“We are more vocal about these issues because we have learned the cost of shutting up, because we constantly have to remind people, because the minute we stop, everything returns to the way it was, the status quo is reestablished, and the real structural and institutional problems that create inequality go, once again, uninterrogated.”
–S.E. Smith
“Keep up, keep up!” Tatenda Marechera demanded, as the Sally Ride screamed into the Titanian atmosphere.
“I’m doing my best, sir, but that puppy is fast and we’re cutting through atmosphere. If I go any faster, we’re gonna start to exceed tolerance for heat shielding.”
“We can’t lose them!” Marechera barked.
“We won’t, sir. Vehicle that big is gonna leave a big wake. Viktor, turn on the Doppler; let’s see if we can follow the turbulence in.”
“On it,” Frieden said, flipping on the ship’s radar.
“Lem, this is Sally Ride actual. We have deorbited Titan, and are following a bogey in toward what we hope is the unknown’s base.”
“Roger that, Sally Ride, this is Lem actual. Do you have visual?
“Mother, helm, no joy,” Ted Martínez said, willing the battered vessel through the choppy atmosphere. “Viktor, are we tied?”
“Tied? Oh…no. We do not have radar contact. We do, however, have their wake.”
“Ted, conning, eleven o’clock!”
Martínez saw it – the massive vessel had chewed up enormous contrails as it plowed through. “Roger that, captain. Mother, we have conning; we are following the bogey’s contrails in.”
“Roger, Sally Ride. Slow your speed; you do not want to burn yourselves up.”
“On it, Lem,” Martínez throttled back his impellers, and began to slow the Sally Ride’s descent. “Captain, altitude check?”
“Absolute altitude 36,414 meters and falling fast.”
“Lem, it’s getting really difficult to see here.”
The thick methane clouds and permanent haze of Titan was beginning to have an effect; Tatenda hoped they’d be able to see what they were headed for before they got there.
As he thought this, the Sally Ride shuddered as it entered an area of turbulence strong enough to be felt through the turbulence of descent.
“All right,” said Ted, “fasten your seatbelts, boys. This ride’s about to get bumpy.”
* * *
Pryvani Tarsuss had been growing irritated.
She was not used to being shut out. Generally, just her name was enough to bring information raining down upon her. In the rare occasions when it wasn’t, she could usually suggest what the humans call a quid pro quo – she could almost always knew of something the person on the other end of the transaction wanted, and if she could identify it, she always could get it.
But this time, she was having no luck. She’d talked to friends in the Ministry of Defense, a couple of cabinet ministers, half a dozen flag officers – heck, she’d even left a message with the office of the Emperor Himself. She was beginning to wonder if this had all been a misunderstanding, an artifact of too many disasters making them all too paranoid, when she finally got something.
It wasn’t much. Just the son of one of her father’s partners in the mining operation at Bitumina VII, who’d become a reasonably successful defense contractor. A guy who’d been dropping hints since his first wedding that he’d dump whatever particular wife he happened to be on in a New Trantor minute if Pryvani would be willing to go on but one date. And, um, a sleepover.
And even he didn’t even have particularly clear information. Just one little snippet.
“What is it with the Earth fascination?” he’d said, after ascertaining that Pryvani was not going to whisk him away from his fifth wife. “I heard Ziah Solis is so worked up about Earth he brought in Tobin Gernhatt from Cortexia University! My boy Zegner said he was gonna cancel his classes, hole up at the Dodecahedron for the day. Some kinda thing going on. Waste of time if you ask me, those little rascals are cute, sure, but they’re hardly a threat, my six-year-old daughter’s killed like five of ‘em, or so her mom tells me. So anyhow, when will you be on Erole again? I thought we could have a drink or two, I could show you my getaway in the mountains. Pryvani? Hello? …Hello? Huh. Always end up with these wonky connections when I talk to her.”
Tobin Gernhatt. The name rang a bell for Pryvani; when she brought it to the attention of the Freemans, she realized why.
“Tobin Gernhatt. Advising the Navarchos Imperii,” Niall had said, in the same tone he would have used if he had been asked whether Scotch qualified as whiskey. “You cannot be serious.”
“Who’s Toby Gerhart?” Sorcha asked; they were still at the dinner table, though the dinner plates had been replaced with pads and computers and scratch paper, and Rixie and Alex had materialized at some point as if they’d been summoned there.
“Now there’s someone I’ve tried very hard to forget,” Naskia said.
