Earth Song: Twilight Serenade

Earth Song V:

Twilight Serenade

Mark Wandrey

To the fans of the Earth Song series. Your words of encouragement are like

water falling on the desert sands, I never get enough! I hope this book

rewards your patience. Don't worry, there are many more books in this

universe!

To my test readers, valiant among the heroes.

Alijah Ballard, Robert Boyer, Abby Smith. You have my eternal thanks.

And of course, to my wife Joy and son Patrick, my love forever.

Published by Henchman Press

Edited by Leo Champion

Cover by Jack Giesen

Earth Song 5: Twilight Serenade copyright 2016 Mark Wandrey

Cover image copyright 2016 Henchman Press

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1-941620-23-6

Published in the United States of America.

Prologue

The Kaatan emerged from tactical jump a picosecond after it had disappeared a hundred lightyears earlier. The ship’s master had become far more adept at the operation than when she had first done it. In the early days she’d have the ship at a relative standstill. Now she did it traveling at almost 1,000 times the speed of light, the gateway appearing a scant few thousand kilometers in front of the needle shaped bow.

Lilith shook off the aftereffects of the tactical jump, far less profound than they had been now she’d been through them hundreds of times. She floated in the center of the spherical CIC and took the measure of her ship. Everything was perfect.

Next she scanned space around her, using stars and stellar phenomena to locate herself to within kilometers. She’d appeared right where she wanted, just a dozen light years from her home of Gamma Orionis. Bellatrix.

“Everything go okay?” Kal’at asked over the ship’s intercom.

“Confirmed,” she said, “we’re almost home.”

“Great,” he hissed back. Lilith could see him in his quarters over the internal monitors. If the reptilian species could smile he’d have an ear to ear grin. “I cannot wait to be home again!”

Lilith broke the connection. The part of her modified mind that handled ship operations finished reviewing her course and brought them back to cruising speed, just under 15,000 times the speed of light. They’d enter the star system in only six hours.

With everything operating on more or less automatic, she turned her attention back to a few days ago. Back to a star system not too far away.

“What to do,” she thought. Some truths were liberating. Some were dangerous. Some were just confusing. And some just didn’t make any damned sense at all.

“This is certainly the latter,” she said. A screen to the side showed the planet in all its detail. Her scanners had gathered an incredible amount of data in the few seconds she’d been within closer scan range of the world. There was some small redshift distortion from the speed she’d been traveling at, but not enough to account for what she’d seen.

Lilith went through the possibilities. First, she’d been in the wrong system. She examined her data and compared against the star charts from The People and her personal records. She was certain she’d been in the correct system. Furthermore there were no systems with population densities that high within almost 600 light years; 592 to be precise.

Her scanners were wrong. Not a chance. Anomalous signal data was possible, yes, but picking up EM signatures of that intensity and misinterpreting them was not.

She accessed her archive data from human records. Unfortunately they were incomplete. The humans had not made all their data available. However she did find a few old style digital images and made comparisons. Some were even within a few orders of magnitude of what she considered normal resolution. Enough detail to make some comparisons. They were… close.

Lilith spent a few more minutes and decided it was close but not perfect. Oh, the land masses and other planetary features were a perfect match. A few other things were not. Artificial things.

“I’m going to need more access to human records,” she decided. “This will take some time. And I don’t think it would be a good idea to let Mom know about it just yet. She won’t react well to this.”

The ship continued through space towards home. Lilith spent the remaining time in deep contemplation.

Part I

Chapter 1

Octember 24th, 534 AE

Office of the First, Ft. Jovich, Peninsula Territory, Bellatrix

The fort had seen to the training of thousands of rangers since it was first operational. Minu had almost designated it as the primary training center shortly after being named First just over a month ago. Then the deal with the Traaga had hit. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” she mused from the balcony.

The scene fifty meters below was like something Dante might have written about. The training floor was over 150 meters on a side, fully configurable for every training environment from vacuum to under water, could be divided into up to ten smaller room, and had one section fit with shields to allow for full power weapons drills. But it hadn't been built to train the semi-anthropoid Traaga.

Everywhere below thousands of the four limbed creatures scurried, climbed, jumped, investigated everything they could lay any of their four hands on, and generally ignored the training attempts.

“I do not understand what you were thinking,” Var'at hissed as he skittered up from a nearby lift. Minu glanced over at him and sighed. “The Traaga are one of the most unreliable species in the Concordia.

“They want to learn to fight and ally themselves with us,” Minu explained. “And since they have a thousand beamcasters and really pissed of the Tanam, it's only fair to give training them a good shake.”

Below there was a crashing sound and some equipment bench was tipped over followed by yelling from Chosen trainers and squeaks of surprise from the offenders. “And what if their fair shake then shakes the fort to pieces?”

“Funny,” Minu grumbled and walked towards the lift. Curious, the Rasa leader followed.

As the lift’s hoverfields lowered her rapidly towards the floor the cacophonous roar rose to be loud enough that she could no longer hear the lifts mechanism operate. “Oh good grief,” she moaned, “sounds like a life or death fight in a lobster bar.”

