Space Colony One Books 4 - 6

Interstellar Mission-7

THE DAY AFTER CHERRY returned from her visit to the threads, she decided to go and see Aubriot. Through some secret machinations she couldn’t even guess at, her lover had managed to wrangle a room all to himself in the overcrowded settlement. She didn’t approve but she couldn’t deny it certainly made their assignations a lot easier to carry out.

The passageway that led to Aubriot’s room was especially crowded. Parents were collecting their babies from daycare after their day’s work in the farming district, tending to the crops and constructing permanent housing. The colony had precious little farming or construction equipment left. Scythian spiders had passed over the place where the colonists had hidden the machines in preparation for the expected attack. The enemy’s search-and-destroy devices had inflicted considerable damage during their passage, and though many Gens had the training to fix the machinery, they lacked tools and parts.

But what the colonists missed in terms of equipment, they made up for in plain laboring skills and determination. No one was under any illusion about how closely they were skirting the prospect of failure. Nearly every able-bodied individual spent the daylight hours either helping to build houses, weeding crops, or picking off Concordian pests that had discovered a taste for the non-native produce.

Cherry eased through the people crowding the narrow space until she came upon the cause of the congestion. It was Anahi, the Woken who had once illegally taken the Leader’s position in order to exert her control over the colony. Cherry halted in surprise at the sight of the older woman. Not because she was shocked to see her, but because Anahi wasn’t wearing her visor. Her sightless eyes stared ahead, and she was swinging a cane to help herself navigate. The other colonists were trying to stay out of her way, causing a human traffic jam.

Cherry guessed that the scientist’s visor must have broken and no one was able to fix it for her. For the first time, Cherry felt a pang of pity for the older woman. What could she do now that she could no longer see? It would be difficult if not impossible for her to conduct any experiments, and going outside would be dangerous.

Side-stepping Anahi’s swinging cane, Cherry continued on to Aubriot’s door. Stepping into his room was a relief after the noise and crush going on outside. She found him sitting at a table working on his interface. He looked up as she walked in, acknowledged her arrival with a nod of his head, and then gestured at the seat opposite him. “Sit down. I’ve got something to show you.”

Cherry pulled out the chair and sat on it. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened? How everything went on my trip to the threads’ city?”

“You can tell me in a minute. First, you need to see this.” He turned his interface around and slid it across the table toward her.

Cherry had been expecting to see a design for a weapon. Aubriot had been fixated on designing weapons for weeks, laughing at any suggestion that he should perform manual labor, and entirely ignoring the fact that they had absolutely no means of making anything more complex than plows, hoes, axes, and shovels.

But what she saw on the screen was a list of words.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Come on, Cherry. Isn’t it obvious? It’s a ranking system. See, this is you here.” He pointed at the words at the top of the column.

General

“General what?” asked Cherry.

“Not General what. General who,” Aubriot replied. “General Cherry. Or whatever your last name is.”

“Lindstrom. My surname’s Lindstrom. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. But what the hell are you talking about?”

Aubriot’s eyes narrowed. “Come on. It’s simple. Read the rest. See what you think.”

Cherry scanned the list of titles. “I can’t even read this one. How do you pronounce it? Loo—”

“That’s Leftenant. It isn’t pronounced the way that it’s spelled. Unless you’re a Yank. Give it back to me.” Aubriot pulled the interface from Cherry’s grasp and lifted it up to read it. “General, lieutenant-general, major-general, brigadier, colonel, lieutenant-colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, second-lieutenant, officer cadet. I think that’s right. I had to write them from memory. There isn’t anything in the data banks about military ranks. Ethan would be captain general, I suppose.”

As he continued speaking, Aubriot put down the interface and his gaze shifted from Cherry to the middle distance. “Makes sense. Bloody pacifist scientists. I should have guessed that’s what they would do. Never mind. It’s water under the bridge now. Got to make the best of it.” He looked at Cherry. “So, what do you think? If we’re going to have a fighting force it needs structure. A clear line of command. I thought the ranking system for the Royal Marines was as good as any other. Though maybe we don’t need all of these ranks. But if you’re general, that makes me lieutenant-general, right?”

