A Call to Arms Page 3

  “It may be inferior compared to a frontline warship,” Lok’Nar reminded his tactical officer sagely as he tapped his third leg impatiently. “But I doubt very much that whoever sent this device equipped it with its most powerful technologies, to be plundered by someone like us. Be mindful not to make unwarranted assumptions about potential enemies.”

  The underling had the decency to look abashed at the impromptu lesson. “Yes, sir.”

  Lok’Nar stared at his subordinate for a long while to make sure the lesson sunk in, and then moved his attention elsewhere. “Opinion?” Lok’Nar asked of his First, who had been silent during this whole exchange.

  “My Lord, that star cluster was declared as significant to N’xin expansion in the next –” Lok’Nar glowered at his First, annoyed at being reminded of the painfully obvious, and Lor’Crel fell silent as he considered his counsel more carefully. “I agree, it is a probe. And regardless of its level of sophistication, I suggest we bring it aboard and study it… and investigate that star cluster, in case it has an infestation.”

  “Spoken just like your first-cousin,” Lok’Nar simpered, careful to keep his tone neutral. Kuellan Mk’Bak was his superior, and was not someone you wanted to displease. “But I agree. Transmit that course to the navigator.” Lok’Nar turned to his communications officer. “Contact the flagship, update them of our status and transmit our itinerary. Let’s find out who is encroaching on our space.”

  *

  “It’s taken him long enough.”

  Jennifer scowled as she practiced being a statue, as her mother tutted around her as she took measurements – the old tape measure, despite being centuries out-of-date, remained a tried-and-true method of bonding between mother-and-daughter at such a momentous occasion.

  “Ma, be nice,” Jennifer warned, wincing as her waist was tugged at. Jennifer’s wedding dress was a family heirloom, having originated at her great-grandmothers wedding in 2288 – there, Estelle Menzies had married Jonathan Kuiper. The dress would be used seven more times over the years before landing on Jennifer’s shoulders – the last time it had seen use was when Jennifer’s parents had wedded, back in 2378.

  “Oh, I’m happy, pet, happy! I just thought he’d have popped the question before now,” Elizabeth Carmichael said absently as she worked, taking god-only knows how many more measurements. “How’s that?”

  “Tight,” Jennifer muttered, a little breathless – she felt like she was wearing a corset, despite the flowing design of the creamy white ensemble. Her mother made an adjustment and Jennifer felt her breath return. “And would you stop calling me pet, it’s so… British.”

  Elizabeth clucked, waving the concern away. “How about now?”

  “I can breathe again. Thanks.” Jennifer heaved a sigh. “Where’d you learn to do this sort of work, anyway? You’ve never done any kind of textile work before.”

  Elizabeth snorted. She was a small woman of enormous attitude, with shortly cropped dark hair, dark eyes, and a frown that was always severe and never far away.

  “I uploaded my VA with the appropriate programming. I wasn’t going to let this family tradition down.” Elizabeth shrugged. “My sister may be willing to spend a fortune on professionals, but I like the old traditions a little too much.” Elizabeth sighed wearily. “Why are you getting married the day after New Years, anyway? He only proposed last week!”

  Jennifer regarded her mother evenly. “Because we want a small wedding… and the more time we give you to plan, the bigger it’ll be. Speaking of which,” she said, lowering her voice, “The wedding is tomorrow, ma, am I going to make it in time?”

  “Yes, yes, don’t rush me,” her mother replied absently, hissing in vexation. Already, in the nine days since James had proposed, Jennifer had had to veto some of her more prominent suggestions, including holding the wedding in the largest Cathedral on Bastion. The last thing Jennifer wanted was a repeat of her aunt’s third wedding – Elizabeth had planned that, too, and it had cost a small fortune, and had included a payroll of nearly eighty people.

  “So how long am I going to wait until I’m a grandmother?”

  “Oh, Jesus, ma,” Jennifer said, chuckling. “Don’t even go there.”

  “It’s a perfectly legitimate question,” Elizabeth protested.

