Earth Star (18 page)

Drago looked indignantly at Leveque. ‘You can’t do that!’

Leveque gave him a lazy smile. ‘It is my duty to reconsider a complaint in the light of new evidence.’

Colonel Torrek beamed at Drago and held out another set of insignia. ‘In that case, congratulations Commander. I recommend you don’t try playing games with a Threat team leader again.’

The look on Drago’s face as he accepted the insignia was too much. A quite unmilitary giggle escaped me.

‘Don’t take it so hard, Commander,’ continued Colonel Torrek. ‘Speaking from bitter personal experience of your clan, I’m sure that whatever rank you achieve, it will be impossible to keep you away from any action happening in the universe.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Drago gloomily.

Drago and Marlise left, and Mason Leveque gave the Threat team report.

‘We’ve now finished analysing the images provided by the History team. Feeding that data into our main statistical model, brings our current threat assessment down from 61 to 53 per cent.’

Colonel Torrek was obviously pleased to hear this, but I was just bewildered. ‘Really? I don’t see how it did that.’

Mason Leveque laughed. ‘The threat assessment is the product of combining multiple weighted probability zonal nets, Jarra. One of those probability zones relates to the possibility the aliens have visited Earth before, and the image analysis has lowered the probability of them being hostile in that scenario. That brings the overall threat assessment down to 53 per cent.’

He paused. ‘It’s now going to stay at that figure until one of three things happens. We find a way to communicate with the sphere, it does something unexpected, or we get a solar storm. If we get through a significant solar storm with no reaction from the sphere, threat assessment goes down to 38 per cent.’

‘I like the sound of 38,’ said Colonel Torrek, ‘but I’d prefer a way to communicate with the sphere.’

He turned to me and Fian. ‘Since the History team has completed its work, you’re now officially on civilian sabbatical status and can return to your class. We’ll send you regular status updates, and if you have any more ideas then contact me immediately. We’re running desperately short of things to try, and I want to hear any suggestions anyone has, however silly they seem.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I nodded at Fian, and we both stood and saluted. ‘Goodbye, sirs.’

‘We’ll meet again whatever happens,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘I remain your commanding officer, and once the Alien Contact programme stands down I’ll discuss your future with you. I’ve created an administrative problem by promoting you when you haven’t been through the Military Academy, but we can fix that with an accelerated course.’

I pulled a face. ‘That hardly matters in my case, sir. I’m Handicapped and can’t have an active Military career.’

‘I understand Hospital Earth Research are working on a cure.’

I felt instant anger, the way I always did when people mentioned the research that would never do anything but torment me with false hopes, but I kept my reply calm and polite. ‘They won’t find one, sir. People have been researching this for centuries and getting nowhere.’

‘Well, we’ll discuss this properly at a later date. Good luck to both of you.’

Fian and I turned and marched out of the door. That was it. I’d had a brief glimpse of the Military life I could have had if the genetic dice had landed differently, if I’d been normal instead of the one in a thousand.

An odd thought occurred to me. If I’d been that other Jarra, gone to Military school and the Academy, I would never have been here. That other Jarra would still be studying at the Military Academy, still be a cadet, blissfully ignorant of the Alien Contact programme being active. Colonel Torrek had called me in precisely because of my Handicap.

Fian and I headed back to our quarters, went inside, and started changing into civilian clothes.

‘We can’t tell the class anything about the Alien Contact programme, or us being Military,’ said Fian. ‘We’ll obviously need to take the Military lookups with us, so we can get the status updates, but what about the impact suits and uniforms?’

I thought of Arrack San Domex, shook off my strange introspective mood and grinned. ‘We’d better leave the impact suits here, but we’ll take the uniforms with us. The Military won’t miss them, and I have plans!’

When we arrived back at our class dig site dome, everything felt oddly small. We dutifully put our palms on the portal room check-in plate to sign in, and headed for our room with our trail of hover luggage following us. The walls of the corridor seemed to close in around me.

‘Has this place shrunk in the last few weeks?’ I asked.

Fian laughed. ‘I was thinking the same thing. The domes at Zulu base were much larger.’ He opened the door to his half of our room, and looked warily inside. ‘They haven’t put the wall back yet. Zan!’

