Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1) Read online

  Accept? I knew what the captain would say. “Yes! Thank you lots!” The shifting of blond-haired Bjorg on the outer edge of the crowd of humans made me smile. “I am sure Doctor Bjorg and Doctor Murphy will appreciate having a device that can so quickly translate the words of other star travelers!”

  Bjorg smiled, then gave me a nod of appreciation. Cassie frowned thoughtfully, but gave me a thumbs-up.

  Hatsepsit sighed low. “The Empire device does more than translate acoustic sounds. If a star traveling race speaks by way of pheromones, or skin color changes, or even gestures from digits, it can convert that communication mode to your . . . your English.” She stepped back as three large female Melanchon ran up from the other side of the meadow. “Now comes Mokladeen’s Mother and her family Mothers. Let us leave them to their reunion.” The boss orang turned and gestured at a tree on the other side of the meadow. A wooden platform sat across its limbs, maybe ten feet above the ground.

  “Will you join me in drinking an intoxicant made from our melong fruit balls?” she said. “It is a favorite drink of mine.”

  “Sure!” yelled Warren.

  “A fine idea,” Owanju murmured.

  “Let’s go,” Morales said, giving me a happy look and a nod to follow her and the others.

  I stepped out of the six inch deep holes my tennies had dug into the soil as I held up the giant limb. It felt good to walk normal again. It felt good to feel a breeze on my face. Most of all, it felt very good to see Mokladeen’s Mother sweep her daughter out of Leksatok’s big arms and into her own arms. A mother reunited with her child had always been an image I enjoyed seeing. Both at home in Castel Rock, in Chicago while on weekend leave and on the orbital station before we left Earth orbit. It felt good to see the love of a parent for a child. The gift was nice. Better was knowing I had done good.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Now will you believe you are a hero? Again!” said Warren from across the table.

  “Bilge water.”

  “Nate, that was amazing what you did,” Oksana said. She spread her arms wide in emphasis. “That limb weighed a ton, 2,000 pounds. No Olympic weightlifter has ever lifted anything close to that!”

  I closed my eyes, shutting out my friends seated at our table in the Mess Hall. But my ears heard their breathing, their rustling, the low voices of people fifty feet away at the line and staff officers table, the arguing at the NCO and Spacers table, debates on weapons at the Marine table, the hiss of steam cookers attended by the cooks, the clatter of dirty dishes being dumped into the autocleaner, and the entry and exit of many feet as First Shift people came in for lunch, or exited after eating. The smells of seventy other humans also hit me, but not as strongly as hearing every word every person said, if I concentrated on a little bit.

  “I never asked to be born different.”

  “But you were. And are different,” murmured Evelyn from the far side of the table. “That difference saved a life. Feel good about that.”

  I opened my eyes and looked across the table to our redhead from Ireland. Dressed like most of us in blue and gray camos, her freckles were pale but very visible. As were her brown eyes, which watched me closely. Her expression was engaged, almost eager. As were the looks of Oksana and Warren who sat on either side of her. To my left and right sat Bill and Cassandra. Six at the table versus our usual five made it a bit crowded. Food platters sat in the middle of the table, along with pitchers of tea, juice, water and beer. I didn’t feel hungry. Instead, I felt too much the center of attention. My recorder tablet and those of my friends had yielded video of my rescue of Mokladeen. That video had been seen by everyone from the captain down to the lowest cleanup mate. Now, a day after leaving Kepler 22 and our Melanchon friends, any time someone passed me in a hallway they always looked at me weird, as if wondering if I was safe to be around. Or so I thought. That reaction to me being different than other folks was one big reason I had not won any track and field races at Great Lakes, nor blabbed about my super eyesight and hearing. It was hard enough being a country boy fresh from a ranch and new to the big city of Chicago. I did not need more reason for my fellow A-school classmates to treat me different. Now, on this ship, everyone knew what the captain and his XO had figured out. Damn.

  “Yeah, I’m glad I could save that little girl.” I shrugged, then leaned forward and planted my elbows on the cold metal of the table. I glanced around at my friends. “But any of you would have done what I did. Most any Spacer or officer on the Star Glory would have tried to save her. I was just the closest to her. No big deal.”