  “You already are a grandmother,” Jennifer pointed out snidely, poking her tongue out, as her mother lifted her arms and started examining the sleeves. “You have three, and god only knows how many nieces and nephews…”

  “Yes, yes, but I have none from you,” Elizabeth waved dismissively, her nose screwing up in annoyance. “But I’ll settle for two, whenever you’re ready.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Do you have a preference?” Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at Jennifer’s airy tone. “You’ll be waiting a while, though: James and I are pretty adamant about not having kids anytime soon, mother.”

  If ever, Jennifer continued silently. Although she loved her nieces and nephew, she’d never once looked at them and gone I could do with one of them. The whole concept of parenthood seemed alien to her, at least at this point in her life, and she’d been quietly relieved when James had expressed similar sentiments.

  Elizabeth sighed contemptuously, but softened it with a slight smirk as she shook her head. “You’ve always been a great disappointment to me, miss.” She stepped back, admiring her handy work. “Have I shown you the dress little Lauren is wearing?”

  “Twice, now, mother,” Jennifer said patiently. “And yes, she is very cute.”

  “I think she’s a bit too old to be called cute these days, Jennifer,” Elizabeth countered. “She is nearly thirteen, after all… as she is constantly reminding everyone.”

  “It’s a teenage thing, mother,” Jennifer said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Elizabeth smirked, her blue eyes sparkling. “Children are always so ungrateful,” she complained, but was prevented from answering by a knock at the door.

  “How are you looking?” Benicia Powell, one of Jennifer’s brides-maids, stuck her head in through the open door. The fiery red-head smiled puckishly as her hands worked her hair into place, the stark white dress contrasting sharply with her scarlet hair and carnations. “Oh, very nice.”

  “Do you really think so?” asked Jennifer, even as Felicia appeared beside Benicia, her silky blonde hair done up like a stunted bee hive. “How you doing, Flick?”

  “Doing my best not to out-do the bride,” Felicity Jankowski said cheerfully. She was a head shorter than Benicia, and slightly stocker, and had the reputation as

  “You’d need more time than is available to pull that off… I’m gorgeous,” Jennifer countered smugly, smirking, just as her mother straightened up from adjusting something. “I am gorgeous, aren’t I, mother?”

  “Yes, pet,” Elizabeth said distractedly, but didn’t offer anything else.

  “Am I ready now, mother?”

  “My job here is done, I think,” Elizabeth finally, spinning her daughter around slowly as she took in everything. Considering her relative inexperience in such matters, Jennifer felt rather proud at her mother’s efforts… even if they had threatened to cut off her circulation and breathing “Now, just try not putting on any weight between now and tomorrow, we don’t want you passing out at the altar cos you can’t breathe.”

  Jennifer had heard all sorts of stories about brides fainting from the excitement of the moment, but had vowed to herself to not be that weak on her own special day. “I’ll do my best, mother.”

  *

  “This planet is supposed to be uninhabited!”

  First Captain Kuellan Mk’Bak stomped up and down the wide command area of the C&C of his cruiser, the Gilded Claw. He was an old ship, the Claw, but he had served Kuellan well for the fifteen cycles that Kuellan had been its commander, and it still outperformed some of the newer, more advanced models the N’xin had been trialling in recent months.

  The blue-and-white trans
lucent hologram that represented Second Captain Lok’Nar, of the Secret Charity, shifted slightly as he tried to keep track of Kuellan’s movement.

  Lok’Nar was a competent commander, but played things a little too safe, and wasn’t anywhere near as blood-thirsty as Kuellan would have expected from a person of his rank. “It was, almost a full cycle ago when the Tempestuous did a preliminary assessment of the region. We suspect this is some sort of reconnaissance mission – whoever these trespassers are, they haven’t been here long, or it wouldn’t have taken us so long to find them.”

  “Are they a vanguard of an invasion force?” Captain She’lar, of the Swift Talon, asked, his hologram flickering to the left of Lok’Nar.