Even with our two rooms opened up into one, this was nothing like the size of our accommodation back at the base. It had no private bathroom, no food dispenser, and there’d be no cheese fluffle for breakfast now. I allowed myself a single sigh of regret for past luxuries.

‘Shall we go and say hello before unpacking?’ I asked. ‘It’s 20:00 hours here, so everyone will be in the dining hall.’

Fian nodded.

I nervously checked my reflection in the mirror, which was, of course, a mere fraction of the size of the one back in our joint officer accommodation.

‘It’s all right,’ said Fian, watching me with amusement. ‘You haven’t got the word “Major” tattooed on your forehead. Do you have any advice for me?’

I looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What about?’

‘Well, you’ve got previous experience of this sort of thing. A few months ago, you were a civilian and pretending you had a Military background. Now you’ve just swapped around to being Military and pretending you’re a civilian.’

I giggled, and the strangeness of being back suddenly vanished. Major Jarra Tell Morrath had just been a dream. I was back in the real world, the sensible world, where I was just a student on the University Asgard Pre-history Foundation course. ‘Let’s go and find everyone.’

We headed to the hall and found the old familiar evening scene. A few of the class were still sitting at tables and eating. Others were lounging on cushions, backs leaning against the grey flexiplas walls, chattering away while half listening to Dalmora singing and playing her reproduction of a twentieth-century guitar. As we entered the room, there were yells from all around, and everyone leapt up to greet us.

‘You’ve been away ages,’ complained Krath. ‘Where have you been? You couldn’t have left Earth so …’

‘No, Krath!’ said Amalie. ‘Remember what Playdon told you. No being nosy!’

She turned to me and Fian. ‘Krath kept coming up with more and more incredible theories about where you’d gone and why, until Playdon gave him a lecture on his fellow students’ right to privacy.’

I wondered if any of Krath’s theories had included aliens, and bit my lip to stop myself laughing. Fian and I had been prepared for questions from the class of course, and had agreed what to say. Fian said it.

‘I don’t really want to explain a lot of personal details about a family problem.’

Krath sighed but seemed to accept that, at least for now. ‘It hasn’t been the same without Jarra knowing absolutely everything about everything. We’ve had to answer all the difficult questions ourselves!’

At the start of the year, I’d been busily parading my knowledge at everyone, desperate to show my hated exo classmates that I was better at everything than they were. I suddenly realized that desperation had been more about proving things to myself than to them, and I’d felt it all my life, but I didn’t any longer. I’d never been good at understanding the emotional stuff inside my own head, so I wasn’t sure what had changed or why, but it felt a huge relief to be free of that pressure.

‘I knew a lot about New York and excavation work because of all the trips with my school history club,’ I said. ‘You’ll know more about Eden than I do, because you’ve been working on the ruins for the last few weeks. My history club never came here because it’s too dangerous for school parties and amateurs, and I only had a couple of lessons about Eden at school as part of the preparations for when we went to visit Ark.’

‘If you’ve already been to Ark, Jarra, you’ll be able to tell us what it’s like there,’ said Dalmora. ‘Will Fian be coming to Ark with us as well?’

‘Of course I’m going to Ark,’ said Fian, ‘but you aren’t. You’ll all be going home for a few days.’

Lecturer Playdon appeared and the class made way to let him through. ‘I was expecting Lolia and Lolmack to evacuate to Ark to be with their daughter, but I was surprised to find the whole of team 1 is coming as well.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’ve been unable to talk them out of it.’

I was confused. ‘But why?’

‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Krath. ‘My dumb dad did a programme for his nardle conspiracy vid channel,
Truth Against Oppression
, claiming the Solar 5 crash was a fake to generate publicity for the Military.’

He waved his arms in frustration. ‘How could he do that? I was there myself! Well, nearly there. I was there soon afterwards anyway, and I saw the crash site and know it was genuine. I told him how you nearly got killed, Jarra, and he actually said we could do with a few less apes to feed. Well, when he said that, I told him he could …’

He glanced at Playdon and decided not to risk the next few words. I think we could all fill them in for ourselves.

