the shuttle, Bee Hive, was being tracked on the inbound leg of its final approach, and was reported to be five minutes out. Arrbra’s shuttle was already under the protective umbrella provided by the anti-air batteries aboard AAS-8 and whatever toys the heavy weapons squad deployed. I thanked RY for that information, and I learned he was listening in on the Marine’s tactical channels. Having the electronic keys needed to descramble their communication signals, he decided to include all these facts in his commentary, along with everything else he was reporting to me.

So I was aware that Papa squad and Quebec squad of 6th Platoon had been boots on the ground for the last 40 hours, leaving Romeo squad as their reaction reserve. Romeo didn’t have easy reserve duty; they were tapped to provide the labor pool around the big shuttle until the first duty rotation. The two squads on over-watch duty were now in improved positions that provided protection, at least from the sun, at different locations along the entire rim of the plateau.

Their observation posts reported that they’d detected no human threats down in the plain out to 5,000 meters from their position since they opened for business. Other than four large, separate groups of herd beasts they were tracking moving around the huge plain, along with other birds and animals our earlier orbital scans showed should be expected, they saw nothing else but bio-traces or heat signatures from predators out hunting, singularly or in few groups. They reported they’d captured only two visuals of a few members of a pack of big wolves, and two solitary mountain lions.

The Sergeant making the report said that right now the only threat he could envision would be to any boots-on-the-ground out on the plain. And that would happen only if a stampede brewed up, sending one of the herds in the immediate direction of our two designated landing zones.

Then RY passed along one short internal communication and the resulting Kilo conversations between the members of Papa squad. The first communication stated that one of their Privates reported seeing a very tall, reddish-hair-covered creature moving through the trees on two legs. The Private said he saw the creature on his way back from carrying supplies to one of the observation posts in the edge of a forest on the northwest side of the plain. They said the Private was not wearing his Kilo helmet at the time, so there wasn’t any video. His duty partner, another Private, said he’d not seen a thing. He did say they were doing a fast slalom through another section of trees on the quad donk he was driving, intent to get back in time to eat hot chow.

The rest of the Marines in Papa squad were betting the Private saw a big bear; they said the kid was a No-CAR after all. Looking back over far-range thermal scans of the area at the time the Private thought he made the sighting was inconclusive. Something was there, but because of the trees, they couldn’t see the forest, so to speak.

In orbit above us and designated as Tail-end Charlie in our landing scheme, AAS-9 was reporting that the sky above our land zone out to the horizons were clear of any hostile craft, in fact clear of any craft at all in the atmosphere. AAS-9 was tracking everything our intelligence had determined should be above our entire territory as well. But those contacts were in low orbit above the atmosphere—what was left of the colonists’ original satellite system. And most of those satellites remaining were no threat, unless they fell out of orbit and, what didn’t burn up, hit the ground somewhere in our zone.

Strapped in the right seat and watching the slowly circling, sun-bright 360-degree view on my monitors as we descended, everything suddenly was becoming real to me. The Glenndeavor was wrecked; I didn’t know how badly because I’d purposely not read any of the reports sent by the Skeleton Crew that I’d hacked. That was before Task Force Bertram, containing our shuttle, departed the rest of the Evacuation Fleet to find and establish this protected place we would soon call home. Still, we were outside recognized Federation Space and, although emergency message drones were sent off to initiate our eventual recovery, help was very far away.

Gowno! We now knew there were actual living Centaurs here, just across the biggest river on the continent from us. And nearer by, would be one tribe of human hunter-gatherers who seemed to belong to a confederation of six other tribes. And, truth told, those people looked to me like they could have stepped right out of the better Old Earth movies I had; The Last of the Mohicans was one example that came to my mind.

