Earth Song: Etude to War (12 page)

“You mean to say you think Mindy Harper went off on her expedition, and never returned?”

He simply gestured at the empty coffin as his reply, then motioned to another researcher who wore a lab coat and carried a Concordia made biological sampling device. “We'd like to perform the test on you we requested earlier.”

Minu suddenly felt a little dizzy with concern, the cold hand of fear clenching at her heart. Chriso Alma all those years ago, upset at the then-director of the Historical Society requesting a genetic test of Minu. Her first instinct was to refuse the test. How dare they question who she was? What were they even suggesting?

“Why is this necessary?”

Porter cocked an eyebrow then looked around at all the other expectant faces.

“Can you give me and the Chosen here some privacy please?”

A moment later she was alone with him and Engles. “Now, I completely understand your trepidation in this situation.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Porter, I don't believe you do.”

He sighed and gave a little indifferent shake of his head then a shrug. “I can see your point of view. But I would hope you can see ours as well. It now seems a possibility that one of our most famous bloodlines is in question. I don't see how this could affect you in any real way.”

“The Harper family line is a huge part of our family history.”

“I know that, Chosen, but you have yourself brought nearly more fame to your own name as any that could be lent from the ancient family of Mindy and Billy Harper. Tens of thousands are alive and living better lives because of your inventions and exploits. You've saved the planet from alien aggression at least twice. Are you seriously concerned that should you be not related to the Harper line in a way you believed, that this somehow—”

“A name is more part of your identity than you realize,” she cut in, more defensively than she'd intended.

She almost mentioned the sapphire she wore around her neck. A stone her father said came from Mindy, a gift given by Billy Harper on their anniversary in Tranquility. The first native mined rare gem.

Porter looked at her for a long moment, as did Engles. Minu felt her cheeks flush, then it quickly turned to anger. Porter eventually nodded his head. “Okay, I see your point of view. Perhaps we have as little to be gained by determining you are not directly descended from Mindy Harper as you have to lose from finding out the same. However, history is important to us as a people.

“Humanity is an orphan, Mrs. Groves. As a people we have little faith. My ancestors were Catholic. I've read a lot of history on religions on Earth. Aside from the Jews in New Jerusalem and a small but vocal core of Shinto followers in Peninsula, there aren't many we would call religious on Bellatrix.

“I would even hazard to say that there is more of a religion around the Chosen than any sort of deity worship. But without that faith in our lives, what is left? Our history, for the most part. Look at the following of old Earth movies in theaters. Sales for five hundred year old movies outpace our own by five to one. Our cities are named after Earth cities. Our burgeoning sports leagues are copying those from Earth. What do we have except our history?”

Minu wanted to disagree with at least some of what the man said, but unfortunately couldn't. As a fan of history she knew he was telling the truth. The Rangers wouldn't exist without her studying the history of Earth military units. The shock rifles were inspired by Earth military weapons, as were Aaron and Gregg's Enforcers. Her entire drive to move humanity from obscurity to some prominence in the galaxy was inspired by her feeling that mankind should have a better history than it was experiencing.
We have to be meant for something more!

“Do it,” she agreed finally.

Aaron looked up when the cabin door opened four hours later. He was about to look away when he saw tears in her eyes, and in an instant he was up and moving towards her. “What happened?”

Minu shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes as she deftly dodged her husband and made her way to the liquor cabinet. Aaron stopped and watched as his nearly teetotaling wife poured a rare shot of whiskey, neat, and slugged it back.

After putting the glass down she held out her hands, more tears leaking down her face. Aaron picked up where he left off and came to her. She folded herself into his powerful arms. He was only a few centimeters taller than her so her head fit comfortably on his shoulder. “Are they finished out there?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, “the last transport was taking off as I came back in.”

“So can you tell me now why Darth Vader is crying?”

Minu coughed and gave a little laugh, taking her head off his shoulder and looking him in the eye. All the things he'd seen her go through in their time together, including those horrendous hours together on the Kaatan after finding out she was pregnant with their child, then losing it, then finding out Lilith was that child, none of them compared to the look of loss and confusion on her face.

“They did the genetic test on me.”

“So? Why did that affect you like this?”

She reached up to her neck and felt the sapphire hanging there. “Chriso isn't my father.”

Interlude

March 2
nd
, 534 AE

Leasehold Office Comptroller, Government Complex, Nexus

The Office of Leaseholds on Nexus was considered a select job among the bureaucratic class of civil servants that thronged to the capital world of the Concordia. Many of the millions of jobs were considered political by nature. As species gained prominence or lost favor those positions came and went. Depending on a species’ place within the galactic hierarchy, one office or another was assigned to them for control. All except two offices, those of War and Leaseholds. Those two were reserved for the Higher Order species only.

It was the luck of those beings who snuck in through favors or subterfuge, or were just skilled enough to be assigned to the Office of Leaseholds, because it was an easy assignment that never turned over. Do your job, don't piss any powerful Higher Order species off, and you get to serve until retirement. And unlike the War Office, few members of the Higher Orders preferred the assignments. They were just too dull.

