March 22, 2401 C.E. on Earth.
It was seldom quiet for long on Daisy Hub, so whenever they found themselves in a lull, the crew tried to make the most of it.
Engineering Specialists Spiro Gouryas and Devanan Singh were putting every available field technologist to work, assembling what they hoped would be a functioning control panel for the Nandrian field generator on the landing deck.
Cargo Inspector Robert O’Malley was doing what he always did in his spare time — updating the information in the Hub’s databank and then mining it for interesting nuggets.
Life Support Specialist Jason Smith and Ajda Gray, the Hub’s agronomist, were making plans to create an alien biosphere aboard the station in preparation for ssalssit essendi, the ritual exchange of living symbols that would finally cement the alliance between House Daisy Hub and the Nandrians.
Chief Cargo Inspector Gavin Holchuk and crew member Max Karlov were taking turns babysitting Odysseus, the Mitradean refugee currently detoxing in guest quarters after ingesting a large dose of caffeine. (Letting the little alien anywhere near a container of java had turned out to be a huge mistake, one that no one on the Hub would be committing again anytime soon.)
Almost everyone else was in Cargo Inspector Lu Xensiu’s dojo on D Deck, practicing ninja moves. Nobody was sleeping.
Station Manager Drew Townsend wasn’t fond of lulls. Invariably, they pushed his mind into overdrive, forcing him to relive unpleasant experiences and second-guess past decisions. This evening, as he sat behind his desk on AdComm, sipping from a cup of Chef Fritz Jensen’s famous brew, his thoughts kept revolving around the jarring revelations of the past few days. The most disturbing had come from the two women now occupying their stations across the deck from him, pretending that everything was business as usual.
Data and Communications Specialist Lydia Garfield had let slip that she’d been saving “useful” vidclips recorded by the Hub’s security monitoring system. She had an agenda, he was certain of it. What it was, and whether she actually had something on him, were yet to be determined; but neither question was at the top of Townsend’s list right now. According to the Nandrians, a big nasty was on its way, headed directly for Daisy Hub. Could he count on Lydia to back him up when it hit? A handful of days ago, the unhesitating reply would have been yes. Today, he was no longer sure.
He was wondering as well about his second in command, Assistant Station Manager Ruby ‘Mom’ McNeil. Ruby had privately revealed to him that, like Drew, she was an undercover Earth Intelligence agent. The first such operative ever to be assigned there, she’d been living aboard the Hub for more than twenty standard years. He knew that someone on his crew was a mole, under the direct command of a higher-up at Earth Intelligence HQ. Could that person be Ruby? Could she have been the one who executed the kill order on Drew’s predecessor, Karim Khaloub? He only wished he knew.
And then there was the Earth resistance, a movement that didn’t exist yet. He’d apparently planted the idea in the crew’s minds during a speech a couple of years earlier, and now it had taken firm root. According to Ruby, the resistance was the only Terran organization these maverick geniuses would willingly serve.
Of course it was.
Townsend needed to keep Earth from finding out that Daisy Hub had effectively seceded from it by independently entering into a defense pact with an alien race. At the same time, he couldn’t risk letting his crew find out that they’d been co-opted and were now working for the EIS (itself a subversive organization). Having to protect both secrets left Drew no choice — sometime soon, he would have to create and run an off-world anti-government movement of his own. It couldn’t be a con, either. His people were canny as well as brilliant. They would know if it were just for show. This resistance would have to strike an actual, telling blow against the Earth High Council.
And therein lay the problem. Putting together an organization was simple — the crew of Daisy Hub was already a deep space version of the Warrior Kings street gang. But, effecting real change on their home world from an orbiting gulag on the margin of Earth space? That was going to be a much tougher challenge.
No wonder Townsend was having trouble sleeping at night.
Letting out a weary sigh, he leaned backward into his chair, consciously relaxing his neck and shoulders. He closed his eyes, breathing in, breathing out. Savoring the stillness of the moment. Knowing in the depths of his being that it couldn’t last…
“Drew, I’ve got an incoming message from Zulu,” Lydia called to him across the deck.
