The Stars Came Back (19 page)

Allonia: Knock-knock?

Helton: (OC, from the head) Come in, be there in a minute.

Allonia comes in and sits down at the desk.
She runs her eyes around the room and sees the book that Helton found in the tunnel on the foot of his bed. She looks at it curiously for a moment, then lazily reaches over to pick it up to look at it. She leafs through it casually, examining the large hole in one side where the grenade blasted a shallow crater about seven inches across the book and nearly halfway through it. The edges of the crater are tattered and blackened. The rest of the pages are silvery white. She runs her hands over the undamaged side, feeling for something she cannot see. She looks more closely.

Allonia: Lights 50
percent.

The room bright
ens. She looks more closely, angling the book to get the best visibility.

Allonia: Lights 80
percent.

In the brighter light
she turns and angles it. She can faintly see a design on the undamaged cover. A set of twelve interlocking cogwheels, loosely encircled by a chain. Helton walks in from the head.

Allonia: What are these
marks?

Helton: What
marks?

Allonia: These.

Helton examines the book closely.

Helton: Hmmm… That looks like… almost like some of the things carved into the stones at Planet Movers
grav-post sites.

Allonia:
Is it a book about them?

Helton: Could be. Huh. Looks like there are
some marks showing up inside, too.

Helton holds the book angled to the light, look
ing at the edges of the pages where they are damaged by the grenade. He sees faint scattered dots and lines, with more around the edges of the crater. No obvious groups or patterns, but most marks are very small lines, little more than dots. More than just noise on a bad photocopy, but no clear or obvious patterns.

Helton:
I wonder?… I’ll have to borrow a microscope or scanner from Stenson to get a closer look. See if there is anything legible inside. I’m sure those weren’t there earlier. One more thing on tomorrow’s list. What’s up?

Allonia:
Just dropping by to say thank you for sending Kwon and his family this way. He’s a great cook, and I was going
crazy
down there trying to get three meals a day for everyone. He makes it seem easy. And knows what to do with just about everything! And little Kimi is the cutest thing! Quinn has been treating her like a favorite little sister.

Helton: Kwon’s an old friend
, helped me out more than once. Trying to find someone here not being leaned on by Seymore whom I can trust is difficult. Just when I think things are turning to shit, something good pops up.

Allonia: Unless it’s more shit, first.

Helton: Well, yeah, that too, but things are looking good at the moment. Anything else?

Allonia: No, just thanks, good night, and see you in the morning!

Helton: You’re welcome. G’night.

DISSOLVE TO

INT - DAY - Engineering

Stenson and Helton sit at a workbench with a scanner over the book. They are looking at a screen with an image of the book’s cover.

Stenson: Let’s see what we have here. Visible first.

The image zooms in gradually and becomes slightly more detailed.

Stenson: (
Thinking out loud) Enhance contrast …

He fiddles with the controls and the images get much sharper.

Helton: OK, cogs and chains for sure. Definitely Planet Mover style. Any matches with known engravings?

Stenson:
Easy to check… (taps at the computer for a second) Nope, nothing exact. Hmmm… Twelve gears, 144 links. Pretty common gear and link count, typical gear ratios with teeth in multiples of six. Pretty basic style composite. OK… IR?

The image changes, but not much.

Helton: UV next, I suppose?

Stenson fiddles again with the controls
, looking back and forth between image and controls as the image changes

Stenson: Chem scan says…
Not
off-the-shelf molecules… interesting chemicals. Should be both photo
and
oh-two reactive.

Helton:
React to light or oxygen?

Stenson: (
Cautiously) Nnnnooooo… I think… I think it’ll only react to oxygen in the presence of light, or vice versa. Have to play with it a bit to find what sort of concentrations and intensity and wavelength it likes best, but I’d bet that’s it.

Helton: So, not your garden-variety desert guru text?

Stenson: Nope.
That
it most assuredly is not, unless you consider the Garden of Eden to be “garden variety.”

Helton:
Look inside now?

Stenson: Be my guest
.

He waves Helton to
ward the book. Helton removes the book from the scanner, opens it to the first page on the undamaged side, slides it back under.

Helton: Can you composite all those?

Stenson: Patience, patience.

Helton: Visible first?

The screen shows a few faint marks scattered about the page. The contrast is enhanced, but there is nothing obvious worth further attention. Clicking to IR and UV show no change, though in different colors. Scanning shows most of the page to be a sea of chemical signatures with no distinct patterns.

Stenson: Well, nothing there…
or perhaps, a
lot
of nothing there
yet
.

Helton: So, we just leave it out in the weather and wait?

Stenson: Pretty much. Lots going on here, so I don’t really have time to experiment properly. In the meantime, I’d leave it open with a wide-spectrum light on it, check regularly, see what happens.

Helton:
Any ideas?

Stenson: More ideas than Harbin has ways of killing you, but until
I have more data it’s just wild speculation. I like knowing enough to make
educated
guesses.

