Endeavour: A Sleeping Gods Novel, page 11
Red star, having gained expertise in the initial settlement of Mars was definitely in the best position to exploit this ruling, and had already launched a colonisation mission to Tau Ceti. With five thousand people on route there, the first extra solar colony was well on the way towards being founded.
Harry heard an unobtrusive chime come from his ear, his new com implant announced to him that Tom Hites was requesting a link.
‘Hey, Tom.’ Harry spoke, seemingly to himself. He hadn’t managed to get the knack of sub vocalising yet.
‘Doing much for lunch?’ came the no-nonsense question.
‘I was going to hit the deli and then come hide up here, unless you have a better offer?’
‘Mexican it is. Half an hour?’
Sighing, he looked over at the report sat on his desk and replied. ‘Best make it an hour.’
***
Harry and Tom slipped their sunglasses off as they entered the air-conditioned dark interior of La Casa De Playas. Players, as it was known to the regulars had been on East Harbour Drive near the Gas Lamp district forever. It served good food, great drinks but, overall, was an undiscovered gem and so was never completely full. Tom had found it a few months before and had been so taken with it he tried to get there at least once a week.
They were guided across the cool flagstone flooring to a table by an attractive girl and sat down in a private alcove.
‘Thanks, Josie. Can we grab a couple of mojitos?‘
‘Sure, Tom. You guys eating?’
‘Yeah, the usual for me. Harry?’
‘Just the house chilli please.’
‘Coming right up.’
Harry watched the shapely Latina walk over to the bar. ‘I can see why you come here now, but mojitos? Not very professional, I have a meeting with the board in a couple of hours.’
‘You’ll definitely need a drink then,’ Tom responded as Josie brought the refreshing looking cocktails back to the table. ‘Besides, you only live once,’ Tom said, gave a ‘cheers’ motion and took a long slurp on the drink.
‘Good point, well made,’ Harry said as he took a swig of his own bitter drink. ‘How’d the catch-up with the family go?’
‘Great, kind of. The folks are still going strong, but check this out. Shannon’s expecting.’ Tom said with a look of vague distaste on his face.
Harry rapidly figured out the complex contortion to the family tree that the Hites’ family was undergoing. ‘So, let me get this straight, you’re going to be a Grand-uncle?’
‘Don’t you dare laugh!’
Harry held his hands up in mock supplication, but still unable to hide the grin on his face. ‘Congratulations, old man. Give her my best.’
‘Yeah, whatever. Anyway, as much as I’d want it to be, this isn’t just a social chat,’ Tom said, changing the subject. He glanced around and placed a small object on the table, a scrambler. Anyone who tried to use any kind of bugging or eavesdropping device would get nothing but static with it activated. ‘We’re getting some initial results back from the Gliese 581 gateway, it’s looking good.’
‘Hmmm,’ Harry responded. The Gliese 581 gateway was the latest to arrive at its destination system and return a message home. It had been launched whilst the first Gateway had still been closing on Tau Ceti. Gliese 581 had been seen to have a couple of planets in the so called ‘goldilocks zone’ even though the primary was a tiny red dwarf star.
‘You’re the first to know outside the working group, Harry, but we could be looking at some kind of extant intelligent life on the fourth world,’ Tom announced.
‘You’re shitting me? That planet’s what, twice the Earth’s mass?’ Harry said.
‘Three times, but yeah, big ocean world, someone decided to call it Poseidon not long after it was discovered. There are some major landmasses, but it’s about ninety per cent ocean,’ Tom replied as he took another sip of his drink before gesturing to Harry, requesting a link with his retinal implants.