“How could you forget him, Ms. Bass?” Niall said, doing an imitation that immediately brought a laugh from his wife, and quizzical looks from the surrounding group. “Poor, sensitive you. You were so easy for me to hoodwink, what with my cunning and manipulative ways. And now I can use you for my own selfish purposes.”
“Oh, stop, sweetie – how do you do that after twenty years?” Naskia giggled.
“You don’t forget someone you’ve wanted to punch dead in the face, petal,” Niall said, winking.
“He was a witness in your hearing,” Sorcha surmised.
“Actually, I should thank him,” Niall said. “He made a very good case that humans were as intelligent as any Titan if not more, which tended to hurt She Who Shall Not Be Named’s case. But he also said that if the Empire were to admit humans, we would hunt you Titans to extinction, just like we did the wooly mammoth, due to our innate selfishness.”
“Because we all know that Titans would never become violent,” Naskia said, rolling her eyes. “No, that’s only something humans have thought up.”
“And this man is advising the military on humans?” Alesia said with horror.
Darren smiled slightly. “Bright-eyes, that’s the kind of guy who’s always advising the brass. When I was in, they were tellin’ everyone that it was the great Muslim horde, gonna all band together and destroy all of Western civilization. My dad, for him it was Moscow, and the International Monolithic Commie Conspiracy. Now, sometimes there is evil; one of my grandpappies lost his left leg and his right arm fighting Der Führer, and that som’bitch really was out to kill everyone, at least everyone without blonde hair and blue eyes. But then, when the real bad guys show up, that’s usually when the bright boys forget to warn folks.”
“Was that the grandpappy who lost his right arm and left leg singlehandedly saving 147 widows and orphans during the Hurricane of 1900?” asked Alesia, with a wry smile.
“That was my great-grandpappy, and we’re gettin’ off track. Prefontaine, wha’da you think?”
Pryvani had been very, very sober during this discussion. Darren was right – men like Gernhatt had infested the militaries of all sentient species since the first sapient sea urchin attacked the second sapient sea urchin at the third sapient sea urchin’s urging. Wise warriors despise war, but there are always some unwise officers trolling for an excuse to fight.
If Gernhatt was advising Solis….
“I think,” Pryvani said, “that we need to get someone to Titan Station as soon as possible.”
* * *
“All right,” Ted said, “we are going to be below the cloud deck very shortly, keep your eyes peeled.”
The Sally Ride lurched through the soupy Titanian atmosphere. The pressure here was almost half again that on Earth; it was not quite flying through water, but it was close enough. Ted didn’t even want to think about taking off again.
“There!” Tatenda called.
The three men gasped. They were still two kilometers up, they were just beginning to get a visual. But they could see its dimensions. They could see its shape. The enormous footprint of Titan Station, a station bigger than Manhattan, lay ahead of them.
After a brief hush, Tatenda opened comms. “Lem, this is Sally Ride actual. We are engaged with the target.”
“Roger that, Sally Ride. This is Lem actual. You are authorized to open a channel and demand our crewmate’s return,” said Xú.
“Wilco,” said Tatenda. “Unknown Station, this is the Terran Space Ship Sally Ride, Tatenda Marechera commanding. We are on approach. Please direct us to a landing station where we may recover our crewmate.”
There was no reply.
“Unknown Station,” Tatenda resumed. “This is the Terran Space Ship….”
That’s when the gunfire started.
* * *
“Rixie,” Pryvani said, “I want you to take the Galatea. You and…you and Sorcha, go to Titan Station. Just ask around. See what you can figure out.”
Rixie and Sorcha looked at each other, befuddled; neither was quite sure why the two of them made a logical team.
“I’ll go with Sorcha,” Alesia said. “Maybe….”
“No, Alesia,” Pryvani said. “I don’t know what the situation is there, and the fewer people we send, the better.”
There was a brief pause.
“Well, I’m going with Rixie,” Alex said. “She needs me for protection,” he said, winking to her.
“Me too, Princess. We need all the tactical knowhow we can get there. No offense, Trixie, but two heads are better than one.”
“No, Darren, Alex, like I said, I don’t know that it’s safe!”
“But it’s safe to send our daughter?” Niall asked.
“Don’t worry about me,” Sorcha said. “I’ve always wanted to go to Titan Station.”
“That’s….”
“I’m going too,” Niall said.
“No,” Pryvani said, in a measured tone. “This is getting out of control. Sorcha. Rixie….”
“I’ll go,” Naskia said. “Someone should be there with Sorcha.”
“Mom….”
“Well…all right…maybe that’s a good idea, and perhaps Brinn might be available….”
“ENOUGH!”
