Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

He grinned as his crew took their places. “Open hailing frequencies,” he ordered. “I want to speak to Shadow Warrior .”

It was nearly two minutes before Steve’s holographic face appeared in front of him. “Kevin,” he said. “Are you ready to depart?”

“Yes,” Kevin said, flatly. A week of intensive effort had left them all exhausted, but they would have a month to recover while the starship was in transit. According to the databanks, the risk of interception was very low. “We’ve said our last goodbyes, written our last letters… we’re ready, sir.”

He sobered. Never, not since radio had been invented, had a human crew been so far out of touch. Sailing in a wooden ship had run the risk of simply never being seen again, but modern technology had removed most of those risks, even as it made it possible for politicians and bureaucrats to peer over the ship’s commander’s shoulder. It was quite possible, he knew, that Captain Perry could set out on her epic voyage and never be seen again. There were pirates out there as well as interstellar terrorists and great powers waging outright war against their opponents.

Perhaps Steve had the same thought. “Good luck, Kevin,” he said. “If you don’t come back we’ll all be very upset.”

Kevin had to smile. Where Steve had set out to build a new society, Kevin might well have taken the starship and vanished out into interstellar space. There was a whole galaxy waiting for the human race, after all. But he wouldn’t be tempted to take Captain Perry on a long voyage of exploration. They needed to collect information and return it to Earth. If they failed, unlocking the secrets of alien technology might take longer than Earth had .

“We will,” he promised. “Or die trying.”

He took a long breath. “Give my love to Mongo and the others,” he added. “Goodbye.”

Steve raised his hand in salute. A moment later, his image vanished completely.

“Prepare the drive,” Kevin ordered.

“The drive is online and ready to go,” Jackson reported. “All systems appear to be in optimal working order.”

Kevin wasn’t surprised. The Horde’s concept of basic maintenance was terrifying — he had a feeling that they lost at least one or two ships a year — but at least they’d stockpiled a reasonable amount of spare parts. Guided by the interface, the human crew had carefully replaced everything that had been threatening to break and then sent the damaged components to Heinlein Colony. Some of them, he hoped, would be duplicable by human technology.

“Good,” he said. He braced himself. “Engage!”

He hadn’t been sure what to expect when the FTL drive activated. Some races suffered badly, according to the databanks, and needed to be sedated or held in stasis for the entire trip. Others seemed to find it exciting or felt nothing. Kevin… felt a flicker of unreality for a long moment, followed by a strange kind of queasiness. And then everything seemed to return to normal.

But the display were black, showing the unblinking nothingness of FTL.

“We are currently heading away from Earth at several times the speed of light,” Jackson said, in hushed tones. “No man has ever been this far from Earth.”

“No human-crewed starship,” Kevin corrected. Aliens had taken quite a few samples from Earth over the years. God alone knew what had happened to their descendents. Some would have been turned into mind-burned cyborgs, but the others? Were there brothers of mankind out among the stars? “But we will not be the last.”

He settled back into the command chair. “We will run drills for the first half of every day,” he added. “And then we will spend the rest of our time researching the galaxy.”

The next two weeks fell into a pattern. They ran emergency drills every day, learning more and more about the sheer variety of threats in the galaxy, then researched the vast datafiles on the starship. Kevin was used to the interface by now, but even he found it hard to keep track of everything it had to show the human users. And then there were the little hints they found that might just suggest ways to duplicate alien technology. The official files might be long on elaborate superlatives and short on details, but there were plenty of hints elsewhere. But could they be turned into working technology?

It was astonishing just how used they became to flying through space in an alien starship. Boredom started to sink in rapidly after the first week, followed by a form of claustrophobia as the researchers realised that they were truly cut off from Earth. They could no longer email their friends and research partners, nor could they go elsewhere if they wanted a break from their work. Jackson, who admitted that half the trainee submariners felt the same way too, organised an endless round of games and contests to keep everyone distracted. On a submarine, he pointed out, there were far fewer distractions.

Kevin privately understood. Anything could be happening, back on Earth. The Horde could have attacked again, he knew, or terrorists could have successfully struck at Heinlein Colony or one of the recruiting centres on Earth. There were just too many people volunteering to go to the moon for them all to be screened, even with alien lie detection technology. All they could really do was make sure that no one who hadn’t been properly screened got access to the starships or other pieces of alien technology. But his understanding didn’t make it any easier to bear.

He spent a surprising amount of time talking to the alien. Cn!lss, once he’d overcome his slight fear of the utterly inhuman alien, was a strange conversationalist. On one hand, he seemed quite willing to share everything he knew with his human captors. But on the other hand, there were large gaps in his knowledge that seemed utterly implausible. If Kevin hadn’t studied the records on the Horde so carefully, he would have assumed the Hordesman was keeping something from him. But ignorance of the greater galaxy seemed to be part of their worldview.

“The world we’re visiting will not twitch a claw at your presence,” Cn!lss assured him. “They are used to visitors who do not wish to share anything of themselves with strangers.”

Kevin nodded. He’d given serious thought to wearing something that completely covered their forms, but it seemed pointless. The human race wasn’t that different to several other galactic races, including some who looked almost identical as long as they didn’t remove their clothes. They’d be likely to be mistaken for one of those races, Cn!lss assured him, provided they didn’t undergo a medical examination. That would have revealed their humanity beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“You have contacts,” he said, softly. “People we can talk to?”

“Quite a few who do business with the Hordes,” Cn!lss said. “They will sell to anyone, provided the price is right.”

“How very human,” Kevin muttered.

He sighed. It looked very much as though they would have to hire a local to help them sell their wares, giving the local a chance to cheat them out of half of their profits. If, of course, there were any profits. He couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if their produce turned out to be completely worthless. Or, for that matter, if they were simply cheated so badly they wound up with nothing. It seemed alarmingly possible.

The thought still nagged at him as he walked into the research lab and met Carolyn. His half-hearted attempts to lure her into bed had failed, but she seemed friendly enough. Kevin had sighed and given up, more or less. Maybe she was just worried about bedding her ultimate superior on the starship.

“I think we have a rough idea of just how the alien drive works,” she told him, as she took her eyes off the screen. “It actually folds space around it, allowing the starship to cross large volumes of space almost instantly. Or at least we think that’s what it does.”