Operation Starseed

Part 3-5

Conlan tells us it’ll take another hour or

so for the committee to meet and discuss our records, and he’ll get

back in touch with us after that. Which means we wait, Vallery and

I on the nav deck and the others scattered throughout the

ship—Shanley to find something to calm Johnson down and Dylan back

in the cockpit, Leena running a systems check, Parker and Milano

still flanking us in their fighters. Vallery keeps asking me what I

think we’re going to find at this colony, as if I might know

something more than she does, as if I’m holding out on her here.

“What about this committee of theirs?” she asks, and I shrug

because I don’t know. She’s just trying to fill the silence with

something, words, conversation, anything to make the time

pass. “What kind of committee do you think it might be?”

“One with people on it?” I

offer.

She slaps my arm and sighs. “You know what I

mean. Are we talking a government here? Concerned colonists? Do

they make laws and enforce them or just suggest things that need to

be done? Are these people elected—”

“Jeez, Val!” I cry, laughing at her.

“I know as much as you do about this whole thing.”

She thinks that over and then says, “Maybe

we should let Mike talk to these people.” Her voice is soft,

barely audible, like she’s afraid of speaking too loud. “Just to

find out what we are getting into here. Maybe—”

“Think about it,” I tell her, trying

to steer the talk away from Johnson, because there’s a part of me

that wonders if maybe he’s right and we should listen to

him, but I don’t want to go against Dylan, he’s my lover and

captain of this ship, his word is carved in stone as long as we’re

in flight, I can’t side against him. “If this is

Starseed—”

“Isn’t it?” Vallery asks. “I mean,

haven’t we sort of agreed that it is?”

I nod, then remind her, “But we don’t know

for sure yet. We assume it is, but they’ve never come out

and said so, have they?”

Chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully,

Vallery admits, “Not in so many words.”

“It might not be Starseed,” I

tell her. “We just don’t know. It might be another ship out there,

lost and stranded and don’t give me that look, it

might.”

“But it’s not,” she says. “You know

it’s not, I know it’s not, we all know this is one of the

colony ships.”

“Let’s say it is,” I concede, “just

for the sake of argument. Let’s say there’s a ship out there that

held a hundred people twenty years ago. It got off course somehow

and ended up here, and we’re the first contact they’ve had in that

time.” Vallery nods—she’s with me so far. Wherever I’m at, I

think, because I’m not really sure myself. I’m just making this up

as I go along. “So. They’ve been cut off from civilization for the

past two decades. If we’re thinking this is a Starseed ship, then

we have to assume they have the supplies and terraforming equipment

all of the ships left with, which should have been enough to get

them started. So they should have a whole system set up by now,

don’t you think? A steady food source, a community structure—it

should all be in place already.” She nods again. “So why shouldn’t

they have a committee of some sort? Maybe it is a

government, I don’t know, but I’d be more surprised if they

didn’t have some kind of representation, some sort of

figurehead, someone calling the shots.” When she doesn’t answer

immediately, I add, “You know?”

“Maybe,” she says, but that’s not

really an agreement, is it? I don’t like the frown on her face or

the way she toys with a tiny hole in the leather armrest of her

seat, like she’s thinking something she’s not too happy

about.

“Maybe?” I ask. When she shrugs, I

prompt, “But what? Tell me.”

“But they had a hundred people,” she

whispers. Now she looks up at me, her eyes wide and scared.

“They’re down to what, forty-two? And Conlan made a point to tell

us ten women are pregnant, like he was proud of the fact.

Like it meant something special. What happened to the other

colonists, Neal?” she asks. “If it’s been twenty years, you’d think

a hundred people would have multiplied, the colony would have

grown, but it didn’t. What happened to the others?”

I don’t know. And I don’t have to say that,

she can see the answer in my eyes. I just don’t know.

* * * *

“I see it,” Milano says, her voice

hushed over the intercom. Vallery and I exchange a quick glance and

she turns up the volume, the open channel a loud hiss around us.

“Small planet, possible moon, I’m not sure. There appears to be an

atmosphere cover. No defense systems in place—none that I can see,

anyway.”

