The Unscheduled Mission (12 page)

“Well, of course,” Beniala laughed. “Of what possible use could it be to record what a political leader had for breakfast while campaigning for public office?”

“I’m not sure,” Park chuckled in response. “It might make for an interesting study, assuming you could collect sufficient data, not only about that politician, but others as well. Maybe having a good hot breakfast calmed him down and made him too thoughtful before a key interview, or just the opposite. Get enough data on enough people, you might have a documentable trend.”

“Oh, come on, Park,” Beniala laughed again. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“Not really,” Park replied. “I think I might be very interested in reading the results of such a study. Maybe with a cross-comparison with various military leaders and what they ate
 
just before various key battles.”

“Do you really think that would be at all relevant?” Beniala asked.

“Do you know for a certainty that it would not be?” Park countered. “The historical significance of food might well be a great untapped field of study.”

“Perhaps,” Beniala allowed, “but I’m more concerned with Mer and Pirate histories right now.”

“Human,” Park corrected her.

“We’re all human, Park,” Beniala pointed out, “even the Mer.”

“Well, when studying our histories, do keep in mind that our cultural context is not going to be yours,” Park told her. “Our basic assumptions will be different as will religious beliefs, morality and a thousand other facets of our culture that you will find foreign. By all means interpret them as you wish, but keep in mind that they might make more sense when seen from our points of view and that it’s a good idea to keep both yours and ours in mind.”

In all, Park found he liked the scientists who had come from the
Alliance. They were more concerned about their own fields of study than in the politics of the Confederated Worlds and so long as they could have access to Earth and her peoples, they could hardly care less whether the Covenant existed or not. Also, like Dannet and Sartena had before them, they did not seem to have the cultural bias against the gene-locked Mer that Park often heard from the
Alliance political appointees he had dealt with and was beginning to wonder whether the whole gene-locked issue was just an excuse used to keep the Mer bottled up on Earth.

Beniala gave the initial standard response. “I must admit, I’ve never understood the whole prejudice against gene-locked species,” She told Park when the matter came up. “No one really knows how it was done any more and there aren’t many gene-locked species extant in the galaxy. The Mer are the only human ones, for that matter. Who cares if they can’t evolve physically? Evolution is something that happens to species, not individuals, anyway, and it also isn’t something you often see in an intelligent species in your lifetime either.”

“Why doesn’t anyone know how the Mer were gene-locked?” Park asked.

“Forgotten knowledge, I guess,” Beniala replied. “This isn’t really history – it’s not factual – more like folk legend, but according to the stories there were once two competing religions.”

“Only two?” Park asked. “Simple times, indeed.”

“Well, legends almost always simplify the situation,” Beniala smiled. “There may have been hundreds or thousands. In fact, depending on when this happened, if it happened, there may well have been thousands of different religions, but for the purposes of this story only two were involved.

“One was a religion that preached the basic goodness of science,” she continued.

“I may have heard of that one,” Park replied.

“There have been hundreds,” Beniala shook her head. “More probably. It’s been a very long time since you were the only sort of Human. The other was just the opposite in that respect. Its priests taught that all science is intrinsically evil. Whether those two actually existed doesn’t matter. The point of the story is that the pro science one made it a virtue to create new life in God’s image.”

“And the other felt that was the ultimate blasphemy,” Park concluded.

“That might have happened at some time too,” she replied, “but not in this case. No, according to this legend adherents of the other religion believe that life should be created in exactly the same way God might, if you can follow the difference.”

“It’s subtle,” Park admitted, “But I guess you mean that the first group felt they should be truly creative while the other believed that it was only proper if that new life was indistinguishable from natural form?” He ended it as a question.

“That’s it,” Beniala confirmed. “There are some perfectly good reasons for ensuring a gene-modified species would never mutate. In this story it involved a species that was adapted to live in a high radiation zone.”

“The way I learned it,” Park commented, “complex life, people included, can never be bred to resist radiation.”

“For all I know that may be true,” Beniala nodded, “but in this story the scientists were breeding a form of bacteria.”

