| |
––––––––
Templemer, Planet Hoarfrost, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm
December 25th, 2038
Terry watched the younger children singing a Christmas carol on the stage with a small smile on his face. Dr. Orsage was still working with them on therapy sessions. Despite none of their parents actually dying, the battles and watching Dan being tortured had left scars that had yet to heal. They might never completely heal, Orsage said. Time would tell.
Katrina squeezed his hand, and Terry smiled at her. He’d been careful with her after the events back in May. Part of him wanted to do things with her, but part of him wasn’t ready for those things. He’d turned 14 back in October. He felt like he was 40. His mom and Doc, on the other side of Katrina, watched the kids’ performance and clapped at the end.
The children began another song. Terry’s smile faded as he looked up and saw the KilSha watching from outside the dome. Some of the BotSha were there, too, but most of them were still off on their last mission. The ones who remained were pregnant and getting ready to have their own families. The anti-fertility drugs had been stopped right after the battle, at their insistence. Breeding had commenced in the pod with embarrassing regularity.
The mission was with the KilSha on their seemingly never-ending search for Shool. Terry had thought that, after they’d been uplifted, the KilSha would give up their quest to meet god in the cold depths of Hoarfrost. Nothing could be further from the truth. Along with the other modifications to the former orcas and bottlenoses, they now could dive deeper and return quickly, without ill effects.
The KilSha watched the performance silently, without moving so much as a centimeter. They seemed to be completely engrossed in the proceedings. They wore their Konar, as they usually did. The armor was quite comfortable, and Terry wore his whenever he went out, as well. The BotSha mostly weren’t wearing theirs, as they said the armor was uncomfortable when they were pregnant.
“Do you want to listen, too?” He sent the question through his pinplants to the KilSha and BotSha in general.
“Yes!” Pōkole replied right away. “Yes, yes, please!”
“That would be rad, dude,” Wikiwiki replied. Terry had been surprised to find out she was pregnant at the time of the fight and had never considered whether to participate.
Terry set his pinplants to record and relay, and the cetaceans listened to a bunch of children singing Jingle Bells. He looked up and saw the half dozen BotSha bobbing their heads in time with the song, and chuckled.
“What?” Katrina asked. Terry tilted his head up. She followed his gaze and chuckled. The BotSha were singing along, and Terry added her to the channel.
“What are you two laughing about?” Doc asked, leaning over Terry’s mom to stage-whisper at him.
“The BotSha are singing Jingle Bells,” Terry said and pointed at the cetacean audience.
“How do you know they’re singing?” his mom asked.
Terry reached up and touched the external connection on his pinplants. She blanched and looked away. Like the little kids, his mom hadn’t quite come to grips with the events of the Selroth invasion.
He recognized Kray in the group of KilSha; he was noticeably bigger, and his dorsal fin had a particular curl to it. Shortly after the battle, he’d asked Kray about the name KilSha. The Caretaker had said that an uplifted race’s name came from their species name with “Sha” added to the end, by some tradition.
“You should have been OrcSha,” he told Kray.
“We know, but we chose to use Killer Whale instead. KilSha.”
“Why?”
“Because we like to kill.” He’d have sworn the whale was smiling when he said it.
At the back of the audience, the 11 surviving Selroth were sitting uncomfortably on chairs, pointedly ignoring the goings on. They were basically permanent prisoners. After Terry had explained about the law against uplifting, and Doc had verified it through the GalNet, it had been agreed that the Selroth couldn’t go home, and the grownups couldn’t bring themselves to kill them outright. They were also a little horrified that the BotSha really, really, wanted to kill the aliens.
The Selroth were being cooperative in getting the habitat fully operational. In exchange for their cooperation, they were given a large amount of freedom and good treatment. They refused to go anywhere near the cetaceans, in a mixture of fear and revulsion.
