Joachim was still getting used to wearing the hard-hat. He was more of a desk-man, if he was honest. He’d seen his creations getting built, but those environments were usually a sterile, operating-room-like atmosphere. Back then, he’d had to wear all-covering white suits to prevent his filthy human detritus from mucking up the delicate internals of a spacecraft.
This workplace was…quite a bit different. Now he and Blake had bright yellow hard-hats plonked upon their noggins as they followed a cheerful man who went only by ‘Chaz’. Blue-tinted cranes swung overhead, and every time Joachim saw them move above his head, he flinched.
“Don’t worry!” yelled Chaz in a carrying voice which Joachim could hear even through his earplugs. “You two just stay right on my ass! We’re well out of the drop-zones for any of ‘em!”
Joachim hoped that was the case. Each crane carried some huge rib or sheet of metal, and each of them was quite capable of converting his young-again body into a smear of red paste if it fell upon him. Each crane lowered their loads, in turn, into the giant pit which Chaz led them up to.
The three leaned against the railing and viewed the swarming melee below as small human figures clambered over a huge metal form. Bits of bright light flared out here and there as welders bent to their various tasks, fusing the bits of rib and sheet into a cohesive whole.
Chaz swept a triumphant hand over the scene. “Welcome to Norfolk, folks!” He laughed at what might be considered a minimalist pun. “Anyways, I’m glad to see you eggheads getting to behold that which you’ve thunk up.”
Blake pointed at the distant flares of welding. “Just to make sure, are we far enough to not need eye protection?” He was yelling back, both to be heard through the ear protection and to carry out over the din of the construction below.
“Yep! Plenty far, we’re all the way up here. Though now that you mention it…” Chaz cast a critical eye over the drydock, then nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Looks like everyone’s PPE is in place. Don’t have to worry ‘bout anyone getting an unexpected welder’s tan.”
Meanwhile, Joachim studied the emerging form with an engineer’s eye. It looked good, but then again there was nothing like getting hands-on with a design to find out its flaws. “How is it going, so far?”
Chaz’s good cheer did not abate. “It’s going great! Hell, this is nothin’, we build fuckin’ supercarriers up in this sumbitch! This thing here? Easy-peasy, le-mon-squeezy. It’s just some big ‘ol tubes with some stringers inside and such.”
Blake looked over the construction with a more critical eye. “I mean, we moved to stainless steel with Starship because it’s easier to form and weld together than carbon composite. But this seems so…inefficient. That metal is far too thick.”
Joachim straightened up and patted Blake on the shoulder. “That’s the whole point. We’ve all run the math, and it works out.” He smiled. “Besides, if this performs as planned, we should be able to recover the first stage, at least. That should satisfy your ultimate boss.”
Chaz turned away from the drydock and leaned against the railing. “If you don’t mind my asking, how y’all gonna fuel this big beautiful bitch?”
“First stage is LOX and RP-1,” said Blake. “Second stage is LOX and liquid hydrogen.”
“Okay, the high-grade kerosene is not a problem,” replied Chaz. “That shit is pretty safe. But how’re you gonna get that much LOX transported? We don’t have the cryo tanks here to store it all. I mean, I’m the main safety guy here. I’ve read chapter and verse about how bad it can get when you ship that fuckin’ stuff in bulk.” He shivered. “That shit turns just about anything you care to name into a god-damned fuckin’ bomb.” He turned back to look down on the half-constructed rocket below. “It would be a cryin’ shame if she blows up before we can even get ‘er out to sea.”
“We have the fueling part covered,” said Joachim. “Trust me, there will be no chance of any damage to your drydocks. But, one of the reasons we wanted to come out here was to see…”
“How fast can you build another one?” blurted out Blake with all of the aplomb of a teenager stampeding towards their first ever make-out session. Joachim almost face-palmed, but figured that by now it was far too late to appear cool.
Chaz, to his credit, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “Well, now that we’ve gotten all of the kinks worked out in actually constructing that beautiful tubular bitch down there…how soon do y’all need it?”
__________
In the end, it was the fault of the British.
Well, ‘fault’ might be too harsh of a term, but certainly they were the ones instrumental in breaking the UN’s ongoing stalemate on how to give the aliens’ fusion technology to humanity. The affair revealed a conundrum for the ages. British industry en masse tends to be all gormless and floppy. But put two or three Brits together in a shed, and supply them with plenty of tea? They’ll create a black-hole generator by next week if you don't keep a weather eye on them.