The group stopped, and turned to Alesia, who was staring up at Pryvani, quaking with rage. Lessy almost never had a chance to get to rage; that was generally Sorcha’s job.
“So far, Pryvani Tarsuss, you’ve vetoed every human who’s asked to go on this trip, and approved every Titan.”
Pryvani looked at Alesia, mouth hanging open. That couldn’t be right, could it? Rixie was obvious, Sorcha was there to cover ground, Alex would just slow things…and Darren would be better here…and Niall….
Pryvani closed her eyes, and took a very deep breath. And without opening her eyes, she turned around. She wanted to shout, to swear. Instead, she balled her fists, very, very tightly.
She was furious. Livid. And there was nothing to be done about it, because her anger was targeted at herself.
She took two steps away, and stopped, and tried to calm her quaking heart. She had failed. Not just Alesia, or Zhan, not just the humans in this room, or on this rock, or in the galaxy. She had failed herself. Dig down deep enough, and the same attitude was still there. The same lie, the one she wanted so badly to stop believing. There in the cracks of her subconscious, there in the depths of her soul, was the lie that they were helpless, and weak, and that they needed protection from themselves.
When she finally spoke, the voice seemed to come from a far different person than anyone in that room had ever known.
“I am sorry, Alesia,” Pryvani said, still not daring to face the assemblage. “And Niall. And Alex. And Darren. I am so, so sorry.”
Pryvani turned back to the table, and saw her friends staring slack-jawed, save for Alesia Nonahsdottir, who held a hand on her hip, and appeared to be waiting for more.
“I’ve tried….”
“You have,” said Niall. “You’ve done….”
“No, Dr. Freeman,” Alesia said, holding up a hand. “Sen. Tarsuss, you have given a lot. We all know you have. But this isn’t about you. Or you, Dr. Freeman,” she said, motioning to Naskia. “Or Rixie, or Aunt Loona, or any of the other Titans who have chosen to ally themselves with us. Not even you, Sorcha – not even you.
“If you guys stopped right now, gave up, went home, took up knitting, you’d be fine. Your lives would not be affected. Oh, you’d feel bad – you’d feel like you were letting friends down, and you’d be right. But you could give up tomorrow and go back to your lives and you would be totally fine. Nobody would own you. Nobody could sell you. You couldn’t be ‘destroyed’ for defending yourself.”
“Or forced in’ta trainin’,” Darren said, “like you was some kinda rabid dog.”
“Or forced to grovel just for the chance to hold a job,” said Niall. “Or be told that your daughter is not, and cannot, ever legally be yours. Because you’re just a pet.”
“And we’re lucky,” Alex said. “Even if we’re not legally equals, at least we have people around who see us that way. How many humans never get to be equals – hell, how many aren’t even treated well as pets?”
“This is our fight,” Alesia said. “You can choose to be here. And don’t misunderstand me, don’t ever misunderstand me – we are grateful beyond words that you do,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Grateful beyond words. We will never be able to repay your kindness. Never.
“But you can choose. We can’t. And so when we say that we want to go to Titan Station to help figure out whether there is a threat to humanity, it is not a request.”
“I’m sorry,” Pryvani said, quietly.
“Your apology is accepted,” Alesia said, as her mother’s kind smile fixed itself upon her face. “Now, we need to figure out how we get to Titan Station, and what to do once we get there, right?”
“Right,” Pryvani said, coming back to the table. “Right.”
* * *
“Incoming!” Ted shouted, pulling the craft up and away from the spray of gunfire.
“Anyone get a fix on the origin?” Tatenda shouted.
“No sir. This is not a combat aircraft. What I wouldn’t give for an F-95.”
“Their aim appears to be off,” said Viktor. “It looks like they missed on purpose.”
“Shot across the bow?” Ted asked.
“Looks like it,” Tatenda said. “How’s our fuel?”
“We’re at the line, sir,” Martínez said. “Should we pull out and wait for the Lem?”
“Negative,” said Tatenda. “Those hills over there – bring us down in them. We will wait and observe. See if there is a way in the back door.”
“Wilco.”
“Stanisław Lem, this is Sally Ride actual. Permission to go wheels down on Titan.”
“This is Lem actual,” Xú said, smiling tightly. “Granted. Get me all the intel you can, Tatenda. We’ll be there in five hours. You have the bridge, Captain-Lieutenant.”
Five minutes later, Shang Xiao Xú Mùlán walked into the power plant, striding purposefully, not slackening for a moment. They were facing what she now considered a hostile entity. There was no time for lollygagging, as the Americans liked to say.