Terry, Colin, and Katrina, along with Doc and his crew, rode the shuttle up to the Selroth’s ship in orbit and took it from them. Terry and his people did most of the work. Their Konar easily handled the pressure differential they needed to maintain to avoid ill effects. The mercs had to wear clunky pressure suits, and ended up being little more than observers. Four of the 11 Selroth were the surviving crew. Terry’s mother had nearly freaked out when he got back in his Konar armor and went with Doc. They’d taken two of the BotSha, because the former bottlenose dolphins had insisted.
There really wasn’t a fight; the Selroth hadn’t been expecting an attack from their own shuttle. Afterward, Doc’s people treated Terry, Collin, and Katrina differently. They’d exchange a nod with him when they walked by. Sometimes at meal time, they’d lift a glass in his or his friends’ direction. He’d asked Doc about it once.
“We’re part of the same club,” he’d said. “You’re too damned young, but you’re one of us now.”
They’d flown the ship to the Lupasha Independent Trading Station, where Doc registered the Selroth’s ship as a war prize, so it now belonged to them. They returned afterward and parked the ship in orbit. The BotSha spent the whole time with Tina, examining the ship’s nav computer and talking among themselves. When asked what the BotSha were up to, they weren’t interested in sharing. However, they’d been excited at whatever they’d found.
After the concert, the Selroth returned to their quarters, while the Humans went to the mess hall for cake and ice cream. Terry enjoyed seeing everyone so happy. Dan was moving around like nothing had happened with his metallic blue artificial feet and hands. The Caretaker had fixed him up and given him pinplants, as well.
The Caretaker had said it would give pinplants to anyone who wanted them. Doc and his people were planning on it before they went out on contract in March. Terry thought they were probably working up the nerve to undergo the procedure. Regardless of what they’d said, it was obvious the mercs didn’t trust the Caretaker. Despite that mistrust, they’d discussed Konar for them, and discarded the idea.
“What do you think would be the reaction if we went out on contract wearing those technological marvels?”
“I don’t know,” Terry said.
“Sure you do. They’d want to know where we got them. They’d really want to know.”
That made sense, of course. Technology was power, and nothing like the Konar existed in the galaxy. Nothing the Humans had encountered in the current era, anyway. Everywhere he looked, the people of Templemer were happy, or at least content. Maybe it was enough.
“We going to the Caretaker as planned?” Doc asked him over vanilla ice cream.
“You bet,” Terry replied. He knew Doc wanted to try to get the Caretaker to follow his orders again. It hadn’t worked yet, and wouldn’t work ever. For whatever reason, it only listened to Terry, Colin, or Katrina. Terry seemed to be the one it listened to first, as well. The leader. “You know it wants to see the newborn BotSha, right?”
“Yeah,” Doc said. “The moms are fine with it.”
Terry nodded. He’d seen the ultrasound of Wikiwiki’s baby, done by Dr. Jaehnig. The baby’s pectoral fins had fingers. The Caretaker had altered the bottlenoses’ DNA. Hula was only four months pregnant, too soon for a good ultrasound on a KilSha. Terry knew what it would show; the same as the BotSha, maybe even more advanced.
As the Christmas celebration was breaking up, Terry found a minute alone with just his mom and Doc. “I wanted to tell you something,” he said to his mother. She looked at him expectantly. “I’m going with Doc and Last Call on contract.” Her mouth dropped open. “Colin and Katrina are going too. They’re telling their parents right now.”
“You can’t!” she said, looking at Doc for support and, to her horror, finding none. “You’re only 14 years old.”
“And I was 13 when I led the assault that killed the Xiq’tal and Selroth.”
She teared up and looked away.
“It’s a different world,” Doc said.
“I don’t like this world,” she said and looked at her son. “Things are too black and white for my liking.”
They left the mess hall for the walk back to their apartment, the one Doc now shared after he and Terry’s mom were married a month ago. It was a quiet walk, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Terry’s thoughts were closer to his own person. Because, if the Caretaker had altered the orcas to KilSha, and the bottlenose dolphins to BotSha, what had they done to him and his friends? Maybe he’d ask the machine. Maybe it might answer.
# # # # #