  “Bullshit,” muttered Bill from my left. “Yes, you were closest. The rest of us were ten meters or more away with Hatsepsit and the other red furballs.” He leaned forward. “But like the major said, you moved like a blur. I know. When I heard the crack of the limb breaking off, I glanced back, worried that you might be in danger. Instead, I saw you moving so fast your legs and arms were a blur. You covered thirty feet in way less than a second. I know. I watched. Then you reached up and caught that big bastard limb with both hands.” He sighed. “Never seen the like of that, even on the A4E sports channels.”

  “Nate,” said Cassie from my right. “Bill’s right. I looked it up on my tablet. The biggest weight ever lifted by any human, male or female, was 263 kilos in the Olympic snatch and grab of 2004. By the Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh. Which equals 580 pounds.” She shook her head. “But you held up a limb that weighed a ton! That’s two thousand pounds or 900 kilos. No one has ever lifted that kind of weight, let alone held it up!”

  Her praise touched me. I just wished it came from wanting me close to her, rather than admiring me. Instead, she had analyzed my instinctive effort. As had Oksana. The only woman here who looked at me with other than admiration was Evelyn. Who was ten years my senior and a super geek in evolutionary biology. Her look was appraising and thoughtful, with a lift of her lips as if she wanted to try something with me. Something that did not involve brain power. This was too much. Time to change the subject.

  “Anyone got any idea how the Empire ships hide their neutrino emissions from detection?”

  “Well,” said Cassie, looking deeply thoughtful. “One of my physics friends speculated that maybe the Empire encloses their ships in a field that translates their neutrino, infrared, ultraviolet and other emissions into an adjacent dimension. Kind of the way we talk FTL with other ships by sending our neutrino comsignals through an alternate dimension.”

  “Otherwise known as stealth,” muttered Bill. “But I was struck how all their females are bigger and bulkier than the males. The reverse of us humans. Why is that?”

  “It’s actually rather normal in the animal world,” Evelyn said, looking away from me to my friend. “Early this century a scientist named Daphne Fairbairn wrote about that. Females are the larger sex in most reptiles, most amphibians and fishes, and in most insects and spiders. In her study of 49 animal classes, she found 86 percent of the females to be larger than males.” She held up a slim white finger. “While humans conform to the pattern among mammals and birds of the male being larger than the female, this is the exception rather than the rule. In general, animal males are small and quick, while females are often robust and several times larger than the male.” She smiled, nodding to Bill, Warren and me. “You guys, on average, are only 8 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than human females. And some Marine females can beat the crap out of some Spacer guys!”

  Great. Ask a geek a question and get a seminar lecture. “Evelyn, does that pattern also exist on our 12 colony worlds? Among the native animals?”

  She looked my way. Her expression went to musing. It was clear she knew I was trying to divert her from her focus on me. “On the colony worlds there are flyer, crawler and swimmer animals in the air, land and seas of those worlds. And yes, the pattern of females being larger than males exists there too.” She gave me a sexy grin. “Myself, I happen to like larger males. Major Owanju is too large for my taste. But you, Nathan,
are about the right size.” Her grin got bigger.

  Laughter came from Cassie, Oksana, Bill and Warren.

  “My oh my, Nate, it sounds like you have a new admirer,” teased Oksana, her blond ponytail swinging as she shook her head.

  My Intel friend had a grin on her face too. Damn. Why did all the females at this table see me as easy meat for teasing?

  “I also like smart men who are willing to share their emotions,” Evelyn said, looking past Warren to Cassie. “Cassandra, what kind of guys do you like to hang with? Or have fun with?”

  I gulped. Then I licked my lips. To shield my intense interest in what my math tutor might say I reached out and grabbed a mug and the beer pitcher. I poured beer into the mug, handed it over to Bill, pushed a second mug over to Warren and filled a third mug for myself. As I sipped its coolness, Cassie looked at me with raised eyebrows as if to say “Don’t I get a beer too?” Then she looked to our redhead.

  “Evelyn, I like smart guys with good manners. But I signed up for this cruise to get exobiology experience enough to apply for a professorship at Stanford. I aim to be the department chief in ten years. Or less.” She shrugged her trim shoulders. “Smart men are fine for a dance or a few drinks at a pub. But romance is not on my radar.”