“Shang Xiao on deck!” called one of the engineers, and all came to attention, save for Dr. Mukta Chandrasekhar, who simply nodded.
Chandrasekhar was unique among the senior staff in that she had never served in her country’s military. Most of them had worked their way into space the old-fashioned way, starting out as pilots or other officers. Chandrasekhar had started as a physicist working for ITER Global Ltd., which was still the primary manufacturer of Freeman-Akahito style fusion reactors for the world.
Chandrasekhar had designed the engines for the Lem, and her sister ships, the Arthur C. Clarke and the N.K. Jemisin. The next one under construction, the Ursula Le Guin, had a new power plant, but it was an evolution from Chandrasekhar’s original plans. And on the way out, she’d been working on her new project – the drive system for the Miguel Alcubierre. Hopefully, and very soon, travel to Saturn wouldn’t take years.
Mukta was brilliant, but had always been a civilian. Mùlán hoped that wouldn’t be a problem here.
“Chief,” Xú said, “can we talk in private?”
“Yes, Shang Xiao,” said Mukta, gesturing to a small huddle room.
“Any word on Hala?” Mukta asked, as the door closed.
“No,” said Mùlán. She knew Mukta blamed herself; Mukta had identified Hala as her first choice for deputy chief. She’d pushed hard for her; Nejem was the youngest crewmate aboard, just 27 years old – and two of those years had been spent in cryosleep. Of course, Hala was brilliant, dogged, and fearless, which was precisely why she was missing right now.
“Doctor, we need some defensive capabilities.”
“You want me to build a weapon,” Mukta said, bluntly, sitting down.
“A weapon of last resort,” Xú said. “A weapon to use only if all is lost. I need to know if you’ll be willing to use it if I order you to.”
Mukta let a breath out slowly. “They have Hala. We…we have to be willing to defend ourselves. What are you thinking of? A nanobot swarm? Because that’s not possible.”
“Not ethical, banned by the Treaty of Singapore, and plain evil. No. After what happened in the Short War, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“I’m sorry. I forget that you were at the Battle of Singapore.”
“Nobody’s more opposed to nanoweapons than those of us who survived it.”
“What happened? What exactly? We always hear that there was a danger of nanoweapons breaking containment, but never what they were doing that was so horrific.”
“Ask Oliver sometime,” Xú said. “Don’t eat before you do. He saved my life, you know that?”
“He saved many lives that day.”
“Well, one of them was mine.” The Shang Xiao studied the table. She hated telling this. But Mukta needed to understand.
“I was twenty. How I’d ended up second seat I’ll never know. We had just landed at the laboratory when the event occurred. We stopped the initial attack when they were four meters from me. My pilot lost his leg, and if that had been all, he would have been lucky.
Xú sighed, and for a brief moment, she looked nothing like herself, but like the terrified girl she used to be. “We fought our way to other unaffected soldiers. Japanese, American, Taiwanese – it didn’t matter. We were all fighting them. The bots from both sides were designed to mutate, to adapt, and worst, to pass those mutations back and forth like bacteria do. They started talking to each other. And they learned. They went from being able to kill slowly, to killing quickly, to gaining rudimentary locomotive control of their prey in two hours. And it got…it got so much worse than that.
“There were maybe five hundred of us outside the perimeter, trying to hold it until Oliver could finish. The worst was the last wave. The Allied and Chinese bots had hit upon a synergy that was consuming bodies, but leaving neural tissue intact. It was awful. The terror, the screaming, and then…then their…their transmissions – saying that everything was better, they were happy now, they were free, this was the best thing, we should all let the bots overwhelm us. If Oliver hadn’t been able to set off the EMP….”
Xú trailed off. “There are far worse things than death, Mukta. Far worse. I don’t know what they have planned for Hala, or for us. But if things get bad enough, we may need a way to end it.”
Mukta leaned back. “I don’t like the idea, you know.”
“I don’t like it either,” said Xú. “But Hala’s being held in a base the size of a city, and we have the Ride and the Lem and not even pepper spray to defend ourselves with. There has to be something.”
“Oh, there is,” Mukta said. “We have enough plutonium and uranium in the probes to build a crude fusion device. Not enough on its own to do much damage, but if we detonated it by the reactors, it would turn the Lem into a fusion-fission hydrogen bomb.”
Xú looked down at the table. “Dr. Chandrasekhar, I do not want you to build it just yet. But I want you to…just plan. Be able to give me an idea of how long it would take to assemble.”
“Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. We don’t even need to retool them. I don’t know who designed the probes, but they must have thought we might want to use them that way.”