It figured. He sighed again, heaved himself to his feet, and crossed to the main console. Anything coming from the Rangers’ observation platform was probably not going to be good news, but he was too tired to worry about it. Mainly, he was wishing he were a snake. Snakes could shed their skin. They could emerge clean and new and then slither away, leaving the crust of their former self — with all its accumulated baggage — behind them. That, more than anything, was what he longed to do right now: shed the weight of all the secrets he’d been carrying around and get on with the rest of his life.
“Are you opening a shelter for aliens over there?” demanded Captain Rodrigues’s voice. “First a giant prawn shows up, and now a cockroach the size of my nine-year-old niece.”
Jerked wide awake, Townsend nearly gave himself whiplash. “Is this a joke, Paul?”
“You tell me. We’re tracking a craft on our long range scanners. It entered the system an hour ago and, judging by its course corrections, its destination is Daisy Hub. When we established contact, the pilot identified itself as Corvou and announced that ‘the Mother of All’ had finished making the universe, whatever the hell that means.”
Ruby had been waiting silently nearby. Now she shifted her stance and murmured, “Never rains but it pours, doesn’t it?”
“It could be another refugee seeking asylum,” Townsend pointed out.
“I don’t think so,” said Rodrigues. “Now it’s insisting that we have to give it access to something it built. Claims that the future of the entire Corvou race depends on it.”
Drew heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. “Something a Corvou built?” Lydia whispered hoarsely. “Is he talking about Devil Bug?”
Ruby laid a warning hand on Townsend’s forearm. Her forehead was furrowed, her mouth a short, straight line. “We need that shuttle, Chief,” she told him in an urgent undertone. “If anything happens to it, we may never find a replacement.”
He knew that. Townsend stared for a moment at the console’s light screen. The alien craft was still too far away to show up on the monitor. And it hadn’t hailed them yet, probably because it was already in contact with the authoritative voice of the Rangers. “We need to communicate with the Corvou, Paul. Care to patch us through?”
“No, but I’ll share the frequency with you. Remember, I’ll be listening in. Mute your mic when you’re not addressing the alien, so you and I can continue to talk privately on this channel.”
“Copy that,” said Lydia. She busied herself with the many buttons and switches on her board. Then she turned and gave Drew a thumbs-up sign.
He cleared his throat before speaking. “Corvou pilot, this is Daisy Hub Control. Please specify your intentions,” he said, enunciating clearly in case this alien, like Odysseus, was using a translation device.
It was. After several seconds, a flat, tinny, obviously manufactured voice responded, “The Mother of All has finished making the universe. We must prepare our part of it for inspection. Open your landing deck doors so that I can complete my work.”
Drew and Ruby exchanged puzzled looks. “And what exactly does your work entail?” he asked the alien.
Another few heartbeats later, the Corvou replied, “The vessel inside your station is not whole. I have brought the missing parts to install.”
“Townsend, a word?” Rodrigues cut in.
Lydia muted the feed to the alien ship.
“I don’t like the smell of this,” the Ranger continued tautly. “How does it know you have one of its ships? It could be a ruse to gain access to the Hub.”
Ruby was shaking her head. “When Soaring Hawk traded with the Nandrians for the shuttle, it was missing parts, that much is true. Hawk had to jerry-rig stuff together to make it work before I could fly it. If this Corvou has brought us the correct factory components, then I don’t think we should turn it away.”
Not to mention the whole “destroying the future of an alien race” thing that had stuck inside Townsend’s brain.
“Are you detecting any weapons on the Corvou ship, Paul?” he asked.
“Nothing is showing up on our scans so far. That doesn’t mean it isn’t armed, or that the pilot can’t have hostile intentions.”
“True,” Townsend responded, “but this is a first contact situation, and first contacts are inherently risky for both sides. So, let’s not assume the worst here. If the alien ship is in fact unarmed, it should be able to get within ten klicks of the station without tripping our invisibility field.”
“Putting it much too close for my liking if you’re wrong about this. Just to be safe, I’m dispatching the Tripoli with orders to intercept and challenge.”