The first humans who'd laid eyes on a Traaga described them as equal parts crab and starfish with a dash of chimpanzee and a splash of crazy. They were a rare partial vertebrate with a primitive skeletal structure under a dermal covering. Four limbs, each with three reversible joints and complicated grasping 'chimp-like' hands, were arranged around a central torso which road close to the ground. They were actually an arboreal species though and covered in a thin but nearly waterproof layer of feathers that resembled fur up close. Their head telescoped out of the center of the torso on top with a large pair of independently tracking eyes, long feelers, and sharp mouthparts made for eating plant matter. Minu suspected that with their brain and other vital organs in their heavily protected torso, the Traaga would be hard to kill.

“I understand their brains are in their central body cavity,” Var'at spoke over the dull roar, echoing her thoughts. She nodded. “Maybe that explains why they have such a hard time using them?”

Minu was having a hard time not agreeing with him as the hoverfield set her on the training level floor and she stepped out. She tried to march in a military manner and didn't come close. How could she with her belly sticking out twenty centimeters over her belt and her feet hurting. She couldn't help thinking that carrying Lilith was a lot easier. Of course she'd only carried the girl for a few weeks before the Kaatan class starship had taken over.

Minu came up behind Gregg and his command staff, all standing arrayed on either side of them with hands on hips watching the kloth and pony show. They'd obviously given up trying to take control back. He sensed someone behind him and glanced over his shoulders. When he saw her he jumped slightly. “First on the deck!” he barked.

Crap, Minu moaned inwardly as his staff came to rigid attention.

“At ease, Chosen,” she said as she came abreast of them. Gregg couldn't help but glance sideways at her swollen stomach then questioningly at her. “Three months, don't get excited.”

“You sure there's only one in there?”

She snorted and nodded her head. “Yes, the doc is quite sure.” She turned and looked at the riot of activity that should have been an organized training session. “So this is a cluster fuck.”

“Full blown,” her commander of the rangers agreed. “Nothing is working. We try to organize them into squads and platoons and they just don't grasp the concept. Everything is a game or competition to them.”

Minu nodded and thought. The Traaga were common sights where off-world contracts hired out construction work. Their arboreal nature, complete lack of any fear of heights, and radial body design made them incredible high steel workers. The thought brought back memories of watching the Traaga work together, and that gave her an idea.

“Where's their commander, Bob?”

A minute later the Traaga she called Bob came skittering down a vertical wall that had almost no visible handholds like he was walking on a sidewalk. He? Minu didn't even know if they had sexes or not. Bob was instantly recognizable by the intricate patterns of swirling pain along each corner of his thorax and down the legs. For the first time she noticed others now with some paint as well.

“I respond,” he chirped through her translator.

“You report as ordered,” she corrected him. The beings head bobbed in understanding. It wasn't like they could salute that well, it was a compromise. “Have you settled on a name yet? I'm tired of calling you Bob.”

The Traaga looked from Gregg to her and nodded. Gregg gave a little cough and she wondered what was up, until the Traaga answered. “I wish to be known as Patrick.”

She considered for a minute, looking quizzically from Gregg to Patrick and back. A few of the command staff snorted in amusement and she scrunched up her face trying to think of why the name was funny. Gregg grinned and started whispering a song. “Who lives in a pineapple—”

Minu choked and snorted, shaking her head. “You asshole,” she sputtered and everyone started laughing. The Traaga commander observed the always mystifying humans curiously. “One of these days you're going to name some critter something and it's going to figure out what you mean and rip your head off.”

Gregg finished chuckling and got a distant look in his eyes. “This one time Aaron started calling a Beezer McDonalds after that old burger store on earth—” he stopped when he saw Minu look away. “Shit Minu, I'm sorry.”

“He's not dead,” she said quietly, “not in my mind anyway.” She put a hand on her swelling abdomen, or in my heart she added silently. She addressed the aliens leader. “Patrick, when you operate on a contract for another species, you always work in groups of four, correct?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

She turned to Gregg and cocked an eyebrow.

“Squads of four?” he asked. Minu nodded. “Huh,” he said and looked out over the craziness.

An hour later Minu walked back towards the lift, feeling more like she was waddling. In her wake a thousand Traaga were organized into groups of four. Four Traaga to a squad, four squads to a platoon, four platoons to a company, four companies and four companies to a battalion. Somewhat non-standard, but it was working. It seemed natural to them and while the commanders for the platoon and above leaders would take time to work out, progress was underway. There were groups of sixty-four Traaga moving in something that resembled a formation.

Gregg glanced over from where he was talking with Var'at to see her heading towards her office. “I don't know how she does it,” he said to his friend, once enemy.

“She understands people,” Var'at replied.

“People?”

The Rasa leader looked at the Traaga and shrugged. “I blame the translator, yet you understand my meaning.”

“I wish she wasn't so alone.”

“Doesn’t her daughter return tomorrow?”

Gregg nodded and returned to his duties.