Vallery pulls up Milano’s system through the

computer link and data splashes across our vidscreens, radar

signals and flight information and her vital stats, everything we

need to know about the fighter and its pilot. We can see the

planet’s mass on the radar. I look out the window but all I see are

stars and Milano’s boosters, that’s it. “Any fighters?” I ask her.

“Anything out there that might be gunning for us?”

“Negative,” she tells us. “I’m flying

solo up here, guys. Looks like Conan was telling the

truth.”

“Conlan,” I correct, but I keep my

voice down and don’t think she hears me.

Parker’s voice comes over the intercom. “So

we landing here or what?”

“Still waiting on the green light,” I

remind him. It’s been almost an hour since Conlan’s last

broadcast—how long is this going to take? What are we going to do

if we get right up on the colony and there’s still no contact?

Circle until they tell us we can land? Clicking over the intercom,

I buzz Dylan in the cockpit. “You hanging in there,

flyboy?”

I can hear the grin in his voice when he

comes back across the speakers and purrs, “Come up here and see how

I’m hanging, babe.”

“Oh God,” Vallery giggles. “How do you

put up with him?”

With a smile, I say, “I like him like that.”

Though sometimes I wish he wouldn’t be so open, not when he knows

there are others around. True, it’s only Vallery, but what if we

were back at the station and Dixon overheard him? I know he’s been

talked to about it before—right before he left on this mission,

Dixon called him into his office and I’m sure it was me he wanted

to talk about. Dylan spent all his free time in my room—he was the

reason I was late for my shift most of the time, even though Tony

covered for me. He wanted Dixon to change my schedule to

accommodate his, he wanted clearance to the nav deck when I was on

duty, he wanted me transferred to the pilot’s quarters and Dixon

drew the line at that. I couldn’t seem to make Dylan understand

that he wasn’t helping matters, Dixon didn’t like me, he

didn’t like that we were together and nothing I said seemed to get

through that boy. He loved me, he loves me, and that’s the

only thing that matters to him some days. He thinks it should be as

simple as that. I wish it were.

* * * *

The planet’s just as Milano described it,

small and almost moon-like, red and green through the gaseous cloud

cover—it reminds me of a glass ball on a Christmas tree, and it

fills me with the same sense of awe and wonder. Parker takes a

quick look around and reports that this is just one in a cluster of

small planets, all smaller than our moon back on Earth, which means

nothing to me because I’ve lived all my life on space stations out

here in the far reaches of the galaxy, I’ve never seen the

Terran moon. But Vallery oohs like she knows what he’s talking

about and when she looks at me, I nod, too, why not? We’re here,

aren’t we? I’m nervous and excited and can’t stop grinning—we’re

really here. S410. Leena’s right, we’re going in the annals

for this.

We’re close—the timestamp reads

00:42:23, less than an hour before we’re in position to

land—when the transmit beeps again, an incoming call.

Conlan, I think as Vallery opens the channel. “Semper

Fi,” she says, her voice bright and pretty. “Navigator Vallery

Andrews, standing by.”

But it’s not Conlan who replies. “Benjamin

Ellington,” the stranger says, introducing himself. “The committee

has reviewed your crew med files and the decision has been made to

grant you permission to land in the S410 colony.”

“Where’s Conlan?” I

whisper.

Vallery shrugs. “Off duty?” she asks. “I

don’t know.”

“In response to your request,”

Ellington continues, “I’m sending you eight random files from the

colony’s med lab, along with information about the colony itself.

There is no armament to speak of—I believe Jeremy told you that

much—”

“Jeremy?” Vallery asks, cutting him

off.

“Conlan,” he adds. “You spoke with him

previously?”

He waits. When it’s apparent he’s waiting on

us, I hit the transmit and tell him, “Yes, he’s been in

contact with us since the comm-link opened.” Data fills the screen

in front of me, the files he’s downloading to our DAQ system. “Get

Shanley in here to look at this,” I whisper, and with a curt nod,

Vallery leaves the nav deck. Into the transmit, I laugh and admit,

“You know, we’re all very excited about this.” Less than a half

hour now and we’ll be down there, shaking hands with these guys,

making history.

“As are we,” Ellington replies, but

his voice is dry and almost insincere, like he’s reading a script.

Before I can question him about it, though, he says, “Someone will

contact you when you’re ready to land.”

And then the connection closes and he’s

gone.