A Learning Experience

Chapter Sixteen

Shadow Warrior, Earth Orbit

Jumping into a combat situation had always given Edward Romford the shakes, even before he’d been crippled and forced to face the fact that he’d never walk again. He was fine walking to the line of battle, or driving a Bradley towards the sound of the guns, but dropping from an aircraft and parachuting into the combat zone scared the pants off him. In that sense, the teleporter was actually worse, with a brief interval when the enemy could shoot at him and he couldn’t even see them.

The silver light faded away, revealing the bridge of an alien starship. Like the first starship, it was a strange mixture of technology, with several pieces that might come from a previously unknown race. The aliens were already staggering as the stun grenades took effect, but several of them had managed to don masks before it was too late. Edward silently gave them points for earnestness, even though he hated what he’d read of the Horde. He’d hated wearing MOPP suits too.

He lifted his weapon as soon as he orientated himself and opened fire, spraying stun pulses over the entire compartment. The stunner was a fantastic weapon, he decided, as the remaining aliens hit the deck. It was easy enough to point and shoot, then sort everyone out afterwards. Indeed, he had a feeling that police departments across the USA would be trying to buy stunners as soon as they went on the market. But that would be years in the future.

Bracing himself, he stepped forward, hunting for the alien in charge. The starship’s commander had fallen off his throne, somehow; Edward couldn’t help thinking of a spider that had been flipped upside down by a cruel human as he rolled the alien over and tried to remove the neural interface. It stubbornly refused to budge and, despite its apparent frailty, wouldn’t come free when he pulled at it. As far as he could tell, it had merged with its owner’s flesh.

He keyed his communicator as the rest of the team spread through the starship, stunning the handful of remaining aliens. “Sir, I can’t disengage the neural interface.”

There was a long pause. “I killed the last one,” Stuart said, grimly. “They don’t disengage unless commanded to do so or if their owner is dead.”

Edward gritted his teeth, then drew his knife from his belt and sliced open the alien’s throat. Foul-smelling green blood cascaded out, pooling on the already scarred and tainted deck, as the alien breathed its last. The interface hummed slightly, then withdrew from the alien’s skull. As soon as it was free, Edward felt an odd compulsion to take it for himself and place it on his head.

He fought it off as he picked the headband up and passed it to the volunteer. The volunteer took it and placed it on his head, then winced as the interface made contact with his brain. From what Edward had been told, the experience was painful, but the volunteer’s face looked as if he were on the verge of collapsing into madness. Eventually, finally, he brought the link under control.

“I think this one was made by different people,” he said, as he took control of the starship. “The operating system appears to be completely different.”

“I see,” Edward said. “Does that mean you can’t handle the ship?”

“I can handle it,” the volunteer assured him. “It just took some time for the device to adapt to a human brain.”

Edward nodded, then keyed his communicator again. “Target secured,” he said. “I say again, target secured.”

It had been easy, he knew, but the Hordesmen had suspected nothing until it was far too late for them to escape. If they realised that the Sol System was becoming a black hole for their ships, they’d either give the system a wide berth or send a much more formidable fleet to challenge Earth’s defences. By then, humanity had better be ready to defend itself.

“Understood,” Stuart said. “Take the ship to the reception point. We’ll deal with the prisoners there.”

“Welcome to Alcatraz,” Graham Rochester said. “Our primary penal centre for alien POWs.”

Steve had to smile. Alcatraz was nothing more than a dome of lunar rock, covering an area big enough for a dozen football fields. The only way in and out was through an airlock that wouldn’t open unless a modified shuttle or tractor had already docked there and exchanged security codes. In the unlikely event of the prisoners managing to force their way through the airlock, they’d find themselves breathing hard vacuum. If they weren’t careful, the entire prison would decompress.

“We’ve included a sizable supply of their food,” Rochester continued. “Once they wake up, we’ll send a holographic projection into the prison and explain the state of affairs. I don’t think they can kill themselves with what they have on hand, but…”

He shrugged. “Overall, given their honour code, they probably will try to end their lives,” he warned. “But we can’t guard against that without keeping them stunned indefinitely, which will eventually kill them anyway.”

“Understood,” Steve said. On the display, the alien prisoners were sleeping peacefully. None of them had been particularly injured, but four had died when they’d collapsed at the wrong time and injured themselves when they fell. Their bodies had been shipped to a medical centre, where they would be examined carefully by human scientists. “Do you have any other concerns?”

“The Hordesmen don’t treat their prisoners very well,” Rochester said. “It occurs to me that we could try to convert some of the POWs to our side. They’d be killed if we sent them home, sir. They have to know it.”

“Bastards,” Steve said. What sort of idiot would blame someone for being taken prisoner when there had been literally no opportunity to resist? But there had been human cultures like that too, ones that had treated the prisoners they’d taken shamefully. “But if you can get it organised, feel free to try.”