Harry accepted it and a high resolution video clip of what appeared to be an expanse of blue appeared. Harry could tell it had been taken from orbit, likely from a probe that had been dispatched by the Gateway ship, the view moving from left to right. As it did so a large square raft appeared in Harry’s vision, the camera automatically zoomed into it, probably directed by the probe’s controlling AI when it saw something strange and anomalous. There were numerous holes in the raft, all square shaped again and in a uniform pattern. Interestingly what appeared to be a small camp fire was on the image next to one and what looked like a set of huge, thick tentacles stretched out from one of the holes. It seemed to be manipulating something over the fire, and even squeezing something. He assumed it was a set of bellows which caused the fire to flare briefly.
‘There’s a few other events like that we’re looking at, not much else to be fair. We have a bit of a working theory but nothing solid, of course. We think that some kind of undersea intelligence exists. Of course, they can’t use any combustion-based technologies under there, so they come to the surface to do whatever they need to do,’ Tom explained, before going quiet as Josie bought them their lunch.
‘Whatever they are, they have to be pretty low tech though,’ Harry said, once she had walked on to the next customers.
‘We don’t know. They could have a pretty complex civilisation under there,’ Tom replied with a shrug. ‘My boys and girls are conjecturing that they have a grasp of basic smelting, which seems to be what’s going on in that clip. They can lash a raft together, things like that. It all strongly suggests that there is a civilisation under there, and maybe a socially complex one, although considering their environment, it’s likely evolved in radically different ways than ours. My guys can’t really draw any parallels other than possibly the Mayans, who had a decent technology base but simply forgot to develop the wheel. These fellows could have just bypassed fire entirely until recently.’
‘Well, it’s pretty ironic that Endeavour’s the ship that’s slated for the Gliese mission. She’s undergoing the refit now,’ Harry said, his tone taking a downturn that seemed to be occurring more often these days.
‘I know,’ Tom said as he folded together a Fajita. ‘So do you think you can convince him?’
‘Convince who about what?’ Harry asked, then he realised what Tom was referring to. ‘No, Tom, there’s not a single compelling, justifiable reason I can give him.’
‘Sure you can, we’re the daring adventurers who’ve been to Tau Ceti and back. Look, I’ve thought about this. We’re the first, we’re the ones who caused share prices at Helios to shoot through the roof, but we’re losing our value in that regards. It needs to be revitalised and this can do it,’ Tom said hungrily, his eyes gleaming. ‘We’re not office jocks, we’re steely-eyed missile men and Paskett’s got us doing this shit. I know for sure that I have a dozen people who work for me that can do a better job than I’m doing. To be honest I’m not even entirely sure of what I am doing half the time. But with Gliese? Sure he can send a new crew, and there are some damn good candidates, I’ll be the one picking them so I know, but us guys? We’re still the best. We were groomed since eighteen to be the ones to do this. We’ve all kept our hands in our fields and we still have awhile to get checked out on Endeavour and her refits again,’ Tom said in a rush, not giving Harry the chance to rebut any of it.
‘I just can’t see him going for it. Besides, how many of the old crew would still be interested?’ Harry said.
‘We’ll spin him a line,’ Tom said between mouthfuls. ‘We can tell him the story about some young executive taking a punt on an old NASA cast-off program, he’ll love that shit, and as for the old crew? What do you think? You’re not the only one who is getting all depressed about being stuck in some dead-end job. Most of us have only just got up to date in their fields after a quarter of a century out of the game. Besides, would you want the new guys getting all the glory?’
Harry leaned back, playing it through in his mind. Whichever way he looked at it, he didn’t have anything to lose.
‘You know he’s going to laugh his arse off, then kick ours out of his office,’ Harry said as he dug his fork into his chilli.
‘Well if that’s the worst that can happen if we ask, I can live with it.’
‘No, the worst that can happen is he says “yes” and by the time we come home you find you’re a Great Grand-uncle,’ Harry said with a grin.
***
Paskett was a very wealthy man. Last time he bothered to check he ranked about midway on the Forbes rich list, and that meant he had the best implants and augmentations money could buy. At one hundred and fifteen years old he was stronger and faster, with better recall than a man a quarter of his age. Right now though, he was confused and more than slightly perplexed. The boys in front of him had given him the good news about Poseidon, and then almost as an afterthought dropped in their request.