The three Brits-in-a-shed in this particular drama remained nameless even after the dust had settled, but they did manage to post their findings on a certain Unfortunate Website, complete with pictures compiled from the Rithro’s repair and refueling livestream. They saw certain things, caught here and there in the body-cams worn by the human participants in that livestream. Things like diagrams on displays, which in turn suggested other things. Those suggestions then led to other suggestions, and by the end of it those participants of the Unfortunate Website had broken it all down into some reasonable guesses as to how the Rithro’s proton-proton fusion drive worked.
At that point, the genie was out of the bottle, the cat was amongst the pigeons, feel free to pick your metaphor of choice. In any case, by then it was far too late to try and keep the technology contained. And therefore, the Rithro crew made known to the Earth which exact components they needed to fix the damaged engine on their ship.
The resulting stampede and (sometimes literal) elbow-throwing in order to be ‘the first to unlock the secret of fusion’ made any gold rush look like a gentlemanly, laid-back affair. In the end, it was the Indians who got there first…and for a good long while they would never let anyone forget it.
Especially the British. It’s a bit like the whole ‘circle of life’ thing, when you step back and look at it from afar.
__________
Parvati was grateful that she didn’t have to go on these stupid chat shows much anymore. Back when she was starting out in her career, it felt like this was a chore she had to do every other week. But she supposed that, after returning from a minorly-epic journey into space on behalf of humanity, she did owe it to her species to at least smile, look happy, and report on what she’d seen in person.
To his credit, this particular chat-show host wasn’t too annoying. But he did tend towards that simping, ‘luvey’ attitude which oh-so-grated on her nerves. “So!” he exclaimed, much too loudly. “You got to see the Earth from the Moon’s orbit! And to see the, um, what was its name again?”
By now she’d memorized the name. “One-Oh-Three-Pea Hartley,” she responded. “It’s a small comet, it occasionally comes near Earth during its orbit. But it turns out we could match orbits with it easily, and it held enough ice to distill out the hydrogen the Rithro needed to fully refuel.”
“Of course!” The host’s gaze shifted over to Ravindar. “You were out there too, of course.”
The Sikh remained stone-faced. “Of course.”
“How…well, how was it?” The host began to look a little uncertain. “I know it sounds like a silly question, but from the livestream it looked absolutely amazing. I can imagine it must have looked even more amazing while being there in person, right?”
For some reason, Ravindar must have decided to take pity on the poor fellow. “We all got to go outside of the landing boat, that first time we approached the Rithro. Forgive me, I forget the exact details. Did they show that part?”
“They streamed Chao’s personal camera when she went outside,” said the host. “After that it cut to different cameras, but we did get to see you go out.” He laughed and gestured at Ravindar’s body. “Even with everyone all done up in white pressure suits, it’s not like we could mistake you for the other humans, eh?”
Parvati cringed inside, but to her surprise Ravindar smiled warmly. “Indeed.” He paused as he thought through what to say next. “I have beheld a great many things in my life. Many of them were wonderful. Some were, sad to say, not pleasant; indeed, some of the latter made me…doubt my faith. Made me doubt in the presence of God.”
She looked up at him in shock, but Ravindar’s face remained calm. “But during this voyage, thanks to the sights I saw during that short trip outside…I was able to behold the wonders of God’s creation.”
To his credit, the host didn’t follow up with some stupid quip or rejoinder. Instead, his countenance became thoughtful. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“Not in the least. It made me realize the most important things in life. We have been bequeathed a wonderful planet, a precious jewel amidst an infinite black void. We need to protect the things in life we cherish, and we also need to realize that we cherish them while they’re right in front of us.”
Parvati’s brain was still trying to process this new side to her bodyguard, only to realize her smaller hand was now gripped in his much bigger mitt. He locked eyes with her, and then in front of the cameras brought her hand up towards his head. His dark eyes held an unspoken message.
If you don’t want me to do this, do something.
She said and did nothing as he delicately pressed his lips to the back of her hand, then he spoke again. “Sometimes, the things we cherish the most are right in front of us.”
She decided to hell with decorum and all but launched herself at Ravindar, lips-first.
The host, for his part, leaned back and watched Parvati’s resulting smooch-attack with satisfaction. It was obvious that this display of affection was going to give his show gangbuster ratings…or views, clicks, likes, whatever the hell they called it these days.