What are both of our neighbors going to think of us, coming down from the sky and claiming territory relatively close by? I wondered. While I hoped both cultures, the UP and the Centaurs, would be welcoming, I still had a bad feeling about that. I didn’t want us to be considered some kind of gods, or worse, as devils, by people in the Confederation on our side of the river. And I felt the Centaurs would be too sophisticated to mistake us for star gods. I figured that from what I’d seen of their relationship with the Maori, if not from the history of their beginnings and their culture. A flash of the purple toga sundial filled my mind’s eye for a moment.

The Centaurs, I concluded, would be more interested in our tools, technologies, supplies, and maybe even us.

Gowno! I suddenly thought of another subject RY hadn’t discussed in his presentations.

Was there any evidence that either of our neighbors practiced slavery?

I hadn’t asked RY about the slavery question, because that could wait.

I heard Juliet talking to Marine FliCo, which was Space Marine-speak for Marine Flight Control on Thessaly. Task Force Command passed off responsibility for our shuttle to Marine FliCo when we entered the mesosphere. Now the Royal Yacht was 18 minutes from landing and slowly descending through 1000 meters. Also, according to RY’s voice in my ear-bud during the previous 12 minutes, everything was green; Juliet was flying our shuttle in the groove; we were riding the line; the shuttle was on the beam. RY’s colorful commentary finally managed to distract me from the amazing scenery displayed on my monitors. I swear, he must have accessed every movie or ancient television show that had to do with airplanes or space flight in my entire collection of Old Earth media files, were else would he come up with some of his hackneyed terms.

But who was I to spoil his fun? Before this mission, I’d never have considered that an Artificial Intelligence could have a sense of humor, let alone have fun. And from the tone of his deep voice, to the tempo of his delivery, and some of the almost teasing questions he’d asked about my thoughts on what I was seeing and experiencing, you couldn’t tell me RY wasn’t having fun. I know that some people say it’s a human characteristic, or failing—depending on point of view—to anthropomorphize animals, machines, and technology, even our gods. But I didn’t think I had to anthropomorphize RY, it seemed he had it code-monkeyed in his programming.

I wondered what those same people would say about the Centaurs of Thessaly? So far, I’d only seen these once mythical beings in videos taken from orbit, not face to face. But from what I’ve witnessed so far in all the video evidence, I’ve certainly anthropomorphized them. I mean, I saw several Centaurs greet and shake hands with Maori traders, and it seemed they were even joking with each other!

While I philosophized, part of me was watching the sunny terrain passing below since we passed the IP. Now our flight path followed a deep wide valley with its medium-size river, which was winding through patches of forests that spread up both substantial hillsides. Zooming in the focus, I could see gravel and rocks on the river bottom through a meter-and-a-half of clear water as the river cut a sparkling ribbon across sections of marsh and then meadowlands. It was easy to tell where the deep stretches and holes were because the riverbed disappeared and the water turned a clear emerald green. I could even see plenty of fish! I watched as the tributary snaked into another forest, all of which was leading us toward the huge plain to the south, and our landing zone. The Royal Yacht was up high enough that the three groups of herd animals I spotted along the valley floor below didn’t seem to notice us passing overhead.

As if he could read my thoughts, RY took that moment to remind me the advanced design of the Royal Yacht contained so much anti-grav tech that, as long as we maintained subsonic speeds, the only sound signature our shuttle produced would be caused by air flowing around the airframe and over the shuttle’s stubby wings.

With part of my attention on the monitors in front of my seat, I decided to focus the rest of my attention of exploring my connection with Juliet. Immediately, I became aware she was breathing harder than normal; I could hear her breathing beside me. But the connection also told me that excitement was due to her aroused response to the cumulative experience of what she was just about to accomplish as our Shuttle Commander. She’d piloted the Royal Yacht away from the doomed Glenndeavor, went on to rescue three refugees and their XL-5s out of the Big Black, flew along with Task Force Bertram to make orbit around this Earth-Norm planet. And right now, she was just about to finish our EDL!

I could feel Juliet’s pleasure and pride in the fact that we’d start building our new home, as well as explore a world new to us. And we’d do that together as a household, not separately as just individual members of ExServ. She felt that we were starting something for us, not just the survivors of the Glenndeavor. I could feel my emotions, and my body, responding to Juliet’s ocean of emotion.