“Yes, sir,” Rochester said. “I’d also like to get a few military policemen up here to help take care of the prisoners. We’ll treat them under the Geneva Conventions as much as possible.”

Steve looked up at him. “We cannot afford to allow them to send messages home,” he said. “That would be far too revealing.”

“Assuming that their bosses are interested in any messages from prisoners,” Rochester commented. “But apart from that, we will treat them fairly well.”

Steve nodded and turned away from the display. “On to more serious matters,” he added, “how are you getting along with Heinlein Colony?”

“Expanding faster and faster,” Rochester said. “The new supplies from Earth really helped, sir. But we are going to need more personnel soon enough. And some proper cooks.”

“I understand,” Steve said. “Just don’t tell me you want to open a McDonald’s franchise up here.”

“It would be better than the crap from the food processors,” Rochester pointed out. Steve had his doubts, but held his tongue. “But I was thinking more of someone experienced in operating a small eatery, rather than a fast food place. Hell, get three or four of them and let them compete for customers. Of course, we’ll need a monetary system first…”

He eyed Steve expectantly. “At the moment, we’re effectively operating a system where people work and we take care of them,” he said. “Alarmingly like communism, really. But that is going to have to change.”

“Another headache,” Steve admitted. He rubbed the side of his forehead, then nodded. “Perhaps we should just pay everyone in American dollars. Or gold.”

He smiled. His father had always gone on and on about the value of gold, but Steve knew that gold’s value depended upon having someone willing and able to purchase it. Gold would work, he suspected, if it were sold down on Earth, but if the bottom dropped out of the market there would be a colossal economic disaster.

“I was thinking a kind of Lunar Credit,” Rochester said. “We could pin it to the dollar, for now, but we don’t want something that is pegged by forces outside our control. That almost fucked Greece.”

Steve nodded. If nothing else, the economic troubles in Greece meant that the country had plenty of young men and women willing to emigrate to find work. He was sure that, once the public announcement was made, hundreds of thousands of them would apply to join the growing colony. The only difficulty would be training programs and those were just a matter of time. As the colony expanded, experienced men could start training inexperienced men, who would then train newcomers in turn.

And, as they set up more homes below the lunar surface, there would be room for people who didn’t want to live on Earth, but couldn’t work on the moon.

“I’ll work on that, along with a constitution,” he said. “Have you had any major trouble just yet?”

Rochester scowled. “One idiot with more initiative than common sense built himself a still and nearly poisoned a couple of workers with bootleg alcohol,” he said. “I clobbered him, then put the idiot on punishment duty for a couple of weeks. But we will probably face something more serious later on, as we keep expanding. We need some kind of law, sir, rather than just my fists.”

He waved a cyborg arm under Steve’s nose. “That could be very dangerous in the future.”

“It will be done,” Steve said. “Somehow.”

He shook his head. He’d seen more than a few attempts to rewrite the constitution or devise a completely new one, but they were either simplistic or excessively detailed, full of ifs, buts and exceptions. There were people who wanted to restrict the franchise to those who had served a term in the military and people who thought that only those who paid tax should vote. Both ideas sounded reasonable, but they had flaws that would become disastrous if the system suffered a serious breakdown.

And most of the other ideas boiled down to I should get a vote. Here is the list of people who shouldn’t get a vote.

“Good luck,” Rochester said. He paused. “For the moment, we’re largely operating under Queen’s Regulations, with some exceptions for off-duty hours. But that will have to be clarified soon.”

Steve nodded, tiredly.

“Markus Wilhelm was talking about moving his factories up here, as soon as we have cleared space for them,” Rochester continued. “I imagine that other corporations will want to follow suit, particularly if our regulations are nowhere near as tight as the States. But that will cause problems too. What happens if we don’t over-regulate and we have an industrial accident?”

“All right, all right,” Steve said. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “You’ve made your point. I’ll speak to the alien, then go back to the ship and start working on a constitution. And then Kevin and Mongo can read through it and decide what they think of it. How long did it take the Founding Fathers to draft the constitution?”

“Around one hundred days, but it depends on just what you use as the starting point,” Rochester said. “Just try and keep the lawyers out of it. We don’t want a monstrosity like the European Constitution.”

Steve nodded. The Constitutional Convention had included lawyers — or at least people trained in the law — but they’d also been statesmen. He wouldn’t have trusted any modern-day lawyer to draw up a Constitution to govern a kids playground, let alone an actual country. Hell, perhaps they should have a law banning lawyers from government altogether…

“We’ll make it happen,” he said. Had Washington and Franklin felt so tired, even as their work came to fruition? “Somehow, it will happen.”