Xú’s head snapped up. “What?”
“I said, they were designed to fit together. They’re standard probes, they were on the Clarke and the Jemesin too. It can’t be coincidental.”
Xú rubbed her temples. “Okay, so why would the JTSA do that?”
“Didn’t Admiral Harwell always tell people to ‘Be Prepared?’ Maybe they thought…just in case, as you said, what we faced was worse than death.”
Xú stood up. “Doctor…does anyone else know?”
“No. I don’t know if anyone else has even thought about it.”
“All right,” Xú said. “We have weapons. Let’s hope we don’t have to use them.”
“Agreed.”
Xú walked out of engineering and back toward the bridge. She wasn’t sure why she felt worse than when she’d come down here.
That was a truly epic speech by Alesia!
So Pryvani lapsed into an old ingrained habit..and people are killing her for it. Well as they say s**t happens… This is a very stressful moment so she slipped. You gotta look at the big picture, who she is and what she has done…
There is something else going on and we don’t know about it. Something verrry interesting.
The earthers should take care though..They still don’t know who they are dealing with and what their intent is. I understand their desire to get their cremate back, but a recon mission to properly asses the situation would take priority…Commander Xu responsibility is to her entire crew she does not want her entire crew to be taken captive or killed…At least I hope not…
What also should be reeeealy interesting is earth’s reaction once they get all the data…
To be cautious or to be bold. One can never tell beforehand which is the best tactic.
Anyway, a recon mission is more or less what the Sally Ride is doing right now. The only thing they did that deviated from that was sending a message to the unknowns, which Xú probably considered a calculated risk. You see, she and her crew have already decided to retrieve Hala or die trying. But talk about a mission impossible! The unknowns have superior technology, are on their home turf, Xú has zero intel, and judging from the size of that base there’s probably way more unknowns than there are Saturn mission crew. So Xú’s best bet is to somehow persuade the unknowns to return Hala voluntarily, even though they don’t want to talk. Therefore she tried knocking on the front door. Sadly it didn’t work. So now the Sally Ride‘s crew is going to try sneaking through a back door.
In dealing with her guilt over treatment of humanity, Pryvani couldn’t help falling back into the trap of being over controlling. Alesia relieved Pryvani of the illusion she would be the one to lead the revolution, on Avalon or in the empire. This time though Pryvani may have accepted emotionally what she already realized intellectually.
Speculation time: Everyone who asked to go to Titan Station ends up going, especially Alesia, Alex, Darren and Niall. Some adventures later, they are gathered around the vent, or whatever they used to sneak into the station, watching the whole crew of the Sally Ride make their escape. Before Tatenda enters the grate, he turns to the other humans, and says, “Come with us, back to Earth.”
Who, if any, do you think would take him up on the offer?
Just to make it funnier: Sorcha. Though i don’t think she could fit on any of Eath’s ships.
Everyone who wants to seriously PO Nonah, Rixie, Lysis, and Naskia please step forward.
Yeah, it’d take years to get back to Earth in the Stanislaw Lem, with no guarantee that they could ever leave again. Besides, would there even be enough supplies/crypods? I seriously doubt that the Joint Terrestrial Space Agency was expecting the Stanislaw Lem to encounter wannabe-hitchhikers out in deep space.
They were going to have a couple dozen crew awake for several months studying Saturn. If they are forced to turn back and return to Earth now, I think they’ll have enough extra supplies for one or more extra passengers.
The guys all have families and lives they have spent longer away from Earth. While probably tempting, I don’t see them going. Though I know Nas and Rixie would be biting their tongues not to outright forbid their men from going.
Alesia, however, I see as the one willing to go, yes even if it upset her mother. For the chance to see Earth, to be their intel on the universe beyond, and to risk maybe never being able to come back even in her extended lifetime, I think she might be just bold enough to leap.
“And Admiral Harwell wanted me to tell you that you are waking up on the 142nd anniversary of the disappearance of Dr. Niall Freeman, so if you happen upon a missing sesquicentenarian physicist in your travels, let him know.” I bet that’s going to pay off once Sorcha arrives. “No, I’m half human, my father is Nial Freeman”…
Yeah, i also wonder how will people from Earth react on such news as that Dr. Niall Freeman, abducted 142 years ago, is not only alive and well, but has a family with one of those extraterrestrials. And teaches on their university.
Pryvani’s lapse into overprotectiveness shows how deep ingrained that instinct is in titans, and thus how much of an uphill battle human emancipation is going to be. Good job by Alesia for quickly exposing Pryvani’s subconscious reasoning.
