Ships of Valor 1: Persona Non Grata (5 page)

This dinner was a little more casual than our first date, if only by a hair. Lysha and Robert met me outside and we headed to a swank place over in Dome 6. I asked what the occasion was, and she looked at me as if I had grown a third eye then started laughing. I truly loved that sound. Robert, on the other hand, remained stoic in the driver’s seat with barely a hint of a smile at the corners of his eyes. I’m not sure if he was more amused at my ignorance or discomfort not knowing.

"You really don't know do you?" after a few seconds staring at me. I confessed I had no clue and begged forgiveness for my ignorance. "It's your half-centennial, fuel for brains." Then she laughed some more. "How is it that you don’t know this?"

I started working the math out in my head. It had been a gigasecond since I joined the Legion, right after my eighteenth birthday on Terra. After dealing with metric for so many years, I had to actually think about the conversions, even when calendars say the actual date on them.

I hated using metric time. Since I hadn’t grown up with it, the concept wasn’t intuitive to me like some of the younger folks.  A kilosecond being a thousand seconds, or sixteen minutes and forty seconds, but I always just ended up thinking of it as a quarter hour for simplicity’s sake. Hects were easy, count to one-hundred, but megaseconds and gigaseconds were where things got wonky. Who in the hell used eleven-day increments? As for gigaseconds, I knew that one intimately, being on the tail end of one, having officially retired after completing over thirty-one and a half years of service. Those thirty years were hard on the chassis.

Add in a month being back, etc., and yep, I'd be fifty, or I could look at the date and know that. But I'm male and don't think about things like birthdays because they don't really matter. Not since I reached majority and was able to place my thumbprint to join the Legion. My birthday was only a date on a calendar taking up space in my head.

Apparently, this was a birthday dinner. After recovering my wits, seeming to be a growing habit around Lysha, I thanked her. "Don't thank me yet, you haven't seen your present." That scared me and I've literally lost an arm. I had a feeling this night was going to get extremely interesting very quickly. My fears were confirmed with I saw the catlike grin from the driver’s seat.

When we were inside the restaurant, the maitre d' hastened towards Lysha, without actually appearing to hurry. A slick move if I do say so, having all the elements of speed and precision but without any indication of rushing. She greeted him by name, and he was somewhat informal, but in a reserved way. About two seconds in, I realized she either owned the place or knew the person who did so well it didn't matter.

He ushered us to a semi-secluded area where an older gentleman was already seated. A man I had not seen in a decade. His was a face I would never forget. The first face I saw after waking up with the new hardware I call a left arm. General Adam Campbell.

I could spend days talking about this man. Legend really. Last I had heard he had settled on Luna because it was the one place no one could draft him. He'd been a strategic adviser for almost every colony for the last two centuries, not because of his war-fighting prowess but because of his peacekeeping skills. He was the man called when other diplomats failed.

During my incident, while patching me up, he had been a passenger on the
Europe
. He was there when I came to, personally debriefed me, and gave me a piece of advice that has always stuck with me. "Don't revisit decisions you can't change. Whatever you did at that point was based on the information you had at that time. You already know whether you did right or wrong. No point in trying to justify it. All you can do is learn from any mistakes with the new data you have."

These were the words running through my head as he rose and shook my hand. "Son, you're looking fit. Pop a squat and let's have us a chat." I helped Lysha sit then did as directed. Within moments, the wait staff was serving the meal. Apparently, everything was prearranged. No need for menus on this evening.

He regaled us with stories as we dined. Some I had heard, or read, but never from a first person account. I found it epically hard not to fawn like an awestruck teenager. I failed miserably, but, the General hid any disappointment he had in our meeting.

Eventually, as we switched from food to coffee, there was a subtle shift in the tone of the conversation, and the General asked a single pointed question. "Do you know why we don't have the problems out here like we do on Terra?"

I replied I didn't, and he expanded. "Terra is unique. It's the one planet in the Union with multiple nations. It holds to the old ways." He sipped at his coffee and looked at me for a moment. "I'm old, but I'm a Looney by birth. I'll always be a Looney. So is Lysha. You're Terran though, but that doesn't really mean much to you, not the same as us. I've read your file, and know you're from North America up near the polar caps, but that doesn't mean anything to me. It has no context. I imagine being cold, which is hard. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life either here or on ships. The few times I’ve stepped planet-side it’s been in very controlled environments.”

"But Terra still has countries sitting next to each other. They bicker. Like children living in the same house. We don’t have that out here. Except for the corporations, everyone spread out and established their place in the universe. No need to fight for space.”

"I have my suspicions your problems at home are rooted in that.” Another pause as he waited for me to acknowledge my understanding. I nodded for him to continue.