‘Why on God’s Earth would I even contemplate such a thing?’ he said to Harry and Tom. ‘I need you both here.’
Paskett’s office was a shrine to himself. An artfully-designed metal and glass desk, far bigger than anyone had a need for in this day and age of human-machine interfaces, a plush leather chair, more like a throne then something you would find in an office. Adorning the walls were cabinets filled with models of the huge powersats that were Helios Industries’ primary source of revenue. On another table a slowly rotating hologram of Endeavour span round, showing off the starship in all her glory. There were newer, faster and better ships, but Endeavour had pride of place in Paskett’s office. Hidden away in the corner, almost an afterthought was his framed quote, the Fermi Paradox. ‘Where is everyone?’
Sat in front of him, Harry and Tom felt like overly enthusiastic children trying to explain to their parents why they simply must have a particular new toy for Christmas.
‘We’ve got what it takes, is the bottom line,’ Harry said. ‘We’re tried, tested and, frankly, we can be better employed up there,’ he said, pointing his finger upwards, ‘than down here, doing make work.’
‘Curt, we’re a commodity,’ Tom interjected. ‘We’re the first to go to another star and back, but you’ve cashed in on that so much we’re losing our value. There are a dozen expeditions either on route, or already at their destination, by every significant competitor we have. Even a couple of nations are having a go at it. We need to have something to distinguish the next mission from all these other ones. That something is us.’
‘And people think I have an ego?’ Paskett said with a sigh. ‘What do the others have to say about this?’
‘They’d be up for it. We wanted to run it past you before we broached it with them,’ Harry said. ‘This is what they spent half their lives training to do, they’ll want it.’
Paskett leant back in his creaking leather chair, augmented eyes staring up at the ceiling.
‘Go make yourselves busy. I need to have a think about this.’
The two men stood up and walked to the door, Tom paused and turned around.
‘You know, you told us once about a young executive—’
‘Tom, I’m over a century old,’ Paskett interrupted him. ‘If you think any of my decisions are going to be swayed by some god-awful attempt to pluck at my heart strings then I think it would be in the company’s best interests if I simply fired you here and now.’
Tom smiled weakly and nodded at Paskett, before turning and leaving the office. As they walked down the corridor Harry mimicked Tom’s voice.
‘Yeah, he really loved that shit.’
‘Harry, smart we like...’ Tom began their old training cadre motto.
***
After Harry and Tom had hustled out the office, Paskett said out loud, ‘So what do you think to this?’
Blinking into existence, Marcus’s avatar appeared. He’d taken a completely different route to longevity than Curt. His body was locked in a life-support machine with a direct neural link from his brain to a computer and he interacted with the world through his hologramatic representation. In reality, Marcus’s shrivelled body was floating in a life support casket somewhere in the basement. The only thing still fully functioning was his outstanding brain.
Both means of extending life, enhancement or support had there advantages, but when Paskett thought about his current forty year-old wife, the mother of his two most recent children, he definitely thought his way was best.
‘Well ,they’re hungry for it, and who can blame them? It’s what they’ve spent half their lives training to do. Giving them office and academic jobs is just ramming a square peg into a round hole.’
Curt grunted, looking at his old friend’s Avatar that was sat across from him. He appeared exactly as he had in his thirties when they had first become friends.
‘The only one that hasn’t kept her hand in, is Karen,’ Marcus continued. ‘She’s off doing volunteer work in some third world dump. But even then it could be argued that’s decent preparation for a mission. She relies on herself and her skills. She was always slated as the expedition doctor first and biologist second.’
The cogs could practically be seen whirling in Paskett’s mind. Not a completely unapt metaphor considering the amount of tiny machines floating around in his brain, maintaining and enhancing his functions.