I must admit though that Alesia’s little speech didn’t sit entirely right with me. Yes, it’s humanity’s fate that’s at stake here. But this isn’t just the humans’ fight. This is also the fight of any titan (or other citizen) that wants to live in an Empire that upholds the ideals it is founded upon instead of one that violates its own constitution while deluding itself into thinking that they’re acting in humankind’s best interests. Truth is, the humans need the titans’ help if things are ever to become better, as well as vice versa. Only if those of good will stand united does justice have a chance of prevailing.
Does anyone else think that that defense contractor dude is a particularly dim bulb? Even if Pryvani isn’t openly a human activist, it must be widely known that she really adores humans. Casually saying that your daughter killed five of them is not going to be of any help if you’re trying to get Pryvani to sleep with you. Not to mention that anyone with half a brain would have worked out the meaning of the constant “wonky connections” by now.
On principle, Alesia’s outrage is fully justified. On a more pratical scale, let’s not forget Humans are finger-sized to Titans, smaller than most animals and predators on titan worlds. So, while, Humans can have great ideas and insight and be useful that way, I question the wisdom of sending humans to a place where things might get physically violent, violence that would be purposefully directed at humans to boot.
Luke almost got killed by a mere bug on Titan station ! What about titan soldiers targeting humans ?
At this moment they’re going on an information gathering mission. Having extra eyes and minds is going to be an asset, while there is no definitive reason yet to believe that the humans’ lives will be at risk.
More importantly, combining the Code Magenta traffic warning with the fact that Tobin Gernhatt left to advice the Navarchos Imperii would have led Pryvani and the others to the conclusion that there is something going on that could threaten all the humans on Earth. With the stakes that high none of the humans would want to stay behind just to avoid any risk of life.
I think Pryvanni had already hung up, or had stopped paying attention at that point. I imagine she’d be rather furious if she actually heard what he’d said.
Ah pryvani, it’s so hard to not bubble wrap humans friends, is n’t? Good reaction from Lessy! I agree that if titan attack over Sally Ride goes public, this is going PR nigthmare…!
The mention of Lyroo in this chapter makes me wonder what her take on all this will be as it progresses. Humans have made their own way to Titan, using technology that Titans didn’t even think to use when they were still pre-warp, and before this is all said and done… I imagine Titan Station will be witness to Earth’s first warp capable vessel.
(stupid lack of edit button)
This is something she claimed would never be possible because “humans are just too simple”.
Lyroo just needs to pray that Avalon hasn’t developed it’s own Area 51 yet because Darren knows exactly what he’d do with her.
Naw she would never make it to that station. Lysis would turn her into the world’s largest Titan shihkabob…
Looks like the gang is headed to Titan Station.
At first I thought Pryvani might be acting sensibly, if overly caution. But she doesn’t know what the readers know at this point. I look at it, them holding Hala without a hint of reason for doing so, and I’m ready for them to apprehend every human at the gate as an enemy of the empire. She was actually more surprised then anyone when she realized what she was doing. And that was moving speech led by Alesia.
Where Lyroo, sorry I mean Fem Voldemort, idealizes humans as friendly, cute and needing protection because they are helpless, Pryvani tends to idealize humans as noble, above even herself. And she’s still a protector, only it’s human rights, from titans themselves. It’s easy to see how she fell into that trap. Humans have no legal tools to advocate for themselves, and must resort to extraordinary acts to change minds. Pryvani’s been facilitating for so long, she maybe forgot humans do a lot too. (By the way, was that “who shall not be named” jab for the sake Darren’s possible PTSD, or have the Freemans been keeping a grudge all these years?)
Side note, looks like not many people are aware of what’s going on if Pryvani is having trouble getting info. Hope that message left with the office gets the Emperor to start looking into it himself. I’m surprised the Freemans didn’t try their brother or sister-in-law.
I hope the Sally Ride parked close, the scale of the station may be deceptive, and it’s going to take a long time to get anywhere. Well someone certainly knew what to expect, I’m surprised the captain hasn’t been briefed in secret. That’s a serious last resort weapon though. At least now we know nanobots are off the table completely.
Apprehend every human? No way. The military is acting against wild humans from Earth. Officially registered pets are none of their concern.
I wonder about that. What are the odds Alesia isn’t registered as a pet?
Very low. Registering humans is a legal requirement in most of the Empire. And if Alesia weren’t registered then any random citizen could snatch her up and claim her. Galling as it is to register Alesia as a pet, not doing so would be a fool’s choice.