"There’s an old adage in the diplomatic corps. ‘There are no enemies or allies. Just countries whose interests currently align.’ I have a feeling our interests may align at the moment.” A very deep pause and a telling glance at Lysha. "You want to get back to Terra, and I’m in need of someone to go there. Lysha is under the impression you may be willing to skirt some of the restrictions currently placed upon you, and I think we can make all of this work to our mutual benefit.”

Hell of a birthday present. I like to be surprised, but this was like dropping atomics. I had figured the dinner was the gift. Hell, even meeting my hero outside of work was a bonus. Going home, even for a mission was so outside the realm of my possibilities.

“This situation with Terra hit us out of the dark. Completely blindsided us. I've been trying to figure out how for months, and I'm still stumped. There's normally some sort of ramp up to something like this. I can't find it. I can't find the triggering events. And it's bugging me.

“We need eyes on the ground. It's really as simple as that. It's become increasingly difficult to get a clear picture of what's going on there. If we don't have that, we're going to get blindsided again, and the next time it's going to be catastrophic.

“What I'm proposing is we send you down. You’ll scout the lay of the land, and we’ll figure out a plan of action from there.”

This is the point where my questions started getting in depth. Not that I was trying to be ungrateful, but Terra has a population pushing eighty billion, and Luna had about half a billion at any given point. So the real question I had to ask was why me.

“It all really boils down to exclusions. If we take the people we currently have available and start looking at them, most aren't a good fit. A Looney isn't going to pass for a Terran.” He was right. Low-g would give them away in a second. Lunar gravity is
1.62 m/s², but Terra is rocking 9.81 m/s², meaning a Looney, is running around at six times their normal weight. That's a huge difference. Most Looneys haven't been conditioned for gravity like that.
A Marsan would be closer, but they would still be dealing with over double.

“So we need a Terran, not only because of the physiological issues but because of the cultural concepts. We're all humans, but Terra is going to be a foreign land to anyone who hasn't spent extensive time there. It's not I don't think you are the right man for the job, but we also don't have many qualified people. Lysha vouching for you and your personal desire makes you the prime candidate.”

He had a point. It's easy to take for granted little things, like slang or body language. I had talked about how humor was different between Looneys, Terrans, and Marsans. Something as small as that could give someone away in minutes. Toss in the training I already had, and the personal connections, and the logic did make a lot of sense. Especially since this did not seem like a sanctioned operation.

As I said, Looneys have a healthy dose of pragmatism. They're not about to let bureaucracy get in the way of getting something done. Not when the alternative is as bad as implied.

I'd love to say it took a lot of convincing to get me on board with the concept of running essentially a black op into a sovereign planet. I'd also love to say I wasn't chomping at the bit. I can't say either of those things. A man whom I had the utmost respect for was offering me a devil's deal, and I wasn't strong enough to turn it down.

Legionnaires all have the same basic level of training. Our original design was based on classic shipboard combat with an expeditionary mindset so we could head down to planets and conduct ground combat as needed. Sea based infantry became our historical examples for modern operations. Depending on aptitude, we go on to more specialized areas. My official designation was demolitions, but all that really meant is I knew how to tear things apart, usually with lots of explosives. It also meant I had spent quite a lot of time looking at structures ranging from mud huts to dams figuring out their various strengths and weaknesses.  I'm not the best, but I'm very good.

I don’t want to give the impression I’m arrogant about my skills. I’m not. However, I am confident. I’ve got a lot of proverbial gun time under my belt and I know what I’m doing when it comes to my specialty. I also know what the limits of those skills are. I’ve popped smoke before when I wasn’t good enough or when I knew there were better folks more suited for the task. Nothing wrong with calling in help or asking for a second opinion. Too much pride will get you killed, and I like my skin.

The General and I started with my baseline micro level knowledge and bumped it up to the macro. Rather than looking at bridges and buildings, we went global with towns and cities. He pushed me harder mentally than I had ever been before. A completely different experience from being part of a larger class. Unfortunately, without others, any lulls or breathers were removed from the training process. I felt like I was going from simple math to rocket science in less than a month. In big classes, it’s only possible to learn as fast as the slowest person. By reducing the number of people, it speeds up the rate at which information can be mastered. The focused one-on-one training accelerated my learning to migraine inducing levels. Pain is an excellent motivator though because it makes you remember. The General wasn’t trying to cause harm but he had priorities.

On top of that, my workouts with Robert went from twice a week to twice a day. He had been holding back on me, and I was starting to feel the increased regiment by workout number three. If not for the nanites I would have been constantly bruised and bloodied. Even with them, it took a couple of weeks to get past the soreness of the new enhanced workout routine. I think he was pushing them to the upper limits while the General did the same to my mind.