  The Swift Talon was on its way to back up the Secret Charity, but, despite its superior speed, was still several days away. It was unfortunate that it was Lok’Nar, and not She’lar, who had stumbled across the trespassers – She’lar was a shoot-first commander; questions were not considered essential unless he was instructed otherwise.

  “Our belief is that it’s a frontier mission to determine colonial potential. We’ve rated them as a Level One hostile, but even that rating is being generous in their favour. We cannot detect anything that could be considered a weapon –”

  Kuellan snarled. “I don’t care!” he barked, stomping a heavy hind leg to gain everyone’s attention – just because they couldn’t detect, didn’t mean that there weren’t weapons… or that weapons were not on their way. “They are too close to us, in our territory.” He focused his glare on Lok’Nar. “Don’t wait for the Swift Talon. Wipe them out. All of them.”

  “You don’t want prisoners?”

  It wasn’t a challenge, though Kuellan still managed to bristle at the potential rebuke.

  “None of them have anything I want to hear,” he declared derisively. “If, as you say, they are the vanguard of something, then there will be more coming.”

  Lok’Nar seemed to brace himself, as if to argue the point, but obviously thought better of it, opting to bow almost sarcastically at his commander. “As you wish, First Captain.”

  *

  “Don’t you look spiffy?”

  James pretended he hadn’t heard Troy – if only so he didn’t have to think of what the word spiffy meant. Not hearing Troy was something he did routinely these days when his twin was around. He leaned in to the mirror to adjust his tie; try as he might, he could not get the damn thing to sit properly. It sat either too much to the left or right, never where he wanted it.

  And his damn collar was too tight, the fabric clinging to his skin like a tourniquet.

  “I think I need a new collar,” James muttered. “Or a new neck.”

  “My collar size is the same as it was at college,” Troy bragged. James caught his eye in the mirror and directed a nasty sneer his way. Troy did his best to pretend he didn’t see it.

  “It’s your ego that’s gotten bigger,” James retorted, letting out a triumphant ha as his tie finally sat where he wanted it to. He spun around to face his twin, who was leaning against the back of a couch in the dressing room. Both of them were wearing Amani suits, but Troy had opted for a scarlet tie, James a royal blue. “How do I look?”

  “Like… you’re getting married.” A barely perceptible sigh escaped Troy, who had taken to looking at his polished black leather shoes – real leather. Most people would have missed it, but James and Troy had shared a womb – if James was honest with himself, there wasn’t anything the two of them didn’t share with one another, and so it was easy for them to read each other as easily as it was to breathe.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Troy seemed to mull his feeling over in his head, but James already had a pretty good idea what the problem was.

  “Nothing,” Troy said, looking up at James and offering a weak smile. He waved James’ question off. “Nothing.”

  “You think I’m throwing my life away?”

  Troy frowned, feigning concentration. “Not exactly…”

  “You think I’m too young to get married?”

  “That’s more like it,” Troy admitted brightly.

  At 29 years of age, Troy had yet to have a relationship that lasted more than 28 hours… maybe 42 if he was feeling particularly enamoured with a guy. He seemed intent on being a lifelong bachelor – not that unusual these days, truth be told, but it was still something of an anomaly within the family. Patrick Hunter hadn’t married until the age of 40 – and he’d gone through many wives and mistresses since; his brother Franklin had waited until he was in his fifties. With human life expectancies being measured in centuries these days, stable, long-term relationships were not as common as they had been a few centuries earlier.

  “You’re the youngest in the family to get married since dad’s aunt Madison.” Troy shrugged. “Look what happened to her.”

  James frowned incredulously. Madison had died at the tender young age of 34, on the second night of her honeymoon, decades before James and Troy had been born. “A tug driver fell asleep and crashed into her yacht!”

  “Exactly,” Troy said, then frowned in confusion, and added, “Wait a minute.” He paused, obviously intending to rephrase his point, and then abandoned it all together. “I just don’t want you rushing into this.”

  “Jen and I have been dating for almost five years, you fool,” James said scornfully, giving Troy a light shove and – thanks in part to some wonderful over-acting on his brother’s part – toppling him off the back of the couch. “That’s longer than dad’s second marriage.”

