To Honor You Call Us (54 page)

“After that, I think I have something interesting in mind for you.  I bet on horses every now and again, and one of the ways I win is by putting my money on winners.  Right now, Robichaux, you’re winning, so that’s where my money goes.  Well, haul your sorry butts back to your ship.  Even a crotchety old bastard like me needs to get some sleep every now and then.  You’re dismissed.”

Epilogue

12:22Z Hours (08:36 Local Time—High Tide) 21 February 2315

Hatchery Number 1817 was immense.  A vast, low building enclosing nearly a square kilometer, it contained secluded, muddy pools where recently fertilized eggs progressed through the early stages of their maturation cycle, another area where the fertilized eggs incubated to maturity and hatched in warm, still water, yet another where the hatchlings swam in a series of ever larger tanks of rapidly circulating water as they grew, and the enormous, dimly lit area where Max and the doctor, along with more than a hundred of their shipmates, Admiral Hornmeyer (whom Max could hear from eighty meters away) and a contingent from the Task Force, and about two hundred Pfelung, both male and female, stood.  They all lined the edge of what Max would have thought of as a swimming pool, if it were not that the now empty basin was at least twenty times the size of any pool he had ever seen.

As the two had spent very little time alone since meeting with the Admiral, mainly due to the doctor’s busy schedule as Acting Union Ambassador, Max was filling the doctor in on the meaning of some of what transpired.  The doctor was particularly puzzled by the meaning of the ‘E.’  “All that means,” said Max, “is that when we aren’t stealthed, we get to turn on a four meter tall letter ‘E’ that we made with temporary running lights, we already installed those, to tell everyone who can see us that the Admiral has found the performance of the ship to be “Excellent.”  He doesn’t do it all that often.  Right now, the
Kranz
is showing one, and a few Cruisers on detached service.  I don’t think he has ever given it to a Destroyer.  It’s right next to the big Battle Star, which we’ll light up every chance we get between now and when
Cumberland
goes into the boneyard.”

Once that was cleared up, the doctor explained the operation of the Hatchery to Max.  He apparently had something of the professor in him, as when he started to talk about this kind of subject, it usually wound up sounding like an academic lecture.  “All of this used to be done in natural ponds, rivers, and lakes, but once the Pfelung became a technological civilization, they found intolerable having more than half of their hatchlings eaten by wild predators, so they brought the process indoors to keep the little ones safe.  This huge tank is where the young juveniles, akin to our toddlers I suppose, swim until they are old enough to fend for themselves in the ocean.  They are released from here to the sea where they spend five years swimming free and wild, eating what they catch.  Then, when they reach adolescence, they instinctively swim back to where they were released, where they are reclaimed (by smell) by their families, reared, and educated.  They spend three years in this tank.  It is here that they form the earliest memories that they will still have as adults.  I hear that memories formed at this stage are particularly clear.”

“How deep is the tank?”  Max asked.  “It is so dark I can hardly see the inside at all.”

“Quite deep.  When the Pfelung are in their Pre-Adolescent or Pelagic Stage, they don’t keep to the shallows the way the hatchlings or the adults do.  They need to hunt for food at several different levels in the water column.  They make this tank deep so that the ones at this stage, which I think they call the Lake Dwelling Stage, can become accustomed to diving down into the deep water before going out into the ocean.”

“It’s so dark that you can’t see into the thing at all, much less see the bottom,” said Max.

A murmur among the humans and a bubbling sound among the Pfelung indicated that something was afoot.  Five females, distinguished from the males by their smaller size, their slightly lighter color, and the camouflaging pattern of spots, swirls, and splotches on their backs, were making their way up a ramp to a meter and a half tall platform.  The largest of the females, flanked on each side by two others, moved to the front of the platform and began speaking into the microphone which, as was customary for the Pfelung, was mounted in a protective mound about the size of a man’s head, resting on the floor of the platform.  Her remarks were swiftly translated by the devices each human wore in his ear.

