Earth Song: Etude to War (11 page)

“That never ends well.”

“I'll say it again, how can it get worse?” she asked.

“You need to study human history better. Nearly every time an old and stratified system like the Concordia is torn down or replaced, the outcome was anarchy, destruction, or tyranny.”

“The galaxy isn't made up of humans.”

“No, many of the species are not nearly as calm, contemplative, or logical as humanity. And that's saying something, because I think we're a borderline crazy species sometimes.”

Minu nodded and thought about it.

“And least I remind you,” Pip went on, “that the surviving starfaring species will likely not be thrilled to invite us into the clan. I doubt the T'Chillen will give us a wet kiss welcome.”

“I've been on the busy end of T'Chillen affections,” Minu said with a mirthless laugh. “But you're right, they wouldn't be welcoming. We'd have to be very stealthy about this.” Pip shrugged. “We're getting way ahead of ourselves. Let me know what you find out about building a star drive, and we'll go from there.”

An hour later Pip was gone on his way and Minu was left with a lot to think about. She knew now why P'ing was so concerned that humans, a hominid species, were pushing into areas hse considered 'dangerous'. Hominids had been involved in the creation of the Concordia, and all evidence pointed to the fact that they hadn’t ended their time in the leadership well.

She'd begun to evolve her view of the current situation of the galaxy. There we no more starships plying the stars because most had been destroyed millions of years ago, and perhaps even the means to build more. In fact it seemed all but certain that the ability to manufacture starships was gone. Why else were the snakes so desperate to salvage the ancient spaceships left behind by the People?

Pip was worried humanity might upset the balance of power, but the snakes had been trying to do just that for a long time. Sally, the T'Chillen, told her that they'd been trying to gain access to the fire-base for as many as a thousand years. Probably a lot longer than that.

While she thought, Minu called up a design schematic of the Groves Industries A-2 Phoenix. As the wife of the president, she had complete designs on her tablet, and a fully functional design interface. As the part of her mind dedicated to politics and the Chosen considered what she'd learned, the scientific leaning part was tweaking the Phoenix.

An hour later she looked at the ship with surprise. She'd doodled it into a starship almost a hundred meters long with cargo and passenger capacities to match. All it needed was a faster than light drive. “It might work,” she said into the darkened office.

Chapter 9

March 2nd, 534 AE

Sanctuary Island, Plateau Tribal Territory, Bellatrix

It was March before an email Minu sent the previous year came back to bite her in the ass. She tended to spend less time at the island over the winter. It was uncommon that a migrating kloth would find its way across the frozen lake, but not impossible.

One spring she'd returned to find four of the beasts wintering under the old lean-to woodshed her ancestor had built before she'd converted the building to run on EPC. Of course the ice was long gone and she'd been forced to shoot the beasts. She still had a few kloth steaks in the bottom of the freezer. The reptile meat was an acquired taste that she'd never quite acquired. Luckily for her Aaron loved the stuff.

The first weekend they spent at the cabin after winter was often used up in maintenance on the five hundred year old cabin, and this year was no exception. The sun was up and it was a nice fifteen degrees outside. Minu and Aaron were using the old clothes lines (now replaced with dualloy lines) to hang out the linens and get the musty, wintery smells out of the house. “At least we didn't have to shoot any kloths,” she commented as she held a blanket for Aaron to secure with a clip.

“We're almost out,” he noted, “I was thinking about hooking up with Gregg and going on a hunt this migration season.”

She made a face and shook her head. “Help yourself, I've had enough of the damned lizards to last me a lifetime.” He grunted and nodded. “But shoot a small one, I'm not as big a fan of kloth-kabob as you are.”

They both turned at the sound of approaching gravitic impellers. Minu knew it couldn't be Gregg, he and his wife weren't coming out that weekend. He was offworld on a gig with the Rangers.

She held up a hand to shield her eyes from the morning sun. Her skin itched from the heavy sunscreen she had to wear as a redhead. “Reporters?” Aaron guessed.

“No,” she said and cocked her head. It was a pair of private aerocars flanked by two larger flying trucks. “I think they're lost.” But a minute later they began to descend and look for a place to land.

“Damn it!” Minu growled and ran as they started to zero in on her garden. The first car had already set down by the time she got there, a hundred sixty five centimeters of pissed off redhead descended on the driver just as the door was rotating up. “Get off my garden asshole!”