It seemed the tide, as well as our shuttle, was coming in.

And, of course, there was everyone’s excitement about our new neighbors: a mysterious Confederation of human hunter-gatherers on this side of the big river, whose far-most northern border was less than 50 kilometers away; and our neighbors on the other side of the Great Eastern River—the Centaur people!

A shot of adrenaline hit my bloodstream; according to RY, there were only 10 more minutes before we’d be over our landing zone. I could feel the building excitement and anticipation of the all the crew on the Flight Deck. In the screens, I could see the beginning of our destination slowly being revealed—the expansive rolling plain ahead—as the Royal Yacht approached the mouth of the valley we’d been flying above. Good to his word after the initial reveal of our descent rate, RY hadn’t mentioned again our velocity or airspeed. And right now, I knew we were flying along at a pretty good clip! At least nothing on the ground was passing in a blur!

He did tell me we were at 300 meters and on full anti-grav lift and propulsion, moving almost directly south. The river that drained the valley below was off to our right with a band of trees growing up all along both banks and blending into clumps of scrub scattered throughout the tall meadow grasses that spread toward the lowering hillsides along the valley floor to our port and starboard as the shuttle continued forward.

Maintaining our altitude, we were headed toward that undulating terrain of the central plain that I could see was dotted with forests and meadows. Sweeping forward along our route, I focused my screens where the river below moved slowly through a band of marshy wetlands two kilometers deep and three klicks wide before the waterway emptied into the bigger river that flowed from east to west through the plain. According to the information in the bottom corner of my screens, that convergence was eight kilometers beyond the mouth of this river valley.

As the valley terrain below the Royal Yacht transitioned into the plain, here and there several herds of animals appeared in the tall prairie grasses that boarded the meadowlands farther out; each of the herds were all headed in that direction. One group seemed to me to be Old Earth bison; another was some kind of really big and rangy-looking cows with huge horns. The next was a herd of surprisingly large deer-like beasts that looked to be two-and-a-half meters tall at their front shoulders. Passing quickly below, I glimpsed the bulls in the herd with massive antlers atop their heads. I didn’t notice if any of the members in each drove looked up as we passed over; but if they did, I didn’t think they’d be concerned.

From scan information, I knew there was a species of huge raptors that ranged all over the Big River basin, perhaps the animals below thought we were one of those big birds. But animals of the size below us must know that only their young might be seen as prey for those raptors. For a moment, I thought about the wreckage images RY showed Juliet and me of the power-assisted glider our scans discovered. It seemed highly likely someone designed the glider purposely to be mistaken for one of those birds by anyone looking up as the craft soared high overhead. I wondered, again, what that was all about.

I took in a deep breath and held it for a moment! Everything around us was part of our new territory—and beyond!

I knew from RY that all of the data gathered since we made orbit and began scanning, and which was still being recorded and monitored by the Marine shuttle, AAS-9, hadn’t detected any natives within a hundred kilometers to the east, south, or west of our claim. Even though RY estimated the northern boarder of the closest UP tribe was 50 kilometers to the south of our territory, it seemed none of their hunters or gatherers ranged very far northward in summer. That was just fine by me.

However, there were traces of human activity found in the areas just outside what would be our borders. There were several seasonal hunting camps with large supplies of stacked firewood and stone structures that appeared to be used to smoke meat. Most of those sites were found near caves, and water was always close at hand.

Across the Big River, as we’re starting to call the Great Eastern River, scans showed several of the Centaurs’ trails that were underlain with woven bimetal carpeting. One of those trails followed along the western bank of the Big River, and once the trail entered the Set-Aside lands, there were square corrals fenced with large limestone blocks, all of uniform size and age. There was also one seriously huge bridge spanning a steep section of valley that was constructed in a series of concrete arches that looked to be 50 meters high!