“That makes a little more sense,” Park admitted. “Under such conditions, a bacterium could mutate very easily. Gene-locking it would avoid that.”

“Right,” Beniala agreed, “but the adherents of the religion that believed life should be made according to God’s plan argued that the concept of life that could not evolve was abomination. This eventually led to a long mutual crusade between the two religions until all the pro-science believers had been killed. And supposedly that’s what led to the prohibition against gene-locked species.”

“That story is a bit thin on the ground,” Park pointed out, “and has a lot of holes in it. It seems to imply these bacteria were the first gene-locked species and that they caused a war between the two religions. When would the Mer or any other gene-locked species have been created? “

“Well, I did say it was not really factual,” Beniala replied defensively. “But there may be a grain of truth in it.”

“Well, the prohibition against gene-locking does sound like a religious dictate,” Park replied, “but the rest of it is just too simplistic.”

“It’s all I have on that,” Beniala shrugged. “Obviously I couldn’t care less or I wouldn’t have come here to study the history of the Mer.”

Jance returned to the table the next afternoon and started where he had left off. “…and we expect a full official apology for your unprovoked attack on peaceful Alliance ships including full restitution for the of those ships and their crews. Furthermore…”

“You’ll have to remind me what peaceful
Alliance ships those were,” Arn told him frostily, “because the only ships we engaged with shot first. Unless shooting to kill is considered a friendly greeting where you come from?”

“We will not listen to the lies of Pirates,” Jance growled at him.

“I’ll let you know when to stop listening then,” Arn retorted.

“Furthermore,” Jance ignored him, “We expect you to surrender the mass murderer, Black Captain McArrgh, to face the justice of Confederate courts.”

“Yeah, that’ll be the sunny Friday,” Arn laughed viciously. “Unlike you, I’m not going to insult the intelligence of everyone else at this table and only tell you this once more. We attacked no one. After launching three communications satellites, one proved to be nonfunctional, but when we went on a peaceful mission to fix it, Our ship was met by and fired on by the
Alliance ship,
Vigilant
.”

“My report says you fired back on
Vigilant
,” Jance retorted.

“The
Hudson
was armed only with a meteor defense,” Arn shot back. “She may as well have been throwing rocks.”

“
Vigilant
was badly damaged.”

“And
Hudson
was destroyed,” Arn told him. “It’s a major miracle the crew managed to survive the crash landing.”

“We would not have, had we not had one of the best pilots in known space,” Park added. “And then when we took another ship up to finish the job your peaceful boys and girls came at us with three fully armed warships.”

“You had already proved yourselves dangerous and aggressive,” Jance replied coldly. “It was a measured response.”

“A measured response?” Park demanded. “Against a ship on a maintenance mission?”

“A warship armed with state of the art weaponry,” Jance claimed.

“State of the art two hundred and fifty million years ago maybe,” Park retorted. “We took what pea shooters and slings with us we could. A few old missiles and an amped up meteor laser and still it was
Watcher
who fired first. Only after they tried to destroy us with a plasma-caster did we return fire. And one more thing, Jance,” Park went on, stripping off any remaining pretence of courtesy. “We rescued your survivors, an act I have been assured would not
 
have been performed by your ships had the situation been reversed.”

“You took captives,” Jance accused.

“We accepted refugees, bunky,” Park told him. “However, they have given us their parole and refuse to leave until you pay that parole. Acting Governor Gount surrendered Moon Base Lagina to us and acceded to all our conditions. We won that little war and no puffed up, petty-minded political hack is going to take that away from us.

“Now, if you’re incapable of dealing with the truth,” Park went on as insultingly as he could, “I suggest you go running along home and tell them you aren’t up to the job of conducting a peaceful negotiation.”

Jance’s face turned dark under his fur and his eyes half shut as his mouth opened to bear his teeth. “You will pay for this indignity, Pirates!” he shouted and immediately stormed out of the conference room, leaving his aides to scramble in his wake.