Of course he was. Intercept, challenge, and quite possibly fire on an alien craft during first contact. This was precisely the scenario Drew had hoped to avoid. Blowing out his next breath, he replied, “Understood, Captain.” Then he turned to Lydia, gave her the throat-cutting signal to mute the second mic, and said, “It should be hours before anything happens out there. Keep both commlinks up so we can react quickly if necessary. Assign the Corvou ship a docking portal and convey the usual information to its pilot. Then alert Hagman. I want full Security on A Deck as a precaution. I misjudged Odysseus, and seven people ended up in Med Services. I’d prefer not to repeat that error.”
Lydia’s expression had turned impish. “Let’s see now. For the Nandrians, it’s citric acid. For Mitradeans it’s caffeine. What do you suppose intoxicates a Corvou?”
“Most insects like sugar,” said Ruby.
“Shall we find out? Get Nora to make a batch of cookies and set up a pool? How about it, Drew? Are you in?”
Townsend heard but didn’t reply. He was staring at Ruby’s screen, watching the dot that represented the Rangers’ departing shuttle creep slowly across the top corner of the frame. A nagging unease had burrowed into his mind. This first contact situation felt wrong. It was probably dangerous. And all he could do was what he’d already done: set security protocols in place, run drill after drill, and keep his fingers crossed. The Hub’s crew had been practicing emergency procedures for nearly two years. Either they were prepared to handle this or they weren’t.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he was marginally aware of Lydia speaking on the comm. Her voice was an indistinct drone at first. Then her tone abruptly sharpened, yanking him back to the moment.
“Drew, we’ve got problems,” she informed him tightly.
He turned to face her. “Talk to me.”
“Not only is the pilot rejecting the docking assignment, but its ship just appeared on my screen, ahead of schedule and moving very fast.”
It made sense. “The Corvou has spotted the Tripoli and doesn’t want to be intercepted.”
“And we know from Devil Bug how much speed a Corvou-built craft can muster,” Ruby added.
They did, indeed. Piloting the Hub’s shuttle, ‘Mom’ routinely completed the four-hour flight to Zulu in a little more than half that time.
“If the Rangers can’t stop the Corvou and it stays on course, I estimate it will be crashing into our landing deck doors in about two hours,” Lydia continued. “And that’s not all. Another message just arrived. The Nannssi is on her way here. Apparently, the moment Chief Officer Agnosk heard that the Corvou queen was dying, he dropped everything to rush to our aid. They’ve been hopscotching through space gates for a couple of days already and expect to be here very soon.”
Here, where the Nandrian warship would be met by Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, ordered to protect Daisy Hub with deadly force if necessary from an alien intruder.
It was a recipe for disaster.
Swinging his gaze from Lydia’s strained expression to Ruby’s and back, Drew thought furiously for a moment.
“Lydia, get Gavin Holchuk on deck, right now,” he snapped. Then he turned to his second in command. “Ruby, I know you’ve got your heart set on those spare parts for Devil Bug—”
“—but we can’t let an unknown alien onto our landing deck. Understood, Chief.”
“Put out an all-station alert,” he told her. “Situation code yellow, full lockdown.”
In the absence of a battery of defensive weapons, this would have to do. Rodrigues had earlier pointed out to him that the station was vulnerable to attack. In fact, thanks to the Midnight Muralist’s molecular paintbrush — and Singh’s further tinkering with it — the problem was even worse than the Ranger captain knew. By Gouryas’s latest estimate, Daisy Hub’s overall hull integrity stood at just 86.1 percent. If the Corvou succeeded in ramming the landing deck doors, or if a firefight erupted close by, the resulting damage to the Hub could be crippling. If not quickly controlled, it could even cost crew members their lives.
“So far, the danger is impending but not present,” Townsend went on, addressing both women. “If nothing changes in the next hour, bump the alert up to code orange. Meanwhile, we’re going to try to head things off from here.” He signaled to Lydia to unmute the channel and announced into the mic, “Corvou pilot, this is a first contact situation. We must ask you to dock outside the station until proper protocols have been observed.”
“There is no time for ritual or ceremony,” the translation device informed him after a pause. “The Mother of All has ordained this. If one Corvou displeases her, all Corvou will die.”
“Oh, wow,” Lydia murmured.
“That’s the hive mentality for you,” Ruby murmured back.
Clearly, this alien did not recognize Human authority. Drew would have to take a different approach. “Corvou pilot, I am the Hak’kor of House Daisy Hub and I am commanding you to follow the instructions you have just been given.”