“Fellow Guardians of the Ruling Hatchery, Ministers and Keepers, and human guests, welcome to this ceremony.  As the humans present do not know me, I identify myself as Brekluk-Tamm 191.  It was only a few tens of tides ago that humans from the Union, who had neither swum in our waters nor tasted mud with us, fought at our sides against an enemy who would prey on us both, who would foul the Quiet Ponds Where Eggs are Laid and who would eat the hatchlings before they attain the Age of Reason.  Together we defeated that enemy.  In doing so, eleven brave humans were carried to the Great Ocean.  We can never repay our debt to them and to their mates and hatchlings, but there is one thing we can do.  We can remember them.”  Her dorsal fin waved back and forth, apparently some kind of signal.  At that moment, four rows of lights in the pool, one running down each corner, sprang into life, illuminating it from its top to its bottom, which Max and the doctor could now see was more than a thousand meters below.

The ever-artistic Pfelung had decorated the tank.  The sides were the color of the sky.  Not the light blue of the daytime sky, or the pitch black of space, but the deepest purple of the latest twilight at that last moment before the light fades to true night, pricked with stars.  And, framed by the twilight, in the center of each wall, was an image, a different one for each wall.  On the north wall was a depiction of the freighter explosion destroying the battle station that had defended the jump point.  The painting was quite realistic, yet somehow, not photographic, managing to capture through some subtle emphasis on the reds and orange hues of the explosion the shock, horror, and fear it must have inflicted upon the Pfelung who saw it.

On the East wall was an image of the
Cumberland
. 
Genius-level artistic talent had turned her utilitarian, inelegant lines into something stirring and graceful by inspired use of light and shadow and by the technique of framing the ship with the sickle crescent of Pfelung’s enormous moon.  On the South, its squat, stubby shape painted to convey an impression that reminded the human observers of a defiant bulldog, was the Cutter, shown with her engines blazing as she accelerated toward her destiny at the jump point.  And, finally, on the west wall, were arrayed the images of Garcia, Amborsky, and the other men sacrificed to close the jump point and stop the invasion.  They were painted full length, standing, wearing their SCUs as they were on the Cutter that day.  The obviously brilliant Pfelung artist, informed by each man’s service record, had managed to capture the essence of each:  Garcia’s friendly competence, Amborsky’s gruff exterior and warm heart, Finnegan’s flamboyant energy, Akumba’s solemnity, Chang’s cutting wit, and all the rest—some part of the spirit that had once burned within them shining forth from the images. 

After letting what they were seeing sink into the minds of her audience, Brekluk went on.  “As these young grow, adults swim with them so that they will remember the shapes and faces of adults as those of friends and protectors.  So, now, these young will remember the shapes and faces of humans as friends and protectors as well.  There are 285 such Swimming Places for the Young throughout our worlds.  These images are being placed in each.  This is the highest honor we know how to bestow.  That is all I have to say on this subject.  Let the tank be filled.”

A floodgate twenty meters across opened hear the bottom of the tank, admitting water through an aqueduct bored through solid rock to a point under the ocean several miles from shore to admit the purest sea water.  It poured in rapidly, filling the tank in less than two minutes.  “Let the young be admitted,” and a sluice opened to pour tiny Pfelung by the thousands, each about the size of a man’s hand, into the tank.  In a few moments, the torrent of young had run out and the tank was full of splashing, milling, swirling, enthusiastically swimming creatures, filling the room with a sense of playful, joyful, exuberant life.  “This ceremony is concluded.”   

Acknowledgements

To some degree, every book is a distillation of everything an author has learned and experienced in his lifetime.  Naturally, that legacy cannot be articulated in a few paragraphs.  There are, however, a few individuals whose contribution to these authors’ learning and experiences is so related to the contents of this volume that they deserve particular recognition.

