Libor: Katana Krieger #2 Page 2

  Two Marines are guarding the hatch, lightweight body armor and sidearms only, a little surprising if this is really a high level delegation. My hand goes over the palm scanner, the hatch beeps, but doesn't open. A few seconds later, it is opened from inside.

  I pop into the room, someone closes and seals the hatch behind me. There are four more Marines inside, also lightly armed and armored, along with Everingham, Benson and several Navy folks I don't recognize. The far wall is mostly glass, with an airlock at one end, allowing great vision into the currently empty bay. The wall to my left is covered with screens and controls.

  While I stare out into the docking bay, and the squad of Marines in full battle armor floating in it, I hear the hatch open and close again behind me.

  I am quickly joined by Lieutenant Paul Summerlin, commander of the corvette Congress, Lieutenant Veronica Rivera, commander of the corvette Decatur, and Lieutenant Steven Maxwell, commander of the corvette Truxton, all of whom shared my recent alien adventure.

  I think I know what that means.

  Before I can ask, the huge doors of the bay open, and we stare in fascination as a corvette sails gently in. No matter how many times you've been a part of this scene, you can't help yourself, it's just cool. And it gets cooler. A second corvette enters the bay in close formation, something I've never seen before.

  It's Rivera who identifies them as United States and Samuel B. Roberts. Both belong to the Earth squadron, usually working convoy duty. Instead of docking, they simply land near to the airlock and we watch as the bay pressurizes and the airlock lights turn from red to green.

  The hatches on the boats open, and five people come floating out, three from the closest, two from the other, all apparently civilians. The closest three have matching Nike flight suits with government logos on their chests. The further two are wearing UCLA blue flight suits.

  The sounds of "Defend the Union" come rolling out of the sound system as the airlock hatch begins to open. I get it as soon as the first man comes in, it's Senator Paul Piper, from California. Tall and fit, mid-50s, chairman of the Congressional Armed Forces Committee. The Secretary of Defense, a remarkably unremarkable man for such a position, is at his right. Never seen the other three before.

  Piper ignores the admirals and heads for the four skippers. He's done his homework, knows all our names and correctly matches the skipper to the spacecraft. Congratulates us on our achievements, and shakes our hands. He's got a smile bigger than my head, strong grip, lots of almost colorless brownish unkempt hair.

  Floating backward, he points to the three men behind him and says, "Rob Krause, my aide, Professor Henderson and Professor Quandt, UCLA. His aide looks to be ex-military, 30s, big nose, bigger ears, shaved head, not a talker, just nods at us. Both professors come forward and do the hand shake, the first totally bald, 10 pounds overweight, shorter than me, the second, tall, skinny, long blonde hair in a pony tail part way down his back except that the middle of his head is hairless.

  SecDef ignored us all and went straight to the brass.

  Two young petty officers come over and salute. We all return them. Well, not the professors.

  "I'm Petty Officer Simon, sirs." It's the first and younger of the two. "Captain Kreiger, you are due in the Chief of Naval Operations' office in 20 minutes. Lieutenants, I am to escort you to meet the students from Grissom Elementary and Secondary. If you'll follow me?" She points them toward the hatch. I give them a quick salute, a "we need to talk", and a "have fun with the kids."

  The second petty officer meanwhile has rounded up the professors and is following my task force commanders out the hatch.

  I watch forlornly as the two corvettes power up and make their way back into space. I follow them out (the professors, not the corvettes, though I thought about it), turn the other direction, hit the head, then make my way up to ChiNO's office.

  No politicians in sight when I arrive, just SecDef and the two admirals, plus we've picked up the Marine Commandant. No aides invited.

  The Senator shows at last. He once again comes my way, stopping to look at my cast as if he missed it first time through.

  "Captain, with the election in five months, you did us a great favor by beating those bastards. I want you to know that we can't authorize additional expenses now, or it plays into the hands of all the Earth Party candidates who are running on the idea that this happened because we've weakened the Navy. Once the election is past, though, we've already agreed to make the battleship reinstatement permanent, and to build a few of the next generation cruisers your bosses having been begging for."

  My face must have been bad again.

  "Don't look so shocked," he says, laughing, "I served on the Samuel B. Roberts for three years, that's why they sent her to get me. I love the Navy."

  "Thank you, Senator." It's all I can think to say. He slaps me hard on the back and floats over to Everingham, while I hide the grimace from the painful effect of the impact on my arm.

  The "Spruance" class cruisers have been on the drawing board for a long time, smaller (also known as cheaper) than our existing cruisers, but with the same batteries of missiles, and upgraded cannons. Helpful, but at best three years out before wheels up on the first one. I give myself an internal "You may fire when ready, Gridley" anyway.

  The next 10 hours consist entirely of me floating next to Benson and listening to the others in case they say something important or mention my name, and nibbling on the constant stream of food that appears on the conference table. It's kinda like taking an airplane ride near thunderstorms, the anticipation is worse than the bumps, and when the flight's over, you realize it wasn't a tenth as bad as you imagined while in the air.