This time, the response was almost immediate. “If you are a Hak’kor then you understand the need to comply with my instructions. Everything must be completed before the final hatching, or the Corvou will not be remade in the new universe. My race will die out forever. If you prevent me and my race dies out, then yours will die as well, in this universe. Open your doors to receive me.”
As if on cue, the tube car hummed to a stop on AdComm. Drew turned in time to see his disgruntled-looking Chief Cargo Inspector step out of it.
Holchuk had evidently been dragged away from Teri Mintz. A tiny smear of her lip rouge was visible at the corner of his mouth, and he was still tucking his shirt into his trousers as he crossed the deck. “Boss man, I hope for both our sakes that this is a real emergency,” he warned.
He was not overdramatizing. Teri’s nickname was “Tiger”. She had a temper to go with her red hair, and this was not the first time Townsend had interrupted one of their intimate moments.
“We’ve got Rangers, Nandrians, and a Corvou, all converging on the Hub with weapons primed and ready. The Corvou is trying to ram us, the Rangers are hurrying to intercept, and the Nannssi is on its way to lend assistance,” he summed up. “Is that emergency enough for you?”
“For her,” Holchuk corrected him. “Yeah. But it seems to me we’ve had this conversation before. It’s tekl’hananni. Your problem-solving skills are being tested, and, as a member of the Fifth Shield of House Trokerk, I’m not allowed to get involved.”
Drew’s heart and jaw both dropped. “You’re joking,” he blurted. “This situation was deliberately set up to test our worthiness?”
“Not deliberately. But anything that happens during a tekl’hananni becomes part of it, just like in battle. I’m afraid you’re on your own here, boss man. I can witness the test, but I’m forbidden to interfere.”
Ruby drew herself up to her full height, just a few centimeters shy of his own. “Really!”
Her expression darkening, she was opening her mouth to say more, but Rodrigues’s razor-sharp voice on the comm cut her off. “If the Corvou die out, then Humans will die too? That sounded like a threat to me.”
Townsend rolled his eyes. He’d forgotten that the Ranger was monitoring their communications with the alien ship. “You can stand down, Paul. I’m sure the Corvou is just expressing a religious belief.”
“And I’m sure that you’re indulging in wishful thinking right now,” Rodrigues returned sternly, “especially since the Nandrian response to this alien is being delivered by a warship. We can talk about ‘House Daisy Hub’ another time. Meanwhile, I’m dispatching the Bonaventure to block the Corvou vessel by any means necessary from reaching your station. Rodrigues out.”
More firepower. Just what they needed. Now, for certain, blood was going to be spilled at Daisy Hub’s front door. Unless…
Townsend signaled to Lydia to mute the channel again. “Put me on with the Corvou. Let’s see if I can convince it to leave peacefully.” A moment later she looked up and gave him a nod.
Summoning up the steel-edged tone of voice that had served him well in the interrogation rooms of the 33rd Precinct in New Chicago, he declared, “You say that you need to finish building the vessel on our landing deck. You say it is missing parts. But I say you are mistaken. The vessel in question has been complete and fully operational for more than a year.”
“That is impossible,” said the Corvou’s translator. “I held back parts when I constructed it, as the Mother of All commands us to do.”
“Humans are resourceful. We made our own parts and installed those instead. Since the vessel is completed, there is no work for you to do, and therefore no reason for you to stay in this system. You already know that there are ships on their way to intercept you. They are armed and prepared to fire if you do not change course. Leave now. Otherwise, I promise that you will be in mortal danger.”
Silence. As they waited for the alien’s response, Townsend stole a glance at Holchuk. The other man’s expression was grim, his head moving very slightly from side to side. As their eyes met, Holchuk raised his chin, braced his legs, and folded his arms forbiddingly over his chest.
It didn’t take a genius to read that body language. Townsend mentally crossed his fingers, praying that he hadn’t just flunked the Nandrians’ test of worthiness.
An electronic shriek erupted from the comm, blowing the thought right out of his head. “You finished it? This is blasphemy! You have offended the Mother of All! You have doomed the Corvou to extinction for all time! And you have doomed yourselves!”
Startled looks crisscrossed the deck. Holchuk opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it again.