Helton: So
just… be patient?

Stenson: Yup, ‘fraid so.

FADE TO BLACK

Levels

FADE IN

EXT - D
AY – Training ground near the ship

The recruits, SGT Kaushik,
CPL Kaminski, and 1SG Reel stand in the morning sun. The recruits are in a two row formation with Kaushik and Kaminski as the squad leaders. They are all dressed in simple camo fatigue uniforms. Arrayed before the formation is a series of mannequins, each clad differently. From left to right are:

● 
Simple cloth tunic and trousers, nothing but a belt knife and a staff leaning against it

● 
Padded cloth reinforced with leather arm, leg, and chest protection, a saber and spear

● 
Romanesque body armor, greaves, shield, helm, sword, vambrace, spear

● 
Chain mail and some plates, good helm, sword, bow, spear, ax

● 
Full articulated plate of steel, sword, crossbow, bow, ax, mace, flail

● 
No body armor, just a uniform, helmet, simple bolt rifle, bayonet, and revolver

● 
High-tech body armor covering more body area, obvious electronics, semi-auto rifle and sidearm

● 
Full articulated power-assisted synthetic/composite armor, lots of electronics, several weapons with lights and laser ranging and target designation units

● 
Full space armor, remote-powered beam weapons, machine guns, grenade launcher, etc.

Harbin stands before them, sometimes pacing back and forth slowly as he talks, looking them in the eye to emphasize points, occasionally shrugging to acknowledge that he knows he’s simplifying things. His tone is patient and quietly emphatic; it’s a topic he knows well.

Harbin: If you get mugged, your home is attacked without cause, your ship is hit by pirates and you are dumped in a desert, or you are fighting for the survival of the species, you fight with whatever you have, and the only rule is:
win
. That’s been true since before humankind had language to call ourselves “human.” But humans seem to
like
rules, even when they don’t all make sense. And there are
always
charismatic egomaniacs, or God's Prophet of the week, or someone out to save us from ourselves who think
they
know how to run things if
only
we’d just do what they say and follow
their
rules (snorts in derision). Sadly, there are
always
too many bloody ignorant save-the-worlders, my-tribe-firsters, and NIMBY’s willing to do what they say and try to enforce their laws on folks. So here
we
are. In an undeclared war, the rule book is pretty slim. In a declared war the rulebook may be a bit thicker, and the contract spells out the details. The rules might sound stupid at first, but there ARE reasons for them.

All of you have heard this before, but not from
me
. Today we introduce you to the
basics
of the combat levels. Following the bloodshed of the mid- and late 21st century, people thought we needed
more
rules about warfare, something with more teeth. Then the stars went away and we were all fighting for our survival system-by-system, and everyone came up with their own rules. After the stars came back not every planet was on the same tech footing, but some people
still
managed to piss in everyone’s oatmeal, or have competing interests, even
with
a hundred other worlds on which to get out of each other’s way. Humans are not the most rational pieces of meat.

And we
still
didn’t know anything about the Planet Movers, except they had tech at
least
as high as our best and about the only common element of their carved symbols that we
do
understand are the sword and spear. So, the surviving planets decided that we would only allow fighting between declared combatants at whatever level was the lowest military technology they would both agree too. More rules.

He pauses and shrugs eloquently at the skepticism showing on the recruits faces
.

Harbin:
If there is significant fighting in an
undeclared
war,
any
one can show up to the party and have target practice, and some people seem to just
love
to do that, so most people have learned to keep things at least
sort
of honest.

As a potential Plataean soldier, you have to learn how to use
all potential weapons because you might have to use them. If you try to cheat, you open the entire unit to
all
offensive firepower
anyone
wants to have fun shooting your sorry ass with. Smuggle a level seven pistol to a level four sword fight, and you might discover yourself finding out how well your chainmail handles a close-laid barrage of artillery shells that a neutral observer and camera crew send your way for shits and grins and film rights because they’re bored. You
will
adhere to strict level compliance, or you
will
get killed by the first officer or NCO who sees you doing something illegal. You can always use lower tech, and sometimes it’s all you’ve got. Occasionally it’s even the best choice. It’s what the contract says that you must live by. If you can’t become competent at them all, you’re only good as a limited-contract temporary. But you
can
still find good jobs if you can do
any
of them particularly well. We’ll give you a basic introduction to each one and see how well your natural instincts match it. You will get more advanced training in the second phase of initial training with a larger group.

Harbin pauses and looks around at them, inviting questions.

Horkle: So if I get attacked, I can only defend myself by what a contract says I can use?

Harbin: In a declared battle setting, correct.

Darch: So if I’m about to get killed by a spear when I’m standing in a shield wall and I shoot the guy with a pistol-

Harbin: T
h
en I’ll cut you down myself if I have to. Anyone else seeing it is expected to do the same. With medical attention you
might
survive a spear thrust from the enemy. You will
not
survive your unit if you betray their trust and endanger them.

Sanchez
: That’s messed up.