Parvati didn’t care, she was for right now the happiest person in the world.
__________
Admiral Katsura Tsuneo, in spite of his very Nipponese name, considered himself a thoroughbred American. His parents had been children when they’d both been interned in camps during what they always called ‘The War’. There was no need to add numerals to it, in their eyes. But in spite of such nasty treatment of those he loved, Katsura still believed in his native country. He believed in America. He’d believed enough to rise through the ranks of the US Navy…and now he was here, at the helm of a mighty strike group which Yamamoto, that back-stabbing imperialist sonofabitch, would have given his eyeteeth to command.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
He stood on the outside deck next to the bridge of the Nimitz as he sipped from his mug of coffee, his white uniform crisply pressed as it should be. It had taken awhile, way back when, for him to get used to Navy coffee. Now, he wouldn’t have it any other way. It was that little pinch of salt which made it special.
The admiral’s hazel eyes scanned over the organized chaos which always constituted an active aircraft carrier’s flight deck, and he pronounced that chaos good. Katsura knew that the people down there also knew that, every morning, he’d come out here to view them. He hoped it gave them a little bit of extra incentive to perform well, upon seeing his little white dot up on the ship’s island.
Katsura took another sip of his coffee as he breathed in deep the tang of sea air. There was nothing quite like this combination of sensations. He also could feel through his legs the thrum of his ship’s mighty engines, driven by dual nuclear reactors, and beneath that he felt the swell of the sea under everything, a reminder of the ever-present threat of the ocean which yet still cradled his massive ship like a giant, velvet-covered gauntlet. He knew that he would miss these morning moments once he was retired. Still, he couldn’t complain. It was nice to be able to go out on top. Commanding an entire US Navy carrier strike group? It was like getting to play with the very best toys in the sandbox.
Although to be honest, it was a bit of a bittersweet command. Very soon, the venerable Nimitz was going to be de-commissioned. Her reactors would be de-fueled, and she might even be sold for scrap. Such a fate did not seem, well, honorable to Katsura. Such a grand old ship deserved better. Although ‘deserving better’ could include going out in the middle of combat. His ancient ancestors might have considered that a fine death, but to Katsura the thought was abhorrent. Because that meant that his country was at war, and this time it wouldn’t be with anyone on Earth.
Once more, he tried to war-game the scenarios in his head. This ship and its surrounding support craft would be no help in combat from the alien menace, not unless the Breakers were completely stupid and tried to invade by landing troops or drones. In that case then, sure, the planes and craft under his command could deliver a mighty blow. But most likely, any Breaker would just stand back and pummel the entire planet from orbit. Although, the Aegis systems in the surrounding missile frigates might be able to intercept the incoming weaponry. And if the Breakers tried an underwater approach, well, his boats would show those genocidal robot bastards that humans had figured out how to do that shit a long while ago…
His strategizing was interrupted by a polite cough from his right. “Admiral, sir?”
Katsura turned and returned the salute from the ensign. “Yes, Ensign…Kemp, correct?”
“Yessir! Priority message for you on the scrambler. It’s marked for your eyes only.”
The admiral’s eyebrows raised. “Really? Can’t imagine what that’s all about. The CCP are behaving themselves…for once. Welp, I guess that means I’ve had enough sea-air for this morning.” He waved to Ensign Kemp to proceed him.
Once alone in his quarters, Katsura performed the necessary security ablutions to receive the proper Holy Writ. The system was so old-school that it actually printed out the resulting message onto a sheet of physical paper. It took him several read-throughs to fully grasp what was being asked of his pride and joy. At the end, though, he grinned. If this was how his command ended, he was more than fine with it.
He grabbed up the rather old-school phone next to him. “Hello? Yes. Please have Captain Harrison come to my quarters at his earliest convenience.”
‘Earliest Convenience’ turned out to be less than three minutes. Katsura rose as the brown-clad man entered his quarters. The admiral had a more relaxed command style, and so Captain Harrison shook his hand instead of saluting.
The flaxen-haired man seated himself into one of the chairs facing Katsura’s desk. “Hey, Kat. The ship is abuzz that you got something important in on the red-line. Is this little chit-chat because of that?”
Katsura seated himself upon a corner of the desk. “It is indeed. I’m authorized to distribute this information to those whom I deem fit. For some strange reason, I’m including you on that list.” He smiled as he handed the printed sheet down to Harrison.