“The Bonaventure has launched, and it’s headed our way,” Lydia reported. “The alien ships are both on my screen now, and the Tripoli is moving to intercept. The Nannssi is gaining on the Corvou, but they’re still pretty far apart.” Swiveling in her chair, she added, “As long as the Corvou veers away before anyone gets close enough for a weapons lock, we should be all right.”
The alien’s translation device blared through the speaker again, beginning with a metallic screech that set Drew’s teeth on edge. “Humans! Your entire race will pay the price for your arrogance and stupidity on this day! Prepare to be destroyed by the Corvou!”
“Now, that was a threat,” Rodrigues declared. “I don’t need your permission for this, Townsend. Diplomacy has obviously failed. I’m giving the order to fire at will.”
“No, Paul, wait!”
The Ranger did not respond.
An endless heartbeat later, Lydia glanced up from her screen, her expression doleful. “The Corvou vessel just winked out. It’s gone.”
“Gone,” he echoed, adding hopefully, “As in, escaped through a Gate?”
Busy with her control board, she replied, “I’m detecting a debris field at its last location. No life signs. I would say both ship and pilot have been obliterated.”
Ruby reached blindly for the nearest chair and sank onto it. “Oh, dear lord,” she murmured bleakly. “Did we really just—? Please, tell me Humans did not just fire the first shot in an interstellar war.”
Townsend had no words with which to reply. There was only a sick feeling at the back of his throat, as though everything inside him had gone into freefall. His instincts had been correct. The Rangers had blown up a ship on first contact and Humanity was now at war with an alien race. Whether or not the Corvou were one of the common enemies they shared with the Nandrians, it appeared the big nasty had found them at last.
For several long moments, a miserable silence wrapped AdComm like a blanket. No one moved or spoke, or even dared to make eye contact with one another. Then a light began blinking on the comm console.
Lydia extended an unsteady hand and opened the channel. “This is Daisy Hub Control. Please identif—” Sitting bolt upright, she turned slowly in her seat and stared incredulously into Townsend’s face. Then she toggled a switch, putting the sender’s voice on speakers.
“I am Agnosk ban Sitgaram,” it rumbled, “Third Shield of House Trokerk and Chief Officer of the Nandrian vessel Nannssi. In accordance with the terms of our alliance, we have destroyed the Corvou ship that was threatening your House. Please honor us by granting us permission to dock at your station, so that I may meet with your Hak’kor to discuss the incident.”
A tsunami of relief crashing over him, Townsend had to fight the impulse to burst out laughing. The Rangers hadn’t fired the first shot after all. It was a point of light in what had so far been a very dark day.
Holchuk stepped over to stand beside him. “It’s your call, boss man,” he remarked. “By destroying an unarmed foe, he’s broken one of their most sacred laws, giving you a damned good reason to deny both of his requests. However, if you really want to learn what happened out there—”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to interfere,” Ruby broke in.
“This is not interfering,” he explained patiently. “I’m simply laying out his options.”
“Like Nagor was doing when he translated that manual and then gave it to us?” Lydia said, her eyebrows arching.
Townsend could guess what was going through her mind. As Rex Regum had told him on so many occasions and in so many ways, playing by the rules only made sense if both sides could be trusted to follow them. This was not the first time a Nandrian had “colored outside the lines”, so to speak. And Drew did want to know what the hell Agnosk had been thinking.
“All right,” he decided, squaring his shoulders and assuming his most Hak’koresque demeanor. “Agnosk can come aboard the station. But he’s doing it on my terms. Ruby, assign the Nannssi a portal. Identify yourself as the Kalufah, then notify the Chief Officer that we won’t be separating the Hub to accommodate him this time. If he wants to dock, he’ll have to take all weapons offline before making his final approach. Lydia, I’ll be meeting with him on A Deck. You can cancel the code yellow, but we’re still going to treat this as a situation. Tell Hagman I want a Security team standing visibly by in case things take an ugly turn and I need tactical support.”
Looking directly at Holchuk, he added, “You can forget about writing me a script. There won’t be any welcoming ceremonies for this visit. Agnosk came to my House and violated the Nandrian code of honor. Now he has some serious explaining to do.”