  I learn a couple things. The Senator is leading the expedition, the two professors from UCLA are coming to act as linguists and establish communications. My job is to get them there and back again. All four (the Senator's aide is coming too) of my passengers, like the President, are from the California star system.

  We're keeping the expedition secret so that the Dynasty and Empire won't know anything until we get home, treaty in hand. I don't say anything, but I'd bet a month's pay that not only will the Empress and the Prime Minister know where we're headed before we leave, but the Libor will know full well who's coming to dinner too.

  Other than four sentences, a total waste of my day.

  Spend the evening inside Yorktown, reading the repair logs and putting my mark one eyeballs on the repairs making sure it all matches, and going for a 90 minute run in the on-board gym. I make some "to do" lists for Shelby on the theory that she'll be back at work before me.

  I'm back in Everingham's office at 0750 again, to discover that the President sent two members of his Security Council as well, though not in secrecy. They'd spent yesterday touring the four Navy stations in Earth orbit.

  Instead of wasting 10 hours of my time, today they waste 12. Benson and I float by the food table while the three civilians argue with the Admiral and the General over whether or not we can trust the reports we got from the human conspirators, and what to do about the aliens in the long run. The Secretary of Defense's opinion shifts back and forth as if he's watching a tennis match.

  The argument only ends when someone's aide pops in to report that Navy One is ready to depart. The Secretary and the Counselors head for the door, nobody sorry to see them go.

  Benson catches my eye. "Zero eight hundred tomorrow, briefing room A." A quick salute and I am out the door, an unofficial ceremony of my own to attend.

  At 2100, I'm floating at a table in a private room off the side of my favorite bar. Eleven years ago, a scruffy Ensign just out of the Academy joined the crew of Ayacucho, a destroyer in the William Tecumseh Sherman battle group, as number two RISTA (Reconnaissance, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition) officer. I grew up on board her and spent the last five of those years as her commander.

  Joining me at the table are Admiral Showalter, my mentor and the man who commands Sherma
n and that battle group, and the current commanders of the destroyers Ayacucho, Leyte Gulf, and Wasp, which make up the group.

  We're one ship short.

  There's an empty spot at the table for my best friend on the team, Commander Julio Mendoza, commander of Santa Cruz, who didn't make it back from Gamma Nu. We order him a Dos Equis, which sits there unopened. Three rums, a lot of stories, and a few tears later, I'm asleep in the BOQ.

  Next morning I find Briefing Room A which is a 60 seat classroom, six rows of tiered seats attached to fake wood tables that span the rows. When full it would look like a land-based classroom, despite the fact the students' seats would be an inch or two above the seats, if you get my meaning.

  This time it's only me, Everingham, Benson, and Cuellar, 10 stars and one bored eagle. We dutifully sit scattered in the last two rows, leaving the first four entirely empty. Bad that they are keeping secrets from the corvette skippers, but the 10 stars heavily outrank my eagle on the matter.

  Two captains from Naval Intelligence enter at exactly 0800, turn on the projector and spend the next three hours running through a set of slides, talking in a total monotone about the future of mankind. The younger of the two, a tall bald woman whose uniform pins let us know she's been in live combat, does most of the talking.

  They used orbital telescopes and found two star systems with planets between 40 and 80 light years of Gamma Upsilon. We've known for hundreds of years how to do this, you find minor fluctuations in a star's orbit that enable you to calculate the orbits and nature of its planetary bodies. One of these systems is remarkably Earth-like, five planets, the third of which is the right size and in the right orbit to be habitable.

  The 80 light years, if you're starting this story in the middle, is twice the limit of the alien's jump capabilities. They use what we consider to be an outdated technology called a Tereshkova jump, we have the more modern (and relatively unlimited) Cooper-Tereshkova technology.

  We already knew that none of the stars within 40 light years of the edge of our space had a habitable planet, so it was logical they were at least two Tereshkova jumps from the border. We never explored that far because we didn't need to, we already had more empty planets than we could fill on our side of the line.

  Intelligence sent a stealth spy drone into the system which sat there for six days gathering data. They have pictures of the planet from a distance, including a couple of stations in orbit and both moons, seemingly uninhabited. No obvious orbital defense grid, but the Libor coated the ships we faced with a magic material that made them almost invisible, so if I have to enter orbit we'll be going in cannons hot.

  They have an idea of the volume of space traffic in the system, and the traffic patterns. No ship they spotted is larger than Yorktown, and the traffic is all inhabited planet to solar jump point and to a large gas giant roughly where Saturn would be in the Earth system, but slightly larger than Jupiter.

  They have isolated the radio channels in use within the system, and have an idea which are the military frequencies, in part because the hard drives from a ship we destroyed, CSS Orion, showed the bad guys were using two of them. All the transmissions are analog in frequency ranges we're familiar with, but the Union hasn't ever used analog, and I'm not even sure when the US Navy gave up analog to go digital, but certainly at least 500 years ago.