“Minu Groves?” asked the man, a thin bookish looking man that seemed somehow familiar to her.

“You know damn well who I am! Don't let them land those beasts on my garden, damn it, it'll take me weeks to re-till that soil!”

“I'm Dr. Theodore Engles,” he said and held out a hand.

“Good for you,” she replied; no doubt he thought she recognized the name. The first large truck grounded and a dozen square meters of her garden was flattened. Her blood pressure shot up. “Get the fuck off my island!”

“We had an appointment, Mrs. Groves!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Another truck was coming in and Minu was considering going into the house and getting a shock rifle.

“Your assistant, Ms. Beck, set this up with you? She assured me the arrangements were made. Director Porter will be here in a few hours…”

The pieces finally fell in place. The Plateau Historical Society. She remembered an email from Ariana that had come in a couple days before she left for the weekend. It wasn't flagged important, now she suspected what it was about. Shit. She couldn't exactly start shooting up their cars with a shock rifle if they were invited.

“Right,” she said and forced a smile. The man beamed and offered his hand, which she took as warmly as she could.

“What the hell is this?” Aaron asked, coming up behind her.

“My husband, Aaron Groves. Aaron, this is Dr. Engles from the hysterical society.”

The well dress man cocked an eyebrow and Minu didn't even realize her Freudian slip. Aaron had caught it and he beamed at the guy, giving him a wink before shaking his hand as well.

Minu quickly got them organized and managed to keep them from completely obliterating her garden. The island was less than two square kilometers as it was and the cabin was way too small to host the two dozen researchers Dr. Engles had brought with him. Her complaints were cut off as the workers began setting up ingenious little floating docks just off the shore. By the time noon rolled they assembled an impressive off shore facility complete with living quarters and research labs. That was when Director Porter arrived.

They were almost opposites, the two researchers. Where Engles was thin and effete, Porter was massively fat and masculine almost to a fault. He actually bowed over Minu’s hand and gave her a wink as he introduced himself.

“Alexander Porter, director of Founder Studies, Plateau Historical Society. Honored to meet you, Chosen Groves.”

“The honor is all mine,” she said as she offered her hand and glanced at where Aaron stood by the cabin door, observing the kloth-and-pony show. His eyes narrowed dangerously as Porter brushed the back of her hand with his lips. Minu gave her husband a little wink, but to no effect. Aaron had never been forgiving of any flirtatious behavior. Lucky for them both, she was not that sort of a girl.

“We intend to be as little disruption as possible. The society is grateful for letting us have this opportunity.”

“Can you give me a better idea of what you are here for?”

“Of course. We've long known that the majority of your ancestors are buried on this island. Billy and Mindy Harper had five children, only one of whom survived to herself have children. Near the end of the colonial days, about a hundred years after the foundation of Plateau, there were some records lost. The colonists endeavored to switch to indigenous records keeping as quickly as possible.”

“Meaning paper instead of data?”

“Exactly. The problem with that media is it is susceptible to environmental conditions. A roof was damaged in a storm and several boxes of records were destroyed. Ironically if they'd saved the water damaged files, we'd have been able to restore them with Concordian technology. But that is neither here nor there.

“You see, the mystery is the fate of Mindy Harper herself. Shortly after her husband’s death, she left on an expedition to the southern continent with several towns members. The outcome of that expedition is unknown.”

“Mindy came back and died of old age,” Minu said, reciting from what her father had taught her many years ago. “She's buried here with the rest of her family.”

“And we are going to verify that. With your permission, of course.”

* * *

The research team was composed of professional archaeologists and scientists. But beyond that they also were members of a historical society and were cautious of whose hallowed ground they trod upon. Laser grid scanners were deployed and the island was mapped down to the millimeter.

Then they went to work on the burial plot. Minu had always known the area of the graves, but not the exact locations. Down past the cabin, along the shore, at the highest point of the island, her father had explained. So it was there she took the researchers, the she left them to their work.

It was the morning of the next day, Sunday, before one of the researchers disturbed the pair. Minu and Aaron were playing a game of chess and chatting about her idea of making a human built starship.

Aaron liked what he heard but she hadn't gotten to her thoughts on humanity leading a new expansion into space, perhaps to un-colonized worlds, new virgin planets that had not evolved to the point of habitability when the Lost fell from the stage. Who knew, maybe there were even other spacefaring species in the galaxy. It might behoove them to remain quiet, not attract anyone’s attention. The neighbors have itchy trigger fingers.