“I told you I was not a good choice to be part of these negotiations,” Park told Arn in the sudden silence following the exodus of Jance’s aides.

“I fear you will never be a diplomat, my friend,” Terius laughed. “But I must admit that I have always dreamed of being able to say such things to a Galactic myself.”

“I need a drink,” Arn decided. “Let’s go back to my place and decide what we’re going to do next.”

“I should probably see what Marisea and her students have been up to today,” Iris begged off.

“No, call her and have her meet us,” Arn told her. “I think I want the whole team
 
there now. Dannet and that orange woman too.”

“Sartena,” Park supplied the name.

“Right,” Arn nodded, “and our other department chiefs.” He activated his torc and quickly got his deputy, Max Baines, on the line. “My place in ten minutes,” Arn concluded.

Arn was still living inside the old, mostly subterranean Van Winkle Base. When the rest of the colony had moved out to found Van Winkle Town, Arn felt he still needed to be near the central computers of the base, so rather than building a house as Park had done, Arn had commandeered an entire wing of what had originally been the private rooms of the colonists and had it remodeled into a suite. With many of the walls knocked out, he had a large gathering room and an equally large dining room where, Park was amused to note, had once stood a bank of stasis tubes.

Arn was making notes, composing a makeshift agenda as people arrived and Patty Zinco served various drinks, but he never got a chance to convene his impromptu meeting when an alarm sounded all over Van Winkle Band and Town. “Now what?” Arn asked no one in particular.

Park recognized the alarm for what it was, however and was quicker to react. “Battle Stations, everyone!” he commanded. “Move it now!” It wasn’t much of a command, but everyone there knew what to do next and as they rushed outside to take stock of the situation all were making calls to their teams. Park’s call was to Spaceport Control.

“Sir!” came the report. “The Galactic ships are lifting off!”

“Without clearance?” Park asked. “Stop them!” But even as he said that, he stepped outside the base and saw a bright point of light leave one of the ships and streak toward the
Trenisi
, parked just outside her hanger. The point of light expanded rapidly as it flew getting fuzzy and making a strange crackling sound that Park could hear almost a mile away. Tiny bolts of lightning flew out of the expanding ball which had grown to thirty feet in diameter by the time it hit
Trenisi
.

The Mer-built ship exploded instantly, but the crackling ball of light was not yet finished and it slammed into the hanger, blowing it apart in a blast of violet and green light. “God damn those bastards!” Park swore. He touched his torc again to call the gun crews on the hill above him, but before he could complete the sequence, two missiles streaked out toward the spaceport. Another blob of plasma broke lose from a Galactic ship and intercepted one of the missiles. The missile exploded and the crackling plasma ball kept going, narrowly missing the top of the hill. The other missile scored a hit on the tail fins of one of the ships which lurched, but somehow stayed aloft.

“Sir!” Park heard on his still-open connection to the spaceport, “They’re demanding our surrender. Patching through.”

But before the connection could be made a bright but fuzzy beam of light connected the hill to one of the attacking ships above the spaceport. It was not quite a perfect beam, but a long thin cone of light that caused the air to hum loudly shaking everyone to their bones. Then the ship exploded and crashed back to the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Park shouted as the beam went out and worse noises reached his ears.

“I think it was a phaser,” Iris told him. “Ronnie mentioned it this morning, but she wasn’t sure how well it would work in the atmosphere. I didn’t know she had it mounted though.”

Park was about to reply when one of the two remaining ships did something that caused the Spaceport Control building to ignite and explode. Two more missiles streaked out and broke that ship open. It fell to the earth in a ball of orange fire.

“Control!” Park called the port. “Come in Control!” There was no answer, but even from where they stood, the screams from the port and nearby houses could be heard. “Damn that Jance. I’m going to eat his liver!” The sirens of fire engines could be heard now and there were flashing red lights headed toward the disaster, but there was still one more ship still in the air. It was the one that had lost a steering fin and was flying up and away somewhat erratically. Ronnie’s hill-mounted phaser fired once more but had little or no effect on the ascending ship.