Ataalan, a member of the Traaga species, explained his average day to a nest-mate once after a trip home to Coorson. “I sit and stare at data updates on uninhabited but claimed worlds all day.”

The other Traaga had stared at him with wide, amazed eyes. Most would sell one of their extra limbs for such a wonderfully boring job. He was the only Traaga to work in the office, and one of only a few hundred even employed on Nexus. It was an unfortunate fact that many of the Higher Order species found his people… distasteful.

Ataalan took no notice of the prejudice his kind lived under every day. His apartment on Nexus was larger than the space his entire family shared on Coorson, and it was included in his pay. By eating only food he brought with him and taking public transports, he brought home nearly 90% of his income. And on Coorson, that was a lot.

It had been at least a year since Ataalan had seen a supervisor, and that was fine with him. He wasn’t even sure who his supervisor was currently, and it didn’t really matter. As a survey monitor, his duties only required that he scan data before approving it for archiving. The computers had more discretion in decision making than he did, and that was also fine with him.

Two months ago, three of his nest-mates had been working on an Hgog contract, something to do with their energy harvesting station in a distant corner of the galaxy. Something went wrong and they’d been killed. The energy backlash had incinerated their bodies instantly. Boring was good.

The only downside of Ataalan's job was the unpredictable nature of the workload. If he had the same amount of data to review every day, he knew he could settle into a routine and happily do it for the rest of his boring life. They'd find his desiccated, bored, smiling corpse sitting in front of the same computer terminal fifty or so years from now, only getting curious about him when his queue was full of uncompleted tasks,

It was because of that unpredictable nature that his assignment load was behind, and he was annoyed. He'd been in one of those comfortable periods for a month when the data load was light, and the days blurred one into another. Then, suddenly, there was more data than he could handle in a day and he was struggling.

Then he got an email from a supervisor. His work was becoming unsatisfactory. Ataalan had stared at the email in a mixture of amazed consternation. He did have a supervisor, and it was unhappy. One of his life goals, to do his job without being noticed, was failing. Ataalan realized his job might be in danger. And since he was nearly supporting his entire nest back on Coorson single handed, extreme measures were called for. He starting working harder.

Another week passed but still he was behind, so he began coming in early, then staying late. He even ate his meager lunches in his cubicle. And it was that last step that finally began to produce results.

What he didn't know was the intelligent automation that ran the operation had noted his increased efficiency, and began routing the highest priority data through Ataalan's queue. And so it was that he gained the attention of something he would dearly wish hadn't noticed him.

He was just finishing his lunch, One arm was feeding food into his mouth, the three sets of jaws chewing the savory pieces of meat and vegetables, while the other three arms manipulated the computer interface. He understood the basics of the data he reviewed. They were high resolution, multiple spectrum, scans of planets in far-flung star systems across the galaxy.

Each data packet contained specific coding elements. An identification string, a coordinate string, and a record identifier that would tell anyone who had processed the final review. The reviews took him between ten minutes, to hours, depending on what sort of review it was.

As he did any number of times every day, a new data packet loaded into his computer while he finished the last of his lunch. He noted the high priority tag and referenced the coordinate string, calling up from records the baseline data. One arm packed away his food carrier by touch as his eyes scanned the data. Immediately he noted something unusual.

The recorded baseline data included previous scans. This location was reviewed every hundred standard years, but this was the first time an operator such as himself had been sent the live data going back five scans. That was unusual. But as he examined the new data against the last reviewed scan, it became hugely unusual. So much so that he just sat there for a minute and stared.

Traaga weren't a curious species. It was a trait that made them such highly sought-after laborers. Want a job done in questionable territory, with questionable outcome, of a questionable legality? Hire the Traaga. Beyond the price and particulars of the contract, it can be a relative certainty that they will not ask a single question or look beyond the basic requirements of their duties.

But now Ataalan was presented with a serious conundrum for a Traaga. The file was flagged for review every century, and the differences between the last review (five centuries ago) and this one were profound. He felt the stirrings of curiosity, and despite his better judgment he followed that curiosity and called up all five of the most recent surveys.

There was the evidence. This world had been uninhabited five centuries ago, and then over the intervening time massive settlements had begun taking shape, really exploding in the last century. The analysis subroutine placed the estimates now between ten and fifty million beings living on the world.

The computer had tagged the file as 'Within Normal Parameters, File.” It was evident to any being that this was not the case. How could the super powerful sorting program make such an error? It was true that double checking the program was his job, but it was a normally satisfyingly boring job. The usual errors were the computer classifying an asteroid impact crater as new habitation, or a flooded river valley could be misinterpreted as an industrial complex. Compared to those oversights, this was nothing short of cybernetic insanity.

He swept over the world and in just a half hour cataloged eleven major cities, two hundred smaller settlements, six industrial centers, and at least two land reclamation projects involving dams and levees.