As much as it would pain all the friends and family, I imagine Nonah’s children are registered to Loona. Maybe when Sorcha and Alesia left for Avalon they transferred her license to Sorcha for safety reasons.
Nonah has grown angrier over the years over the treatment of humans than even Niall I think. That would have been a “fun” conversation when first suggested. Not that being registered was enough to keep Darren from being taken, twice. And I can’t see Sorcha going along with owning her best friend, not without massive self loathing for the half human. Besides, it not like Darren has Aisell by his side, or that anyone bats an eye at him hanging out with someone not legally allowed to have humans anymore.
But beyond that, we are no longer talking about a normal situation. The military is working in secret to counter human progress and expansion, and you have a group coming from a second system with a human space program. A group of human sympathizers, with Earth born humans dressed in clothes and likely not being carried in the approved box transport. With Earth humans landing on Titan, even if the group were all registered, this suspicious human handling behavior should at least get them detained long enough to check for registration and maybe even a citation.
They might be pragmatic about the whole situation, much like Alex was when he made Rixie register him; It’s just a file in some Archavian database. The safety measures that come along with said file far outweigh any annoyance or injustice felt at the system, and they all know it.
I have no doubt that Niall and Naskia both have held a grudge against Lyroo since she contested Niall’s appointment. Hearing about what she did to Darren probably added fuel to that fire. This grudge was probably strengthened over the years with her other “exploits” (I’m sure she’s had a few).
So using this “weapon” involves crashing the Lem into Titan Station while blowing the engine. Now where have I heard that idea before? 🙂
Is that why we had to wait for the conclusion of Exile?
Your away team for Titan: Rixie – leader and knows the station, Brinn – to care for Hala if needed, Darren – to establish contact with the Lem and coordinate strategy, Niall, because he is best known on Earth, Sorcha – because she exists, and Alex – as mediator. Pryvani to contact the emperor and get a cease fire order to the military until things calm down.
They still don’t know about Hala. Sorcha and Alex are a priori superfluous. The reason we need Niall is that exploration missions tend to be run by the military and include scientists. So we need both a military person and a scientist. Darren and Niall.
“To the Human ships currently operating in the orbit of Saturn: We have recovered your crewmate. She will survive, but you may not recover her.” Everyone in the empire, on Avalon, and probably even on Hive Prime by now knows the Titans have a possibly injured human astronaut at Titan Station and Terran ships nearby.
That’s a message just for the Lem and Ride. Nobody’s told us that anyone else has heard it.
What you’re quoting was a signal sent specifically to the humans. It’s not the Code Magenta traffic warning that was sent across the Empire and beyond. The quoted message was no doubt sent with a regular radio signal; it wouldn’t travel faster than the speed of light. Long distance communications such as the Code Magenta traffic warning would need to use a different system, one that bypasses the lightspeed barrier, in order to get anywhere fast. Apparently that system also renders them undetectable by Earth technology.
With updates like these I’m going to demand daily updates, instead of weekly!
Alright the entire seen with Pryvani was…christ, perfection. It was perfect. It summed up so many feelings, of helplessness, and letting the titans save the day. Pryvani, who out of the the entire titan empire fights for human rights harder than anyone alive, even fell prey to the narrative that humans have to be protective and the reactions from everyone…perfection.
What follow was just as amazing, because it gave humanity a line in the sand. This is an absolute desperate situation and Xu refuses to use the nanobots. An absolute amazing moment, especially when she acknowledges they could all die. That the nanobots are so, soooo, much worse.
How much of this do you have pre-written DX? I fear that at the rate you’re posting, we’re going to catch up and instead of only waiting a few days between updates, we’ll be waiting weeks (like poor Sovereign, which is more like months at this point).
Hey, I posted the last chapter of Sovereign only a SINGLE month ago, thankyouverymuch.
😛
Fairly sure this has been mentioned as done, granted some parts may need to be edited, but not only is it finished it’s been receiving some rave reviews,
I believe I read the entire story has been written for a year now. (And was what got DX admission into the group). It was just waiting for the other story arcs to finish.
It is indeed complete, though that doesn’t mean I’m not still tinkering. I’ll be tinkering right up until I post chapters.
As for the rate of posting, I intended to stick to 2-3 a week, and I will, mostly, but we’re on a run of chapters that I quite enjoyed writing, so I’m moving a bit faster at the moment.
And lay of JohnnyScribe! Guy created the universe, he can take as long as he wants to update Sovereign, though I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to the updates. 😀
I can see the tinkering. This is the most polished story yet.
They’ll all get it at one point.
