The Book of Ominiue: Starborn (44 page)

‘Gentlemen!’ the general’s tired New American accent broke through.

‘I’m deadly serious, Thorn!’ Williams turned to his commanding officer.

‘So you keep repeating yourself, over and over,’ Hanniver replied, his tone much less severe but still cynical.

‘Because I’m terrified that one day it
will
happen!’ he insisted. ‘And we keep giving him autonomy?’

‘He’s sanctioned under Astronaut law,’ the general put his elbows on the table before him and rubbed his temples as he looked down at the letter, ‘and the locals will riot if we do anything to him.’

‘So what, who gives a damn about the space rats? It’s all just smoke and mirrors with them anyway; they’re all words and no actions. I don’t see why we don’t just knock them down a few pegs where they belong! For all we know they’ve already collapsed and we’re rid of their gorram treaties.’

‘Your hatred for the Starborn has stunted your ability to use your brain,’ the Brigadier mocked. ‘Regardless of Astronaut intervention, there’s still the natives and they worship him!’

‘And after a time they will get over it. We can easily hold out for ten years against them, especially out here. They’ll tire of him eventually and see him for what he really is.’

‘You just don’t get it,’ Hanniver laughed. ‘They think he will save them from
us
!’

‘All the more reason to stop him now!’ he raised his voice again as he banged his hand on the table.

‘And what? Fulfil their damn prophecies at the same time?’

‘How can locking him up cause our extermination? Even if their
entire
world marched against us we would still win!’

‘And the lionmen would be wiped out to the very last one!’ Hanniver barked back, ‘because that’s their way. There is no compromise, there is no stalemate. If they can’t win then they would march to their deaths, and that includes their women and their children. They would spill their own blood rather than watch us invade!’ The air-vice marshal’s eyes narrowed at Hanniver but he could not think of anything to say without repeating himself. The man was right, but he knew he was right too.

‘If the Lions don’t bow to compromise than we shouldn’t either,’ he finally said with an air of restraint.

Hanniver fell back into his chair. He looked up at the Air Force leader, ‘What can we do?’

The general looked up at the two; his old grey eyes thoughtful. Williams also sat down as Hendingson began to speak, ‘I’ve asked myself many times; while studying old colonisations. What’s the biggest failure of worship? I don’t mean worship of something you cannot see, but of something you can see!’ the general straightened himself in his seat, holding his hands in front of himself. ‘My conclusion is exposure; exposure is what destroyed those in the past. The more they see the Starborn the more they will discover he’s not a prophet. The assassination attempt proved there’s already discontent,’ Danto gave half a laugh at the thought of the plot; he was disappointed that it had failed.

‘I don’t know if that’d work, plenty of old prophets in our history changed their stance as they grew old and their followers still followed, logic states time is a prophet’s enemy, but humans have always had a knack of proving logic wrong, and on top of that, I still don’t think this will work,’ confessed the Brigadier. ‘I don’t think this is god worship or anything like that, I think it’s something else.’

‘What is it then?’ Williams replied leaning back into the seat, making himself comfortable.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Hanniver raised his hands in admission, ‘but there’s something different in it, something I can’t explain.’

‘Like this Maltat theory?’ the general replied.

‘You wanna test that theory? Simply shoot one of their pets and see if they turn into a dribbling vegetable.’ If the atmosphere of the room was not so low they might have laughed at the air vice-marshals dry humour.

‘And the Starborn has not commented upon it at all?’ the general looked concerned.

‘I think,’ Hanniver spoke carefully, ‘that he’s unsure himself.’

‘You mean the Starborn believes in animal souls?’ Williams snorted at the ridiculous notion of a Starborn being superstitious.

Hanniver shook his head at this, ‘No, he can’t develop a scientific theory either way, so he refuses to commit.’

‘The very thought is ludicrous!’ Williams dismissed with a flick of his wrist.

‘He watches the native animals a lot; I think he’s trying to find evidence.’

‘It’s because he’s bloody crazy,’ Danto said. The general gave him a dark look and he instantly fell quiet under the silent command.

Hanniver ignored him and addressed his concerns to the general, ‘There’s odd behaviour from him, not Starborn anyway, but there’s nothing I can add to any of reports already made, or what the robots have already recorded. It could be his partial Star Born Victim status mingled with his unusually high level of intelligence. I honestly don’t know.’

‘Who can,’ the general spun his seat around a bit as he pondered. ‘He’s intelligent, and that intelligence is of immense benefit to us, but I do share Dan’s fear, there’s something off and I do have sleepless nights wondering what he’s truly capable of; for us or against us. But I’m still not convinced if he’s able to disobey a command; from us or the Astronauts.’

‘What about native influences?’ Williams looked at both Hanniver and the general.

‘He could be influenced by the lionmen. He trusts them, but if they weren’t trustworthy he wouldn’t bother. He purely reacts to how they behave.’

‘So he does hold opinions?’ the general wanted to confirm.

Hanniver thought about the question carefully, ‘Yes,’ he finally added. Williams looked like he was trying to hold himself back, wanting to add his thoughts but knowing he would only incur the general’s wrath and probably create one of his infamous bad tempers.

‘We must remember,’ Hanniver stressed, ‘that he’s not reported as a full Starborn and he has basic rights until a trial can determine his status.’ The general sighed in acknowledgement. He knew this very well and was the main reason he held back.

‘We should just trial him now,’ Williams cut in.

‘Except none of us are exactly impartial, are we?’ the general snapped without needing to.

‘Ten years is a long time to wait. Whether we condemn him, or even worse; free him after judging him invalid here and now,’ Hanniver added. The general nodded in agreement.

‘You sympathise with him?’ The air-vice marshal asked, but for the first time it was a genuine question and not an accusation or passing putdown.