The captain’s eyes got big and angry as he read the first few sentences. “They want us parked next to Florida? Command does know that we’re in the south Pacific right now, yes? We can’t fit her through Panama. It’s gonna take us ages to get the whole task force down and around Tierra Del Fuego.”
The admiral laughed. “Oh, they know where we are. Keep reading. Y’all ain’t gonna believe what they want us to do when we get there.”
Harrison did as instructed. His anger faded, but his eyes somehow got even bigger. “Holy shit. Kat, is this for real? More than one?”
“For real, and for more than the one time. They’re flying some experts out here, so that they can instruct and train us on the necessary procedures while we sail there. That’ll be followed up by shipping us the proper equipment and pipelines, once we’re on station.”
“Pardon my French, but…holy fucking hell.” Harrison looked around the admiral’s well-appointed quarters, and Katsura knew that the captain was looking well past his surroundings and more at the hundred-thousand-ton floating island which they and five thousand other sailors called home. “You know what? If this is the old girl’s final fate, I am all for it.”
“That’s my assessment as well,” said Katsura. His smile didn’t abate. “Besides, this means we all get ring-side seats for the fireworks during every launch.”
Captain Harrison grinned. “If we tell our sailors that, they’ll work even harder doing…well, this. It’s not exactly what any of them signed up for, but it’ll be one hell of a story to tell their grandkids.”
Their mutual smiles faded as they realized the follow-on implication to Harrison’s statement.
Assuming there are any grandkids in anyone’s future.
__________
Corporal Luca Martinez figured that now, finally, he could relax. He therefore did so, with an almost-empty beer bottle against his chest, leaning with the utmost feeling of luxury back into a beach-side lounge chair which cradled him just right. He and the rest of the humans from the expedition had just been through an endless round of interviews and debriefings, followed by the most difficult period of any man’s life – namely, meeting the potential in-laws. Takh and McCoy had even gotten permission to tag along.
But so far it had all gone swimmingly, and Chao’s family appeared to be okay with her dating him. He was still getting a handle on Thai language and culture, but from what he could gather the fact that he was in such an exciting line of business and also now so famous elevated him in their eyes. Maybe. Maybe they were just being polite to the barbarian from the West. He for sure didn’t consider himself that great a catch, at least not in his own eyes.
But right now, his surroundings could not be more perfect. A pure, white-sand beach, with the bluest of blue skys above, the gentlest of waves before him, and it wasn’t even all that hot. No one could ask for any better. But then his sweetie-pie Chao appeared above him, a beer bottle in one small hand, and it automatically became ten times better.
“Hey,” she said, while scanning the horizon. Luca took the opportunity to drop his sunglasses and do some very obvious ogling of her slim body, clad in a green bikini. The color looked stunning against her brown skin.
He grinned up at her as he pushed his sunglasses back up. “Hey there yourself, you sexy thing, you.” There had been plenty of public speculation about the pair’s extracurricular exploits during the Rithro’s repair-and-refuel expedition, but as far as Luca was concerned such talk could remain as mere speculation. He was happy, and from what he could gather Chao was happy. The latter was the most important thing, of course. “I don’t suppose you have another beer for me?”
“I don’t, sorry.” Her eyes remained remote as she scanned the distant blue waves. Somewhere, a seagull gave out a caw of protest at having to witness such a gorgeous display of nature. Nearby, another purpose-built and much larger beach-side lounge chair which held the giant figure of Takh and the much-smaller figure of Corporal McCoy. The distant pair snuggled together in a way that made Martinez feel a bit jealous.
But he was more worried about her neutral manner. He sat up. “Aw, c’mon. The extended-family shindig went fine. What’s wrong?”
Chao looked down at him with a thoughtful stare in her eyes. “What are we to each other, Luca?”
“We?” He looked around on instinct, wondering if some paparazzi had planted a camera to catch them in the midst of a heart-to-heart. “We’re together, baby. Hey, don’t worry, Mama Martinez didn’t raise no quitters. Things are going great between us, and I mean, you and I…we’re ride or die.”
She seated herself next to the lounge. “Ride or die? I will hold you to that.”
“Absolutely!” He sat up, ignoring the protesting creak from the wood slats beneath him due to their combined weight. “Not to mention, your whole family has been great. This whole visit has been perfect!”
Chao grinned at him in that way, one which let him know that Shenanigans Were Incoming. “Perfect, you say?”
“Absolutely!” He drained the last of his beer. “They threw us one hell of a party, that’s for damned sure.”