Ataalan never once wondered where the fabulous data he analyzed every day came from. Why would he? It was just a tool of his job. Does a soldier wonder at the source of his weapons? Or a physician at where the sterile dressings come from? Almost any other species would have long become suspicious after reviewing scan after scan of the same worlds, almost always from different orbits and resolutions. Sometimes they were even distorted from all but obvious redshift.

He dug deeper, calling up the complete file on this mystery world. It was class C type 3. Class C was an old world of limited use, and type 3 meant it was part of a block grant of worlds to one species, though not currently licensed for a leasehold. The last time it was inhabited was nearly half a million years, and then only as a safehold for an un-awakened species. The star was becoming unstable. It was only a few hundred thousand years from becoming class D, and thus no longer of interest to his office.

Fraud, was the word that came to his mind. Someone has manipulated the main discretionary program to ignore changes to this world. But how was that possible? Only the great Higher Order species even had access to those programs.

Ataalan sent a message through the chain of command in the department. “I have an abnormal result from the computers,” was his simple message. And that done he flagged the file, moved it into his personal work folder, and took the next assignment in his queue. It was an hour later when the supervisor appeared.

“Operator,” spoke a voice from the entrance to his workspace. The voice was not understandable, but the words he heard clearly were from the translator pendant that was surgically installed onto his furry 'chest'.

Ataalan had long learned to override his species instinct to retract his head into the protective bony upper torso and skitter away on powerful legs when surprised. Instead he turned his head and regarded the being who stood there. It was a Tog, dressed only in a green and blue belt, the uniform colors of the Leasehold Office. On the belt were a threefold nestled design of multi-colored diamonds. A supervisor.

“How can I help you, supervisor?”

The skeletally thin centaur regarded him with its almond shaped blue-on-blue eyes. Where many beings had a mouth on their heads the Tog only had a tiny pair of breathing slits. “You have been reviewing a file,” the Tog spoke in its native language, a combination of hand movements and light pulses from their specialist physiology that were rendered into Traaga by Ataalan's translator. It carried a small metallic case in one dexterous hand, seemingly unaware it was there. The Tog gave a file number, but he already knew it would be the one that he'd stored.

“Yes, I am familiar with it.”

“Please access the file.”

Ataalan looked at hser for a moment before turning back to the large computer. It only took a second for his fingers to file the current task away and call up the unusual one. The Tog leaned slightly closer to read the identification numbers, then removed a small specially-made tablet from hser belt and consulted it.

“Yes, that is the file.”

“What should I do about it, supervisor. This is an unusual situation.”

The Tog turned hser head to regard Ataalan. Those unblinking eyes conveyed no emotions whatsoever, but he was still afraid. The Tog were not a deadly species like the T'Chillen, or the Tanam. The latter harbored an illogical hatred for his species that none of them understood. Still, the Tog were known for their deadly detached ability to make life and death decisions. Ataalan wondered if it was because their species had only one sex. That would make him less happy. But they were calm and logical, just like his own species, and that was the reason they often worked in the Leasehold Office.

“You are to process the file.”

“Process it for violation review?”

“No, process it for completed and move onto new tasks.”

Ataalan looked from the computer to the Tog and back again, indecision making his head pop up and down slightly like a jack-in-the-box. You were honor bound to follow the directions of your supervisor. And you were also required to report any violations you found to the proper authorities. In this case, perhaps the War Office? Squatters were living on a licensed leasehold world. It might be a poor quality world, but it was still illegal. He'd never have anyone with authority over him give an order that violated the law.

“But supervisor…”

“Why are you hesitating?” Ataalan chirped piteously and looked around, desperately wishing there was a tree to scramble up and hide in. “Do you not value your job?”

“I do,” he squeaked. It wasn't any sense of honor that kept him from action, it was his species own natural sense of inaction. Evolution taught them that the safest way to avoid getting injured was to remain still and do nothing. That instinct normally served them well in a complex bureaucracy like the Concordia Quorum.

The Tog watched him for a moment more before speaking. “You do not need to become concerned.” Hse turned the computer tablet it held and showed him a computer code. “Please enter this access number.”

Ataalan was so scared it took two tries before his computer accepted the data. When it did, it revealed access to the confidential leaseholders’ file on the world, including what species controlled the block of worlds. That data was normally hidden from an operator like himself. It took a moment to focus on the details, but when he did he was stunned.

“The block grant belongs to the Tog,” he said incredulously.

“Yes.”

“But why are you squatting on your own world?” It was a question asked out of curiosity, and it surprised him that he'd asked it.

“That is not your concern.”

“But—”

“We cannot violate the law by colonizing our own world, is that not correct?”

It was technically wrong. There was no active leasehold, but they did control the world. All the Tog had to do was file the paperwork. A simple act that took almost no time. It made no sense.

“It is not a violation of the letter of the law.”

“Good, then we are in agreement. Process the file and continue your duties.”