D.X is the only actual experienced writer among us, if you look hard enough you might even find his own book somewhere on the net. He has self published one.
As for Contact being the most polished, Exile and all my work goes through D.X for an edit before I post it. However, D.X has had a year and then some to write, edit, re write and change Contact, and then he edits even MORE before he posts. So, it has had more time to marinate.
Also, he’s a very good writer…so that helps 😉
“As for Contact being the most polished, Exile and all my work goes through D.X for an edit before I post it. However, D.X has had a year and then some to write, edit, re write and change Contact, and then he edits even MORE before he posts. So, it has had more time to marinate.” That confirms my impression. I figured that it was because this has been sitting for over a year while the others get one edit before they’re out. I’d also be surprised if DX doesn’t have an English and/or Classics degree.
The Archavian government is going to be getting a huge backlash from the public for this, once it reaches the media. Even if people don’t believe humans are equals, they do mostly see them as cute and harmless. Hearing that their government threatened and attacked some defenseless human space explorers, just for getting close to the border… well that’s going to be a PR nightmare.
Not everybody is so concerned with human welfare that they’ll care about what happens to a handful of wild ones. If an airport shot a couple of stray dogs for getting too close it’d be a news blurb but no more than that. The real PR nightmare is that the military is not only violating the no-contact policy for humans, it’s doing so behind the Legislature’s back. That last part is going to upset even those that don’t give a damn about humans.
And of course there is also the question of how the hell those humans got spaceships with which to get too close to Titan Station in the first place. Did the humans get their hands on a smuggler’s ship somehow? Did someone give the humans those ships with the military none the wiser? Did the military allow or order someone to give ships to the humans (see violating the no-contact policy)? Wait what, did those humans actually build those ships themselves?!? Whatever the answer, the government obviously wasn’t on the ball (or even informed) about it.
Then there’s TETH, and likeminded Titans. I’m sure they’ll make noise, even if their numbers aren’t that great.
That’s kind of a poor analogy. Maybe if the dogs could talk, and had a society, and built some cars to start driving around and explore in, and if they had come over from an area that everyone knew was the homeland and place of origin of the dogs.
Also, the huge media shitstorm after the Rutger Massacre showed that people do care what happens to humans, even if what really brought so much attention to it was the death of the girl. Once TETH gets a hold of this story, they’re going to run with it, like the attention craving organization they are, and will make sure they bring as much notice to the situation as they can.
The analogy may not be perfect, but remember that the military tends to keep any information about Earth to itself. Most people in the Empire won’t know anything about Earth except that it is the homeworld of the humans and that the military keeps everyone away from there. They’ll have no idea that the humans built a civilization complete with almost-warp technology there. Instead they’ll assume that Earth is populated by the same prehistoric hut dwellers that the titans found when they first set foot on Earth.
There are also some differences between the Rutger Massacre (a term coined by TETH, not its official name) and what’s happening now. Here we have the military driving humans away from where they’re not supposed to be. While back then, a cadre of supposedly normal citizens was found to be swallowing alive dozens of humans in the middle of a major city under the leadership of an important underworld figure, and the one human who fought back was set to be euthanized for it.
That’s not to say that there won’t be a media shitstorm when word gets out to the public about what’s going on in the Sol Terra system. There undoubtedly will be. I’m just saying that it’s not the military’s attempts to drive back a couple of humans that strayed from their preserve that’ll spark the shitstorm. Instead the spark will come from the military hiding what was going on at Earth, then failing to keep the Empire’s existence hidden from Earth’s humans, subsequently following the advice of an “expert” who envisions humanity to be an extinction-level threat to the Empire, and doing all that without consulting the Legislature on any of it.
The military doesn’t keep information about Earth a secret. That was proven in Physics during the hearings. It’s just that people don’t bother to actually look the information up. They go by what they learned in school, and it’s probably not really covered that much, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the official school texts were really out of date on their information because, again, people don’t bother to actually look the information up.
From Titan: Exile, chapter 68:
“How do we know all of this is true, and not just a grand fabrication?” Laas asked, though not in a tone that would suggest hostility, as much as it did doubt.
“What my counterpart is trying to say, is that the military generally keeps information about ‘Baby Blue’ to itself, what we do know about Earth wouldn’t fill a few pages, let alone a lecture hall.”
Anyway, it’s not that the military is stopping others from gathering information about Earth (as long as they have the proper authorization), it’s just that they themselves always kept quiet about what was going on on Earth. With the end result being that the Empire is now caught without any plan on how to deal with humanity’s discovery of the Empire.