Cherry had gotten bored of Aubriot’s babble. She hadn’t gone to see him for a chat.

Their affair had been going on for months, but she still found herself mesmerized by his looks. Though he was a man, the only appropriate word for describing Aubriot was beautiful. His face was so symmetrical Cherry doubted she would have been able to tell his mirror image from the real thing. His body was perfectly proportioned and his muscles honed though he rarely did any physical exercise. Aubriot was so good-looking, it was hard to take your eyes off him. It was as if his appearance was too flawless to be believed.

Cariad had once said that on Earth if you were extremely rich you could buy genetic engineering that would give your baby whatever attributes you wanted, including physical perfection, and that Aubriot was an example.

The man snapped his fingers in front of Cherry’s face. “Hey, pay attention. I’m your lieutenant-general, okay?”

“Ugh, yeah, whatever you say.” Cherry knew she had to organize Concordia’s defense force before she left the planet to go to the Galactic Assembly. As was usual with the threads, Quinn hadn’t been able to give her a clear idea on when the ship they were building would be ready, but in truth it didn’t really matter. The Scythians might return tomorrow or they might not come back for decades. Whenever their enemies decided to pay the colonists a third visit, they had to be ready.

If Aubriot wanted to play soldiers, she could turn his enthusiasm to the colony’s benefit.

“I don’t know why Ethan chose you and not me as his second in command,” said Aubriot, partly under his breath. “It isn’t like you know anything about military strategy.”

“You don’t know why Ethan didn’t choose you?” Cherry asked. “You don’t think it might have something to do with that time you attacked him because you didn’t want him to run for Leader?”

“Hey, he threw the first punch!”

“Yeah, but you deserved it.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Aubriot. “But that was ages ago. There’s no need for him to hold a grudge for so long. I have a lot to offer the colony. It’s a shame he can’t see it.”

It’s a shame you aren’t beautiful on the inside, Cherry thought.

“What’s up with you?” Aubriot asked. “You’re acting weird today.”

“Am I? I’m just tired. It’s been a long day and I have too much to think about. Maybe I should lie down for a while. Want to join me?” Cherry raised her eyebrows and turned her head to look pointedly at Aubriot’s bed.

Aubriot sighed. “All right, if you like.” He stood up, pushing back his chair, and unfastened the top few buttons on his shirt. As he pulled the shirt off over his head, he said, “So do you want to tell me what happened yesterday when you went to the Fila city?”

Cherry walked across to Aubriot’s bed, sat down, and pulled off her boots. “It was just about the strangest experience I’ve ever had. The threads behave differently down there, you know. They don’t move around anywhere near as much as they do on the surface, and they glow. The whole place glows. It looks quite pretty, in fact.”

“Pretty? Are you sure you weren’t suffering from nitrogen narcosis?”

“You say that like you expect me to know what it means.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Aubriot sat next to Cherry. He didn’t seem in any hurry to do anything. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared absently at the opposite side of the room. His expression was uncharacteristically pensive, though now she thought about it, Cherry realized he’d had that preoccupied expression often lately.

Was he thinking back to his time on Earth, when, by all accounts, he had led a highly privileged, even charmed life? Of all the Woken, Aubriot’s experiences on Concordia had to be the most different from his former existence. Did he regret his decision to join the colony expedition? Cherry had never asked him. For all their physical intimacy, they were not emotionally or even socially close. She preferred it that way.

Aubriot suddenly turned toward her, grabbed the back of her head, and kissed her hard on the lips. With his other hand, he pulled her shirt out of her pants and reached up underneath it. At the same time, he pushed her down on the bed and effortlessly swung her small frame under him.

He seemed in a hurry. Cherry barely had time to take precautions to prevent pregnancy, and he was rougher than usual. When it was over, Aubriot didn’t say anything. He only lay on his back, his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

Something was bothering her lover. Cherry didn’t know what it was. Maybe he was sore that Ethan hadn’t made him second in command, but she had a feeling it wasn’t that. Something else was nagging at him.

She put on her clothes and left without saying goodbye.

Chapter Seven

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