Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Matthews was old, maybe in his forties, but he looked like the kind of CO you could trust. Gray hair cut very short, pale blue eyes. That the other five soldiers were Rangers put Leo at a disadvantage, but he didn’t detect any condescension from Matthews. Only—why was the CO wearing glasses? Eyesight had to be lens-free to qualify for the Seventy-Fifth.

Owen didn’t look at Leo, and Leo didn’t try to catch his eye. Lieutenant Lamont was second in command here. Leo didn’t look at Specialist Zoe Berman, either, having been told not to, but he’d had a glimpse anyway—wow. Flores and Kandiss, like everybody else, were expressionless.

Where were the Navy guys? At the other meeting, probably, which raised some questions. Who was in charge of this mission, Army or Navy?

Matthews said, “This is an informal briefing to supplement what you’ve already been told, so feel free to ask questions. Our mission here is to guard and defend this ship and everyone on it. Because this is a diplomatic mission, ultimate authority rests with Ambassador Gonzalez, whose orders you will obey without question.”

That answers that.

“The captain of this vessel, Captain Lewis, has final say over everything connected with the ship while we are in space. Once we are on the ground, command reverts to me unless and until we return to space. If Captain Lewis is incapacitated in space, his executive officer, Ms. Fielding, is in charge. If both are incapacitated, then command reverts to me, not to the other Navy personnel aboard. Is everyone clear on the chain of command?”

“Yes, sir!” from five throats.

“If I am incapacitated—”

Leo listened, but he wasn’t perturbed. Such talk was just the sort of thing the Army, especially Rangers, did: anticipate trouble. This was a trade mission to a friendly planet. Their main job was to guard the diplomats and scientists against any stray crazy, defuse any situation like that without killing anybody if they could help it, and look impressive in dress uniform.

Although—why Rangers, then, instead of the usual Marine honor guard for diplomats? Rangers were a direct-action special operations raid force. And why a crack marksman taking up one valuable berth that could have been used for another scientist or Washington bigwig?

Leo didn’t think he was going to get answers to any of that, but he couldn’t help mulling over the questions. What the hell sort of trouble was expected on Kindred?

“We do not, of course, anticipate any trouble,” Maria Gonzalez said. She stood at the front of the common room, the most spacious area on the Friendship , addressing the twelve people in easy chairs or seated around the small tables. Two Navy personnel, Executive Officer Anna Fielding and crewman Robert Ritter, were on the bridge, although Marianne couldn’t imagine what they were doing there, since the ship pretty much flew itself and no one, including Engineer Volker, understood how. Maybe the Navy personnel were talking to Earth while they still could. The Army people were holding their own briefing.

Ambassador Gonzalez was forty-nine, a tall and elegant woman with black hair worn in a chignon. As the first-ever ambassadorial appointee to another planet, she carried enormous responsibility to make the mission go well, which she bore without apparent anxiety or doubt. The woman radiated a confidence that Marianne envied.

“If I repeat information you already know, please forgive me,” Gonzalez said. Her smile was charming, if a little practiced. “We don’t know much about how this ship functions, but our Kindred cousins”—a carefully chosen term, Marianne guessed, to remind everyone that the Kindred were human—“have shared their own experience with their ship. The star drive bequeathed to them—and now to us!—is best pictured with space as a piece of cloth. A handkerchief, perhaps. We are at one corner. The drive ‘folds up’ space until we touch the opposite corner, unfolds, and there we are. The Kindred said that about a week passed aboard ship while this metaphorical folding occurred, although when they sent their first ship—because as you all know, they had built two—and went to their ill-fated colony planet, the folding took only a few hours. So it does seem dependent on distance.”

Marianne was not used to people who spoke in such long, grammatically correct sentences with so many dependent clauses, varied with punchier short sentences. Admirable, if slightly theatrical. Gonzalez was a pro.

“We thus expect to be in space for two weeks, although supplies have been brought for three months. We cannot, of course, eat the food on Kindred; our microbes are not adapted for it. The plan is two weeks of travel, a month on Kindred, two weeks back. During the journey out, you will have a last chance to learn or improve your knowledge of the language. The screens in your quarters, and we do apologize for the small size of the accommodations, can access voice lessons in Kindese, accompanied by English transliterations as best as we can produce. Just as a reminder: A caret in the middle of a word indicates a rising inflection, and an upside-down exclamation point a tongue click, like this.”

The ambassador clicked. Marianne, who had no aptitude for languages, had pretty much failed at learning Kindese. Her tongue click sounded like she needed the Heimlich maneuver.

“On Kindred,” the ambassador continued, “the scientists will have opportunities to interact with their counterparts, and the diplomatic corps will establish what I’m sure will be a long, mutually beneficial interstellar relationship with the government on Kindred. Which, of course, is made much simpler by the fact that there is only one!”

Obliging laughter. Gonzalez smiled engagingly. She was known for her abrupt switches from formal speech to the unexpected joke, the slang phrase in the right place. The media loved her.

Gonzalez waved her hand and said, “Piece of cake.”

“We don’t know what to expect on Kindred,” Colonel Matthews said. “The plan is two weeks of transport, a month of occupation, two weeks’ transport back. The natives could be friendly, but they don’t know we’re coming, and there is always the possibility they won’t like it. At destination, the shuttle will convey rotating parties of five to the surface; one will remain on watch aboard unless otherwise informed. At the end of the meeting, Lieutenant Lamont will go over the various possible incident scenarios we’ve anticipated, with our responses. Contingencies include crowd riots, kidnapping, extraction scenarios, terrorist operations, outright military attack, infiltration of the ship or our Ranger base, and/or emergency evacuation of all personnel.

“Basically, all of us need to be ready for anything at all times.”

Captain Alan Lewis now spoke. Marianne recognized him, of course—he was the famous astronaut who had saved the lives of two Chinese and one French astronauts at the ISS. Appointing him commander of the Friendship was a PR stroke of genius. Everyone but the Russians liked him; the Russians didn’t like anybody. But the Russian spaceship, like the original American one, had been the target of domestic terrorism by the widespread, dangerous extremists who wanted no contact with Kindred because they held the Kindred responsible for the spore cloud. Which made no sense, but then, when did extremism ever make sense? Marianne was just glad that the Russian ship no longer existed. She had already tangled with it once.

Lewis had the same easy charm as Gonzalez—was that desirable in a ship’s captain? Marianne didn’t know. Certainly he looked the part, a handsome African-American in dress whites.