A knock on the door made them both look up in surprise. The researchers had been so quiet that they'd honestly forgotten their island teamed with visitors. They looked at each other and laughed as Minu hopped up to answer the door. Halfway there she looked over her shoulder quickly. “And don't touch my bishop!” she snapped, Aaron jerking his hand back not quite quick enough to pull it off. Smiling, she opened the door.

“Chosen Groves,” the young researcher said nervously.

“What can I do for you? Almost finished?”

“Not quite. Director Porter wanted to show you something...significant.”

Minu glanced at Aaron who looked up from studying the chess board and shrugged. “Be right back. Think about how you’re going to save that rook.”

Outside the young researcher led Minu to the area she'd given them to search for the graves. They'd settled on the far side, more inland than she'd expected her ancestor’s remains to be interned. A series of Concordia-built sensor devices were deployed on human manufactured tripods.

As she approached she realized they were each over a grave, seven in total. Porter had his massive frame bent over a table holding a dozen compact holographic display tanks, scratching his chin. As she approached he noticed her, looking up and smiling he motioned he to approach.

“You needed me?”

“Yes, I think it is important that you see this. As is obvious, we have located the graves. They have small markers, carved from the local stone.” He pointed to one display where a three dimensional image of a grave marker hovered:

Billy Harper

1981 AD – 023 AE

Beloved husband, best father, good friend

The carving was simple but legible.

“We found them under about five centimeters of loam and decaying plant matter. They were not vertical markers like you see in most cemeteries on Plateau.” He touched a control and another display became larger, taking her attention.

It was a scanning of the ground under the grave. It reminded her of a wire drawn image used by some imagers on the Kaatan spacecraft. Hints of the wood from a casket, rocks, other parts of the ground, and a clearly definable skeleton nestled in the center. Its skull face stared out at her, arms folded across the chest.

“If this is too much, I can skip this part.”

“Director Porter, I am a two star Chosen. I've seen enough death that this representation is hardly of any emotional concern.”

“I apologize. Still, this is your family, and I only wish to be considerate of your feelings.” She gave a little nod and he proceeded. The scanned image moved over the skeleton’s torso where she could see broken ribs. She pointed at the anomaly. “Exactly. This conforms to the historical account of how Billy Harper died. Massive blunt force trauma to the abdomen. He was trampled by a kloth.”

Better than mauled by one, Minu thought, unconsciously making a fist of her right hand.

“Next is the grave of their oldest daughter, Alice.”

For an hour he went through the graves one at a time. Some he was more interested in than others. Mindy and Billy's youngest child, a boy named Adam, had been born only two years before his father’s death. He'd been lost during an outbreak of influenza that came with a traveler from the newly discovered Summit tribe. Two dozen other young colonists succumbed to that plague as well.

As the examination went on, Minu was struck with just how tragic it had all been for her storied ancestor. To be the one most responsible for saving those around the American gate, defeating a government plot that would have seen only rich, powerful, greedy types come over with lots of worthless equipment. Then spending the rest of her life raising children that died one after another, leaving only one girl behind until her husband was killed as well.

“What about Mindy?” Minu heard herself asking amid a discussion by the director and several of his older scientists.

“That's the reason I asked you to come out,” he explained as he typed instructions into the computer. Despite her own assurances, she felt herself getting nervous as the display changed. Was she really ready to look at the remains of her ancestor that way?

A hand strayed unconsciously to stroke the sapphire held by its dualloy chain around her neck. No-one had said anything for a minute before she realized there was silence.

On the display was the same coffin shape she'd seen several times before, rocks surrounding the shape and other debris. It was completely normal, except there was no skeleton. “Um, where is the body?”

“That's exactly what we were wondering,” spoke the thin Dr. Engles. “And based on some of the accounts we have from other records, this is not unexpected.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

Director Porter spoke up again. “You see, there was an account by a woman, a daughter of one of Mindy Harper's friends, left shortly before her death. It amounted to an encounter with Mindy before she left on her expedition. She was instructed to place this grave.”

“But Mindy isn't in there?”

“Yes, instructed to place an empty coffin and this marker.” He touched a control and the image of the marker appeared. “Mindy Harper” was all it said. No dates or other items. And unlike the others, this was almost crude. It looked no better than she believed it would have if she'd done it herself.