‘So, anyway,’ he continued more calmly. ‘I’m going to Ark instead.’

I was strongly in favour of Krath thinking for himself and standing up to his idiot father, but I wished he wasn’t doing it by going to Ark. I thought of that sphere in geostationary orbit, somewhere uncomfortably close to being right over our heads, and turned to look at Amalie and Dalmora.

‘But what about you two? You surely aren’t serious about staying? The portal system will shut down, the way it always does during a solar storm.’

They exchanged glances, and Dalmora spoke up for the pair of them.

‘I know you’re remembering what happened back on the New York Dig Site, Jarra. When we heard there was going to be a big solar storm, with the portals out for at least three days, we panicked and couldn’t get off world fast enough. It had just snowed as well, and other worlds don’t have solar storms, or snow, so it was frightening for us.’

I nodded. ‘Planet First carefully select new colony worlds to avoid the frequent solar storms we have on Earth. It was perfectly natural for you to be worried. I just don’t understand why you’d want to stay this time.’

‘It’s a historic event.’ Dalmora’s eyes shone in the way they always did when she was getting romantic and emotional. ‘The population of Earth evacuating to the ancient caverns of Ark, and I have the chance to be there! Totally amaz! My father’s sent me a lot of vid equipment, I’ve got permission to take it to Ark, and Amalie and Krath are going to help me make some vid sequences.’

I spotted the smirk on Krath’s face. It all made sense now. Dalmora wanted to make a romantic vid of the Ark evacuation. Amalie admired Dalmora and wanted to help her. Krath wanted to be part of it because he was chasing Amalie.

I felt Krath was wasting his time there. Amalie was from a frontier world in Epsilon sector, which had a lot more male than female colonists, so girls there could take their pick of men. Amalie would surely be aiming higher than the nardle Krath, even if he’d improved enough to realize his father had less sense than a plate of cheese fluffle.

I frowned. ‘How does your father feel about this, Dalmora?’

‘He warned me there could be an element of risk, but I told him I knew that. He’s quite proud that I’m staying.’

Chaos take it, Ventrak Rostha, the famous vid maker, was just as romantic as his daughter. I should have guessed that. When people watched his history vids, they felt caught up in the past, really caring about it, and all that emotion had to come from somewhere.

I pulled a face at Fian. My return to being an ordinary pre-history student had lasted only minutes. I was Major Jarra Tell Morrath again now, thinking about aliens and feeling horribly guilty. The Threat team thought the next solar storm was the key moment. If the sphere was going to attack, it would do it then.

Lots of people I knew would be taking refuge in Ark. Fian would be there because he was too stubborn to leave me. Lecturer Playdon was making a fully informed decision to be there as well. My friends from Next Step were Handicapped and couldn’t leave Earth, so Ark was their safest option.

Lolia and Lolmack didn’t know what was really going on, but I was sure they’d choose to stay with their daughter anyway. They’d already been through a nightmare to keep their baby and aliens wouldn’t stop them. Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora were different. If they knew the truth, they’d probably go off world, but I couldn’t warn them.

I suddenly realized I’d been just as blindly romantic as Dalmora. I got emotional about all the Military traditions and medals, but I hadn’t realized the hardest thing about Military life until this moment. I couldn’t tell Krath, Amalie, and Dalmora classified information, but if my friends went to Ark and got hurt or worse as a result, then …

I sighed and said as much as I could. ‘It’s a historic occasion, but you’d be safer going off world. I keep trying to talk Fian into visiting Hercules for a few days.’

‘I’m staying with you.’ Fian waved his ring finger pointedly at me and there were several excited squeals from the class.

‘Rings!’

I was forced to display my own ring, and the conversation moved on to the subject of flowgold. Petra and Joth had signed up for their Twoing contract while Fian and I were away, and Petra insisted on showing off their rings as well. It wasn’t a good moment for someone who suffered from ring phobia. My poor, scared, left little finger wanted to run away and hide in a dark corner.

‘Of course,’ Fian said smugly, ‘we chose not to have end-date markings on ours.’

‘Zan!’ cried Dalmora. ‘You’re planning to wear the same rings when you get married. How totally romantic!’