The authors are indebted to Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox for their outstanding non-fiction book,
Apollo: The Race to the Moon
, which we believe to be the best single book ever written about the American space program.  Readers familiar with that work’s clear and evocative description of the inner workings of the Mission Operations Control Room and the Staff Support Rooms during the Gemini and Apollo Programs will be able to discern the shape of those rooms in these pages.  Any resemblance between the brilliant Mission Control teams of those years and the CIC of the
U.S.S. Cumberland
is entirely by design.  Incidentally, readers who know well the history of those endeavors may recognize several names in this book, scattered throughout as respectful nods to some brilliant individuals who made largely unsung contributions to what has been, thus far, mankind’s greatest adventure.  With one exception, mentioned below, the similarity of any other names to those of any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

We also acknowledge a profound debt to Gene Roddenberry and to the many writers, producers, and other creative people involved in the
Star Trek
franchise over the decades.  Despite a few snide remarks directed in these pages at some aspects of those programs and many, many deliberate choices to make the ships, weapons, tactics, and procedures of the Union Navy radically different from those of Roddenberry’s Starfleet, any modern author of military fiction set on a starship must deal in some way, overtly or covertly, with Mr. Roddenberry’s creation.  We hope our approach was original, respectful, and humorous.  The original
Star Trek
series, watched so avidly during its first run on NBC, triggered our first crude efforts to imagine and write about brave men fighting on powerful starships to preserve mankind against deadly enemies.  This book is a direct product of those imaginings, begun in that bygone era which we now know as “the Sixties.” 

Also, we offer a tip of the hat to early pioneers and modern masters and modern masters of the
genre
that we call Science Fiction, whose imaginings helped shape and encourage our own:  Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin, Frederick Pohl, Larry Niven, Doris Lessing, Jerry Pournelle, Greg Bear, David Weber, Joe Haldeman, Timothy Zahn, Robert L. Forward, and many, many others whose works have so entertained and inspired us over the years.  We ask that they and their many fans forgive our temerity in aspiring to follow in their footsteps.

More thanks to Ronald D. Moore and David Eick and all of those involved in the production of the excellent television series,
Battlestar Galactica
, which, in addition to captivating us for many hours, taught us that one can tell inspiring and uplifting, yet gritty and realistic, stories about warriors among the stars—and that there might be a market for more such stories.

Our thanks, also, to the originators and the many contributors to Wikipedia.org.  Were it not for the ready availability of this site to tell us the diameter of our solar system as measured in Astronomical Units, the density of gold in tons per meter, whether the element Mercury has multiple isotopes and is used in ion propulsion, the names of the twenty star systems closest to Earth and their distances in light years and parsecs, the status of the evolutionary development of rats on Earth eleven million years ago, and hundreds of other facts that conscientious authors of “hard science fiction” must verify, this book would have been incalculably more difficult to write. 

For many lessons taught and the outstanding example provided by the late Dr. George Middleton, educator, psychologist, mentor, and leader, Paul extends his heartfelt thanks.  The Commodore/Admiral Middleton mentioned in these pages is a poor and grossly inadequate tribute to Dr. Middleton, though the fictitious Admiral is not a depiction or even a parody of the real Doctor, who was so gentle a spirit that he could never have made warfare his life’s work.  The respect and esteem that our characters have for the fictitious “Uncle Middy” in this book are, however, designed to be a reflection of the respect that the real, and ever so profoundly missed, “Uncle Middy” enjoyed in life. 

On Cajun French:  Paul grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, his mother’s family is from the heart of Acadiana, and his maternal Grandmother’s first language was Cajun French.  Accordingly, although he grew up hearing a fair amount of Cajun French from time to time from relatives and neighbors, he did not grow up speaking it, much less writing it.  Every Cajun expression in these pages is one that Paul remembers hearing from his youth; nevertheless, he would have been clueless, left to himself, about how to put those expressions into writing.  The authors, therefore, gratefully acknowledge the essential role served by the
Dictionary of Louisiana French:  As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities
, University of Mississippi Press (2010), in the writing of this book as a source for spelling and to verify the accuracy of Paul’s recollection.  This dictionary is an astonishingly thorough and authoritative work of scholarship, eminently usable, and beautifully printed.  We could not recommend it more highly.