“There is a problem with that, my dear Luca.”
He thought carefully through what he’d just said. There didn’t seem to be any verbal landmines in his previous declarations. “Um, what’s that?”
“Weeeeell, if this is perfection then how can we have anything better in the future? There’s no reason to go on, if this is as good as it gets.”
“Um…” was all he got out, before she up-ended her bottle and poured a generous dollop of beer onto his head.
Amidst his outraged spluttering, she smiled. “There. Now it’s not a perfect vacation anymore. Therefore, we can do a lot more of them after this one.”
He glared at her while beer ran down and around both of his substantial eyebrows. “You are a seriously weird person, you know that?”
“Takes one to know one,” Chao replied.
They both stared at each other, then both burst out laughing at the same time. That was right before they tackled each other into an embrace. The lounge-chair let out another protesting squeak, but neither of them paid it any mind.
__________
Takh and McCoy watched from afar in bemused wonder as the laughing pair rolled around on the lounge.
“We could do that too, you know,” said Takh softly.
The corporal snorted. “What, and break the chair? I’ll get sand all up into my butt.” She leaned over and smooched one of his mandibles. “We wouldn’t want that, would we? Unless that’s some weird alien fetish that you’re into, in which case I’m open to negotiation.”
Just as she’d hoped, the declaration made her giant lover all flustered. “I mean, well, I didn’t mean it like that, of course. I was just saying, you know, if you wanted to cuddle…”
She flipped herself on top and pounced onto him right in the middle of his awkward declaration. It was what drove her mad about him, in the best way. He could break her in two with the merest snap of his fingers, but he was suuuch a glorious dork that she could wrap him around her pinky-finger. It was a wonderful combination…not that she would abuse such a mighty power, of course. Well, she might abuse her make-the-boyfriend-stammer-power just a little bit. As a treat for him. Just to make him feel better.
Takh stayed utterly still, in obvious bliss, whilst she performed the resulting love-bomb kissing of every bit of his interesting, wonderful, mandibled face. Then she leaned down and sank into his equally wonderful and alien four-limbed embrace. “We can cuddle just like this, anytime you want. Or try anything else, anytime you want to. All you need to do is ask me.”
He hugged her tighter to himself. “I know. I guess…well, I do have really good hearing, you know…”
She snuggled herself tighter into him. “Go ahead.”
“I mean, Chao asked Martinez what they were to each other. I should ask the same. What are we, to each other?”
“Right now?” She stroked one hand along his taut, leathery stomach. “Right now we’re serious. How serious is up to the both of us. I’m gonna be frank, this is not my first rodeo. But I gotta say, you are doing much better at being cool and all compared to my last long-term boyfriend. I just want…I want you to know one thing.”
She looked up at him, and he met her eyes. His face was so strange, so different from her own, and yet she could read his worried expression without trouble.
“This is not some kind of weird fetish on my part,” she said. “I like…no, fuck all that wishy-washy nonsense, I love you, Takh. Hell, there I said it. I’m in this for the duration. And it isn’t because I’m just chasing after some alien strange. I hope that’s the same for you. I mean, I don’t know how your society works, if you’re expected to have a girl in every port, you know?”
Takh let out a gravelly, clicking laugh. “Haley…I’m an executive officer in the Coalition Exploration Bureau.”
Upon her uncomprehending head-tilt, he explained further. “Nobody in my position expects to be part of a family, or to have lasting intimate connections. We in the CEB go out, out so very far into the Deep Black. It’s our duty. We have to go out, but we’re not expected to come back. If we do survive, that’s all well and good. But most of the time…Haley. I did not anticipate any of this, certainly not at this stage in my life. But here we are, the both of us. I want you, and apparently by some miracle you want me as well. I could not have asked for more. Thanks to you I’m…remembering who I used to be. You ground me, in the very best of ways.”
She hugged him tighter. “Okay. That’s exactly what I needed to hear. Now, then, speaking of grounding, you big and oh so very lovable dork, let’s see howzabout just how much sand you can get up into my buuuuUAAAHHOLYSHIT…”
Takh dal P’tama tackled McCoy over the side of their over-sized lounge-chair and into the white sand, just as the surf started to roll in towards them.
In the end, neither McCoy nor Takh cared about how much sand wound up in their various bits, as they were having far too much fun in the midst of ravishing each other. Overall, it was a very successful holiday for the four of them.