‘To a degree I do,’ The Brigadier admitted. ‘I worry about his time, especially if he does regain his emotions, any subjectification could destroy him; he may become fragile from actions imposed beforehand. We can’t know what will happen.’

‘I think about that too.’ The general added. ‘It would be a waste to confine him.’

‘And I say we’re better off safe than sorry,’ Williams pointed out. The general reluctantly agreed, though the issue always returned to native worship and the fact that they must maintain healthy relations no matter what.

The general then sat up straight again and his tone somewhat more active, ‘Alright then, I have lots of work to do, especially if we’re to spend the next few days in Karmon.’ Hanniver stood up and saluted his superior, and turned to leave. Williams remained seated and the Brigadier glanced suspiciously back at him before closing the door behind him.

When Williams heard the Brigadiers footsteps fade he turned his attention back to the general who had pulled out a computer and began to write on it, ‘He likes the Starborn.’

‘He is uncommitted.’ The general corrected without looking up from the screen.

‘Still, he’s blind to the threat.’

‘The Brigadier was employed for this mission as a mediator. It’s his job to get along with everyone. There’s no surprise that he’s a sympathiser for the
half
Starborn!’

The air-vice marshal then responded, ‘Regardless, we should keep an eye on Forrester.’

The general banged his electronic-pen upon the table. His gaze darkened, ‘We have cameras and droids
practically
everywhere, and his position and activities are monitored through his
wristcom
. He can’t take a
piss
without us knowing! What more do you want?’ Danto raised his hands in peace but the general’s mood was too far gone so the officer rose from his seat. He saluted the old man and left.

***

‘Argh!’ Kíe’arathorne called in frustration as the incorrect message flashed on his screen. ‘Your time system is very unorthodox,’ he cried out in aggravation. There was a murmur of agreement from the other students in the room. ‘Why is one day divided to twenty-four hours and one hour to sixty minutes? It’s very odd way to divide time. Do you not use your moon to track the hour?’

‘We do,’ their teacher, Kaylan replied. Kíe’arathorne began to pick up the various accents of the Earthmen. This teacher had what he thought the most difficult accent to understand. They called her a Southern New Zealander. She had pointed her Island out when they first began lessons and she also pointed out other major nations within their union including Shayne’s. All their variations amused him: their skin colours and facial features, their accents and varying body structures. If he knew more about the places beyond Dífrun he would be aware of the amount of difference a race of people could have, Earth genetic variation was mild compared to most worlds as their traits were gradually merging together but they still seemed extreme to the students sitting in that room.

‘But we use it to divide a year into months and not a day into moon hours.’

Kíe’arathorne paused while he was writing on the tablet; he looked up at his teacher with his face contorted in confusion. They all had the earpieces while a computer translated. The journeyman was ahead of most of his classmates and could understand most of what she said without the droids help but still the earpiece helped when he was taken off guard; as he was now.

‘That doesn’t make sense!’ he finally said after trying to picture the moon as a method for measuring the time of the year. His only theory lay between the position of the moon and sun relative to each other but that was not effective enough for him. Mapping the stars at night would provide better time keepers.

‘That’s because our moon isn’t like yours. Our moon moves across the sky like the Sun does.’ At this Kíe’arathorne’s eyes widened and the other students all reacted with sounds of amazement.

‘You lie!’ a Kíbaroth Lionman accidently called out. She then looked down at her table with some level of embarrassment at her outburst, but Kíe’arathorne shared her sentiment. He could not imagine the moon moving in the sky and his initial thoughts were the same.

‘It’s true,’ Kaylan looked at the shocked students with mild amusement. ‘I can show you. Our months are roughly calculated by the time it takes for the moon to move through all phases. On your planet that time covers a single day because your moon has a special orbit, but our moon moves around our planet, like Casader moves around the Sun,’ Kaylan then picked up a couple of balls from a draw full of visual aid-props. She held the larger blue one up for them to see, and moved a small red one around it; both balls had a single dot drawn onto them and as she demonstrated their orbits she had both dots always facing each other.

‘Yaulma moves like this, following the dot of the planet, Iraquis,’ she spun the ball a few times, she had to twist her hands around to complete an orbit but they got the point. She was grateful they had a decent understanding of Kepler Orbits. ‘For you the moon orbits once a day, but our moon is more like this,’ and she rotated the blue ball in her hand while red ball lagged behind, shown by the dots moving away from each other ‘For us the moon takes around 28 days to rotate one orbit. If you measured the position of the moon at the same time each day you will notice it’s in a different position in the sky, and so it moves across the sky much like the Sun does but a little slower.’ She then placed the ball on the table and opened up a file on the computer. The students watched as the computer projected a movie on the back screen, showing sped-up movements of the Sun and Moon across the Earth. The image then went to other planets, some with more than one moon, some with no moons and even one colonised world that had a beautiful view of a gas giant in its sky.’

‘What is that!?’ one of the southern humans asked in amazement.

‘This is the planet Jovaridian. One of the very first Jovian planets within the habitable zone and a liveable satellite, and the planet you are looking at is a gas giant; several hundred times larger than this planet.’ The western Empire could not claim the first Jovian world, both the Chinese Federation and the Arab Empires discovered colonisable Jovian satellites well before them. ‘In this instance, it’s not us who has the moon, we
are
the moon.’

‘Do you have cities on the Joe-evian world as well?’ a male southerner tried to say.

‘We would go down if we could, but there’s no rocky surface,’ she stomped her foot on the ground to emphasis the ground. ‘That is one big sky until it reaches an ocean of Hydrogen so dense that you’d pop. You wouldn’t even make it that far; you’d be fried by all the radiation caught up in its magnetic field. No, it makes for nothing other than a pretty picture — and some extra-long nights as the gas-worlds pass between the moon and the sun.’