Once the General was satisfied I had my head wrapped around global logistics to a passable level, he shipped me off to the DLF training facility near Tycho Crater. The DLF or Defense of Luna Force was the police on Luna. Not as though one was needed, not like on most planets.
Looneys do not call for help preferring to take care of things themselves. The DLF dealt with the possibility of someone thinking invasion was a good idea. Anybody thinking so was in for a bad time. Looneys had no problem hunkering down, venting a dome, and then picking off anyone stupid enough to try one by one until they ran out of air, water, or food.

But the DLF was a sort of a first and last line of defense. They maintained the defensive arrays and were able to go head to head in land-based combat if they ever had to. Their mission was different, but the training was directly comparable to the Legion. No one really attacked the moon, though, so most of the DLF’s time was spent as something more akin to beat cops. They were part of the community and maintained a sort of brand awareness. The best kind of policing is being visible. The vast majority of criminals fall under the stupid or lazy category. By having the DLF cops seen, Luna avoided a megatonne of problems. Additionally, when everyone and their cousin was invested in the well-being of the domes, most issues don’t happen. Not to say Luna didn’t have its own share of turmoil, but Looneys took a direct view of handling it.

Most of their members were militia, reserve types. Luna has a two-year mandatory service requirement. It didn’t have to be military as service could be done in almost any sector, and many folks knocked it out doing janitorial before they reached their majority at eighteen. Looneys viewed Citizenship as coming with obligations, including a payback for education, training, and just breathing. People like the General had completed theirs through the Diplomatic Corps. It turned out Lysha was a qualified ship mechanic and others opted for the DLF, mainly because they offer genemod.

Genemod or genetic modification is where the scientists tweak the DNA sequences a bit. It gives us humans a few advantages. The big one people are familiar with is gravity acclimation. The human body adapted to grow in Terra’s gravity, what most people refer to as normal grav. That’s 9.81
m/s², but someone spending their entire life in 1.62 m/s², like the moon, and they aren't really fit to travel anywhere else.

With the right kind of genemod and intensive training, a person ends up insanely strong, fast, and able to travel anywhere without having to worry about it. This is something Terrans take for granted, but Looneys have to think about. Folks like the General didn’t need same types of acclimation, so visiting anywhere with more gravity than Luna became a huge issue. Lysha had gone through some of it during her payback because mechanics need to have a good amount of physical strength even in low-g. But Luna treated the process as an investment as a strong Citizenry is a strong Nation. For others gravity isn’t really a big deal most of the time. Tech helps and all, but something as simple as wanting to go on vacation becomes infinitely more complex for folks from low-g worlds.

On top of acclimation are immunities. Some humans have a predisposition towards specific disease and sickness. We mapped the genome almost two centuries back, and although we don't know what causes every sickness, or how to cure it, every generation we get a little closer. When someone knows there’s a potential ticking time bomb somewhere in their future, why not trade a couple of years when they’re young to get rid of the possibility in the future?

The DLF was a great resource because of not only location but also access to several tools, beneficial to our mission. General Campbell needed me on Terra and the simplest way to do that actually was have me fly down solo. But I had absolutely zero training. Legion farms combat pilot school out to the Mariners based off Titan, but the DLF also had a moderate sized flight school, which was why I was at Tycho Station.

When I got there, I met by the crustiest Sergeant Major I had ever seen. I'm not sure what crypt the DLF pulled him out of, but he had to be pushing two-fifty. He could have given Schmiddy a decent run for who was going to expire first. He spotted the abundance of stripes on my arm and grabbed my arm like we had been buddies since basic. Hell of a thing, as Schmiddy would say. There’s some sort of kinship that develops when you start pinning them on. Like wearing your resume on your chest. The Legion doesn’t have Sergeants Major, which from our view is more of a billet than a rank. They’re the guys commanders go to for advice about the men and morale. I don’t have the right kind of personality to fill that role being good with individuals, not groups. I’m more of a technical expert, which is why I wear the gold mastery insignia of my branch on my collar. It made us peers in grade if not equals in position. As he walked me around the base, I found out he was a pensioner from a century back. Served on the original
Ozzie,
the sister-ship to my own
Europe
.

After he retired, and eventually settled back on Luna he decided to turn his skills to training. The kind of training that kept young bucks like me alive in the far reaches of space. Book knowledge is amazing but comes from scientists and writers. The kind of training this old soldier gave was hard-won and contained a full century of actual experience. As time goes by human kind becomes more and more reliant on tech, the old timers like him and me, to a much lesser degree, keep the new guys grounded in non-tech solutions. DLF was a good fit for him keeping him engaged, active, and all that expertise wasn't lost.

Since the main mission of DLF is to keep things from getting bad, he loaded me up on what he called “a little light reading.” I'm not sure if he was joking or not, but it looked like every book DLF had on reconnaissance and undercover work. He then turned me loose and said flight school would start the following day. He seemed less worried about that since the ship's onboard computer should be able to handle most of the heavy lifting. I needed to be able to look the part, and talk my way through approach and landing.