  Troy scrambled up, dusting himself off noisily as he affected a haughty air of disdain. “Fine, fine, but I reserve the right to say I told you so at a later date.” He frowned. “Besides, dad’s second marriage only ended on account of Cassie dying on him.”

  “I stand corrected!” James snapped, smiling. He approached Troy and the two men embraced, both of them clapping each other’s shoulders as if they were competing for noise. “You realise that you’re going to be nagged even more by the women in the family to settle down, right?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind, thanks,” Troy said darkly, sighing dramatically. “I am happy for you, though. Entering a brave new world… By the way, I stole a look at your marriage contracts, and I’m glad neither one of you included an exclusivity clause in your contract. I always advise my clients to include that.”

  “So glad to have your approval at this late hour,” James replied, smirking. He didn’t point out to Troy that he didn’t have any clients. “C’mon, let’s get me hitched so you can hit on one of the waiter’s and take them home.”

  Troy beamed, as if all his Christmas’ had come at once, but, before he could respond, there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in, I’m decent,” Troy called automatically.

  “For once,” James muttered, and was gifted with a withering glance from his twin. The unassuming door opened slowly, and a woman – who managed to radiate beauty with very little work – poked her head in, eyes narrowed in annoyance.

  “Are you two still fooling around in here?” Rebecca Gold – their mother – asked, shaking her head in firm disapproval – she’d left them just a few minutes earlier to check on the other preparations, namely, the bride. “Hurry up. Your step-mother keeps staring at me.”

  Troy wrinkled his nose in annoyance – he’d always disliked Bridgette. “Just ignore the dumb bitch. I do.”

  “Troy!”

  “What?” Troy asked, looking surprised at his mother’s reaction. Rebecca simply clucked at him, then turned her attention back to James.

  “We’re hurrying, we’re hurrying,” James said reassuringly. He twirled around, arms wide, and struck a series of poses, like a model on a catwalk. “See, how do I look?”

  “Like you’re getting married, and are now four minutes late!” His mother clapped her hands, then pushed James aside as she looked in the mirror, making sure her outfit and make-up were still on check. “I thought I might go b
londe for the ceremony,” she continued, almost to herself, and with a gentle shake of her head her black hair changed to a more golden hue. “How’s this?”

  “It’s good… but now I’m five minutes late.”

  Rebecca chuckled as she turned around, and embraced James tightly, her eyes watering with a mother’s pride – it was the only time he’d ever seen her cry. “Alright, alright, let’s get you to the altar.”

  *

  Gallus IV was a challenge not easily surmounted, Peter Kincaid thought to himself as he stood, foot tapping gently, waiting for the latest batch of results to come through on the terminal in front of him. It was a thought he’d had every day for the last six months, ever since he’d been sent to this planet to determine its viability.

  The main problem a person faced on Gallus was its day, a fact that had eluded Peter when he’d first been sent here from Cambridge: Gallus IV rotated along its orbit at almost half the pace of Earth, making for a day that lasted forty hours – which compounded a second problem, namely, the planets weather. A mere eight-degree axial tilt – more negligible than Bastions – made for a single season with long, warm days, and cold nights that were so lengthy as to completely screw with the human body-clock.

  Peter’s initial field trip in 2407 had been a quiet success, but draining, both mentally and physically, and now here he was, nearly two years later, continuing the work he’d started. He wasn’t sure if his reassignment here – having pushed to get assigned somewhere, anywhere, else – was a punishment, or karma, or something, but he felt as if it was both: after all, he’d annoyed many people during his career, and he’d grumbled a fair bit – and quite loudly – at having been sent to Gallus in the first place.

  There had been moments where he felt he’d never get away – or off – this cursed planet.

  The plodding pace of the bureaucracy in the Commonwealth assured that it would take years for before any colonists set foot on the planet, no matter how much of a priority this world was for their plans. With worlds like New Haven and the like sagging behind in development limbo, I’d be surprised if this world gets colonized before 2435. He secretly wagered that it’d be 2440 before any human’s made this planet their home.