  They have so far not been able to decode the alien data streams, interpret the language, or turn any of the transmissions into watchable video. Not surprising. We know they write in graphics resembling 3D snowflakes and that their eyes look more insect than human. What a watchable video is to an alien may be 180 degrees from what it is to us. And analog is, well, analog. They're hopeful that they'll have more to help us before we go.

  From apparent energy generation signatures, Naval Intelligence calculated the population of the planet to be approximately 50 million, though that's a total guess under the assumption that the average Libor uses the same amount of electricity to live as the average human. It's a ridiculously small number for a planet that size. Every Earth-like planet in the Union, Empire, and Dynasty has at least a billion, and that's from only 300 years of men and women at work late at night.

  We have a million questions, they have zero answers, and don't hang around for lunch.

  The afternoon session begins when another man and woman, both Captains with medical insignia, join us. We return to our seats in the back.

  The result is a gruesome couple hours of viewing autopsy photos, telling us what we already knew. Three big fingers, long skinny thumb. Multiple small internal organs, no large ones (many small hearts, many small livers, etc.), body built like a biological network. The brain likewise scattered, but a crucial "network hub" sits behind their eye. Other than that point, it takes multiple weapons hits to put them down.

  One eye, which is actually many eyes and sits squarely across the middle of their heads. From photos, Intelligence determined that each Libor we've seen (all five of them) has a unique eye pattern, much like our finger prints. The doctors comment on the seeming lack of diversity among their other body parts and what it might mean.

  The Libor have DNA, but we are not related and there is no chance we could reproduce. The doctors do take a moment to wax poetic about the apparent universality of deoxyribonucleic acid.

  There are, however, a remarkable number of proteins and biochemical processes common to Earth based life and Libor based life, which explains why their drugs worked so well on our sailors. Their skin, which I wrote up as "cow" like turns out to be similar, but more stretchy, with short hair covering their entire bodies. All the Libor we've seen so far have been a dirty white color.

  Finally, they appear to be unisex, having both male and female reproductive organs, entirely internal in the one we captured. The doctors refuse to speculate on what that means.

  Again, we have a million questions for them, they have zero answers for us.

  I think everyone's expecting me to find them, the answers that is. I'm still thinking I'm going to be Phil Sheridan in Missouri.

  The session ends, I get ready to go relax, but there's trouble. Admiral Benson floats over and looks me in the eye.

  "Katana, meet me at 1900 at the Bar S Steakhouse for dinner. We have a couple issues I need to discuss with you in private."

  "Aye, sir. 1900." Issues?

  I go back to the BOQ to throw some water on my face before heading down to the Bar S, which is in the same high gravity ring with the shopping mall. It's reputed to be one of the better places to eat on the station, never been there because my tastes run more to burgers and fries. Or maybe I'm just cheap.

  Four Marine guards are manning the front of the restaurant when I arrive, two of whom boarded Yorktown with Benson. Since the Libor threat emerged, all the senior officers have been sporting Marines.

  Benson is sitting at the bar drinking with an Admiral I don't recognize, but must explain the second pair of Marines outside. The hostess recognizes me and takes me to an isolated table for two in the aft section of the eating part of the restaurant that could be romantic if I wasn't with my boss. I make a mental note to come back here one day with someone more interesting.

  Two ex-Marine looking men, namely built like Marines, but with pony-tails, are looking me over from two tables away. I am officially a piece of meat.

  Benson strolls back to join me, taking my mind off my trophy status.

  We spend 45 minutes ordering, eating great steaks, and talking about our home worlds, no ranks. Then he orders a scotch, and orders me a rum. Not sure how he knew to do that, but the fact that he knows and that he thinks I'll need one scares the crap out of me.

  The boss starts right in, once he's ready there's never a delay or a softening of the blow.

  "We've filled your crew stations, Chase and I. At the direction of the President, your new Second will be Lt. Commander Jacob Rains. His sister's youngest." Thankfully, I had swallowed the first gulp of rum before he said that. He's not done, and I'm
suddenly holding my glass way too tightly in fear of what comes next.

  "I know you didn't select Petty Officer Scott," that's the traitor, "he was simply top of the list and you had no time. However, Chase and I felt it better to fill your stations with people we knew, making sure there won't be more trouble."

  He touches his pad and mine beeps.

  "The names and files are there for you now, all but one of them served under Chase on Kennedy, or me on Grant. Three experienced Chiefs for your Engineering staff, a veteran Chief pilot, and an Ensign, just graduated first in his Academy class. Captain Weaver wanted him for his pilot unit on Constitution, but we borrowed him for you. He's the son of Admiral Jones, I've known him since he was five. None of these assignments are permanent, you can replace them at your pleasure when you get home. Except your Second, of course."

  Of course. Here I was thinking I had gotten past the trust issues and they actually believed I could do my job. Benson reads my mind.