I had been hooked up with a stateroom so I hunkered down and started plugging away at the books until I felt like I couldn't fit any more in my head and crashed. When I was much younger I was a horrible student, but I have always loved to read. I’ve had to learn how to study in the Legion to stay proficient. Dealing with explosives gave me exactly the push I needed to refine my education standards. My survival on Terra was no less important to this mission so I had the incentive I needed to keep pushing.

The next day, we went through probably the most boring morning of my adult life. I don’t even get bored, but if I had a spoon on me, I would have scooped one of my own eyes out, to get a slight reprieve from it. I can’t blame my instructor, because just I didn't have the background, and he was trying to figure out how to make a comparable model for someone well past his learning prime. Despite looking half my chronological age, at least by Terran standards, I was essentially an old man trapped in a young body. That made picking up new concepts a hell of a lot harder than back when I was a kid.

A product of a living in space is we forget the outer wrapping doesn’t necessarily match our insides. It gets even weirder when you add in deep-sleep. For a guy like me, I looked about twenty-five but had about forty-two years of awake time, and fifty linear. The General was triple that, but only looked fiftyish in Terran terms, and someone like Schmiddy or my new Sergeant Major buddy looked like the walking dead. For Thomas Knox, all he saw was a young buck needing training and approached the issue like he would every other wannabe pilot.

My instructor, was a Mariner who was originally from Ganymede, but wanderlust and the stars made him join the Space Mariners’ Guild as soon as he could legally thumb on. Unlike the Legion, the Mariners’ Guild didn’t really have a retirement program. They just worked folks until their pilots quit. I’d personally never heard of anyone doing that, though. The guys who ended up as Mariners had a different kind of outlook on life centered on exploration and travel. Thom was no different. He was back on Luna as part of a training tour as a mid-career breather waiting to get back out to the stars.

He’d been back on Luna for about a year and a half and had been itching to leave for about twelve months. He had a cool steady confidence of someone who was very good at his job, unfortunately, because he knew it so well and had spent years around others in the same career he spoke in a hodgepodge of trade-speak and jargon, mostly flying right over my head, forcing me to stop him every couple of minutes. Each question I asked would spiral into several additional questions to the point where I felt safer not asking questions at all. It was hard to avoid that urge because I knew the mentality was not only lazy but also dangerous.

He was pounding regulation, theory, and standard control layouts into me. Once we got to the last part, things started to click a little, since almost everything from hoppers to angrav sloops used almost the same setup. I'd used hoppers back in Alaska when I was a kid, and I loved watching them race, so I went from death by vid to wide awake almost instantly. Thom saw my level of engagement jump and asked if I wanted to try my hand in the simulator. Hell yes, I would!

“We're going to start you off on something small. We'll use a light shuttle. A little ten-seater. Lots of maneuverability and wide open space. It will give you a feel for the controls. Since we're in a sim, I'll let you crash, but co-chair if you have any questions.” He plopped down beside me and I watched how he moved. If I was going to pretend how to be a pilot, I needed to mirror the little things too.

He fired up the system, and for practice walked through a launch sequence, as though we were leaving a satellite, then turned the controls over to me. I have to admit there was a bit of an adrenaline rush. The grav system tied directly into the sim, so as soon as we pretend launched, I felt the loss of gravity, and lifted out of my seat. Then a shift as we accelerated. Like I said, it’s the little things. I quickly buckled my restraints, as Thom laughed, and pointed to the grav controls “keep her at point one five standard grav, which is comfortable for most folks, and bump the decel damps to ninety-three cabin, 100 all others. You'll want to feel the boat moving in here, but we don't want fluids flying back there.” I did as instructed, adding the advice to my mental checklist.

“Sorry about that, but the best way to learn is to feel the drop firsthand. You tend not to forget after that. The guy who taught me, Grimes, dropped us off a cliff at four gees to drive the lesson home. I figured you didn't need as much a push” He smiled. I told him I appreciated it, and he pointed me towards a nearby moon on the display telling me to make my way there.

After a few minutes “Not bad, you have a bit of a knack. You sure you don't have any training?” I told him nothing larger than a hopper back home, back when I was a kid. “Hmm... let me try something here, you keep us going towards that moon. All right?” That was when the real fun began.

For the next hour, his hands were a blur on his panel, as I did everything in my power to keep us pointed in the same direction. I was sweating bullets by the time he said: “I give up.” Huh? I gave him a look inviting him to tell me what he meant. “Someone’s been screwing with your head. Probably a long time ago. Your sense of spatial geography is too good.” He paused the sim a second and pulled up a display showing how I did. A lot of green on the board, and only a few orange. “These should have killed us both. And nothing on this screen should be above yellow past here.”