‘I suppose it could be argued that Endeavour’s old technology, even with her refits, and they certainly handled Eden well. And, I suppose, they do have a point, they’re still good at what they do down here, but we have far better managers,’ Paskett mused thoughtfully.
‘It’s blue sky thinking that’s for sure, but then wasn’t buying up Delphi?’
‘Don’t you start,’ Paskett said with a roll of his crystal-blue eyes.
Marcus ignored his annoyed tone, one of the perks of their friendship.
‘Look, put conditions on it. If they can beat out the current candidates then why not? You’re good at spin, we can sell it to the board as them being dashing space adventurers or something.’
Standing up, Paskett pursed his lips. No one would say that he wasn’t a decisive leader.
‘They can go, if they can beat out the other candidates, that is. I’m not going to finance them on some damn nostalgia trip, they work for it. Oh, and Marcus?’
‘Yes?’ Marcus smiled back at his old friend.
‘You’re the one to tell the other candidates they’ve got new competition.’
‘That would be my pleasure.’
CHAPTER 19: 2147 AD EARTH SAHELIA
The country that Karen was currently in really depended on whose map you looked at. For what passed as a government in this part of the world, it was the relatively new nation of Sahelia. For the rebels and tribes people who were fighting a generation’s long guerrilla war, it was still called Sudan.
To be fair, she didn’t much care. Karen was here in her capacity as a doctor and whoever came through the door of what could be loosely termed as the hospital got treated exactly the same. She was waiting by that same door with a crash team, ready to deal with the latest casualty that had been called in.
The ancient, dirt covered jeep screeched into the dusty parking lot and skidded to a halt. The orderlies ran out with a gurney whilst one of the UN peace keepers that were attached to the hospital took up a position covering the jeep. The weary soldier was making sure that this wasn’t some kind of ruse to raid the pharmacy. Luckily, even the brashest of bandit groups were unlikely to take on a peacekeeper with combat enhancements. The soldier, a paratrooper, seconded from the French 11th Parachute Brigade was so upgraded he could likely pin a silverback gorilla in a wrestling match and win a foot race against a cheetah, and that was without his formidable weapons and armour. On his own he would stand a fair chance of being able to fight off a group of brigands, and, he had the rest of his squad not too far away if they did fancy trying their hand in greater numbers.
She watched as the patient was quickly but carefully moved onto the gurney and brought to the emergency reception area. The blood-covered man had been brought in by his friends and the only information she had was that he had had the misfortune to have a bouncing land mine explode in front of him. The fact that he wasn’t currently a cloud of red mist suggested that the landmine had been somehow defective. Not for the first time she gave a silent thanks to the sub-standard production values of the weapons factories in this part of the world.
She quickly looked at him from top to toe.
‘Okay we have chest trauma, some facial injuries, extensive damage to the right arm...’ She quickly rattled off her observations for her team as they wheeled the patient through to the resuscitation room. The man was breathing in rapid short breaths, his eyes wide, the whites visible as he looked around the room, clearly in panic and pain. She could picture it, the man had probably seen the bouncing mine pop up in front of him and, in that fraction of a second, instinctively moved his arm in front of him in a vain attempt to ward it off before it exploded. The nurse had slipped the diagnostic band over his uninjured arm and his vitals began scrolling across the screen at the head of the gurney. She watched the display closely, quickly absorbing the information.
‘He’s presenting with tachycardia and tachypnea, blood pressure is low and getting lower,’ she pressed a stethoscope module on the side of his chest that hadn’t been injured and listened to his breathing on her ear implant. It sounded hollow, wrong. She tapped the sternum, listening to the noise her finger tips made and nodded. ‘I’m not too worried about the arm at the moment, and the facial injuries look superficial.’
His face was going blue from lack of oxygen as cyanosis set in and he seemed to be drifting out of consciousness. She pulled the imager off the wall and played it over his damaged chest, and found what she suspected, a pocket of air had found its way between the lung and the chest wall, something that would kill him. She looked over at one of the techs.