Cn!lss had fallen in love with the human laptop as soon as it had been gifted to him by one of the humans charged with watching him. It was clunky, compared to some of the computers he’d seen when he’d been trying to study Galactic technology, but it was also remarkably simple. He’d read through countless files on humanity, researched aspects that puzzled him… and discovered that humans seemed to like nude photographs of themselves. When he’d asked, his guards had muttered something about human sexuality and changed the subject.

The more he studied humanity, the more impressed he became. Humans were… odd, both a technological race and yet a divided race. Almost every Galactic power had unified their homeworlds before reaching out into space or shortly afterwards, when they discovered that they weren’t alone in the galaxy. Even the Hordes had an overarching structure, although it was more symbolic than real. No Horde would happily accept the domination of another Horde indefinitely.

But humanity… they’d come so far, despite so many different attitudes and cultures. Human religion was a strange mixture, utterly beyond his comprehension, while human government perplexed him. There were societies that reminded him of the Hordes — and yet they were technological — while there were others he simply couldn’t understand. What sort of ruling family ruled indefinitely? What sort of society operated by giving everyone, strong and weak, a vote? Half the time, he would read one website and then discover that the next website contradicted it. If he believed all he read, the human race was in a permanent state of civil war.

He looked up when the door opened, revealing the human commander. Cn!lss pulled himself to his feet, then slipped into the Posture of Respect. Maybe the humans didn’t really expect him to prostrate himself, but there was no point in taking chances. He hadn’t seen any of the humans beheaded by their superiors, yet even the most brutish Horde Commander tried to keep such discipline away from Galactic eyes. After all, they might disapprove and suggest trade sanctions on the Hordes.

“Greetings,” the human said. As always, it was hard to read emotion on the alien face. They simply didn’t have anything like the Horde’s range of expressions. “Two more of your ships have been captured.”

Cn!lss wasn’t sure how he felt about two more ships falling into human hands. On one claw, two more Horde Commanders had been humiliated — and he hated his superiors with a passion he couldn’t have hoped to convey to his human captors. But on the other claw, it suggested that the humans were steadily growing more and more powerful… and, combined with their technological inventiveness, would soon be in a position to leave their star system and wage war on the Hordes. Would his entire people be exterminated?

“Good,” he said, finally. At least it didn’t seem as if the humans would commit genocide against the Hordes. “Did you take prisoners?”

“Most of the crews,” the human said. “Do you wish to speak with them?”

“No,” Cn!lss said, hastily. “They would reject me as a traitor.”

“I expected as much,” the human said. “Our sociologists will wish to discuss them with you later.”

“I have nothing to add,” Cn!lss warned.

“We will see,” the human said. “And there is a second issue we would like to raise with you.”

Cn!lss waited, expectantly.

“We will be sending a trade mission to the nearest settled star,” the human said. “What do you think we could offer them?”

Cn!lss considered it. The nearest settled star to Earth, as far as he knew, was a multiracial colony on the end of a dangling chain of gravity points. There was almost no form of overall government, merely dozens of small settlements on the planet’s surface and asteroid belts. Indeed, it was commonly believed that, sooner or later, one of the larger galactic powers would eventually swallow it up. But, for the moment, its political insignificance was incredibly useful to the shadier sides of galactic society.

“Guns,” he said, finally. “And probably quite a few other things, if you give me some time to consider it. Or you could sell slaves.”

The human made a spluttering noise. “As nice as the idea of selling the” — he spoke a word the translator refused to handle — “into slavery is, I think it would be a very bad idea.”

“That may well be true,” Cn!lss agreed, reluctantly. Given the use some humans were put to by outside powers, they’d probably be reluctant to let more humans out of their control. “I think you could also offer mercenary groups. They are big business on the edge of galactic society.”

“We might have to do just that,” the human said. “I wonder what” — another untranslatable word — “would make of it.”

“Much of your technology is primitive, but so are many of the races along the edge of society,” Cn!lss offered. “It’s quite possible that they would be happy to buy technology from you, even though it isn’t the best in the galaxy.”

“That would probably be a good idea,” the human said. “Anything else?”

“Rare metals would be useful,” Cn!lss offered. “But I don’t know what else.”

He paused. “And you would have to be careful. The other Hordes might realise you’re flying one of their starships.”

The human made the gesture he had come to realise meant agreement. “It’s a problem,” he agreed. “One final question, then. Would you be willing to accompany the mission as an advisor and native guide?”

Cn!lss hesitated. He was being trusted? The Subhorde Commander had never trusted him, not after he had studied the Galactics. Why, he might have been secretly intent on subverting the Horde and destroying its way of life! One word out of place and he would have been beheaded on the spot. But the humans were prepared to trust him?

“If you will have me, I will happily come,” he said. How could he refuse the chance to show his loyalty? “And I will be very useful.”

“Good,” the human said. “My people will speak to you soon.”

He turned and left the cell, closing the hatch behind him.