  “Too bad,” the evolutionary biologist geek said softly. She looked to her right. “Oksana, the same question to you. I’m curious since you and Cassandra hang with three guys who are a bit . . . out of the norm for dating prospects.”

  Oksana frowned. “These guys are my friends. They’re smart too. And they show respect for what I know that they don’t know. Plus they are outside of my chain of command. Which makes it easier to enjoy their company. What about you, Miz full-figured gal?”

  Evelyn looked surprised at the reference to her bare-skin appearance during the decontam shower on the Melanchon ship. Then she sat back, looked from Oksana to Bill to me to Cassandra and ending up with Warren. Whose strongly muscled arms she stared at a moment, before returning to my friend. “Oksana, I’m a civilian. I’m not in anyone’s chain of command. Which gives me lots of options on this ship.” She grinned. “While there is close to 50-50 gender balance on the Star Glory, well, hey, I can appreciate a hot gal as much as a hot guy.” She shrugged her shapely shoulders. “At the orbital station I did not wait for a guy to ask me out. Or a hot gal. I asked them. Though the names must remain confidential, I did not lack for intimacy on the station.” She sighed. “Though here on the Star Glory folks do seem a bit focused on rank and chain of command. And since I am not Star Navy of any rank, I think some folks here overlook me when romance enters their mind.” Evelyn turned and stared directly at me. “Nathan, do you overlook me?”

  Damn. Double damn. And worse. “Evelyn, I think you are as beautiful as Oksana and Cassandra. And I liked working with you on the Melanchon ship.” I grabbed a mug and poured a beer. “Here’s a beer for you.” I then poured mugs of beer for Cassie and Oksana, pushing the mugs to them. I lifted my mug. “A toast to the Melanchon, our new member of the NATO of the Stars!”

  Evelyn lifted her mug. “Yes indeed, hail to the Melanchon. Who gave us the location of the pirate base we now head for. And who gave Nathan that nifty translator box and shoulder tubes.” She grinned big. “I like being able to be hot in any language!”

  I blinked, then did my best to swallow the entire mug of beer. Discovering that Evelyn had the hots for me was nice. Even if it happened in front of the woman I secretly desired, and the rest of my friends. Who were all drinking the cool tasty beer. I should have known my effort to change the subject, in front of three smart and capable women, would not work. These ladies might be shorter than me, but they sure as hell were as fast on the neuron think-crunching as me. Or faster. Well, we still had to eat our lunch. Maybe that would shield me from being the center of attention.

  “Hey, anyone want some sushi rolls?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Later that day, at the end of Second Watch, I picked tomatoes from one of the long lines of vines in the roomy spaces of Lieutenant Morales’ Farm Deck. The woman who had led our trip to the Melanchon ship was nearby, planting seeds of fruit shrubs given her by the Melanchon folks. In the distance, her regular crew of Spacers and two POs pulled fruit from the cherry, apple, peach and plum trees that grew at the edge of the wheat and rice fields that filled most of the deck. While I would have preferred to have spent my free time in the Forest Room, on the opposite side of the deck, helping Morales had seemed like a good way to spend part of my Second Watch break time. Now, as the gong sounded overhead to alert people to the change to Third Watch, I stood up, a woven basket full of tomatoes in my arms. The basket was one of the other gifts of the Melanchon orang-beings. I headed for the floater carton that sat on a metal bench near the gravlift shaft tube.

  “Nathan!” called Morales from behind me. “Thanks for your help! The Mess Hall has been grousing about all the fruit we gave the Melanchon. Getting them that floater carton of veggies should appease them.”

  I stopped, turned and nodded to her. “Lieutenant, glad to help. But it’s time for me to hit my cabin and get some sleep. Should I pull the floater carton with me to the Mess Hall? It’s just a deck below Residential.”

  The mother of two girls and a son gave me a big, engaging smile as she stood up from her seed planting. Her camos were caked with brown dirt and her short black curls were stuck to her forehead, thanks to the sweat that came from laboring under the deck’s overhead lights. It might be night by ship hours but the plants on Farm Deck had yet to enter their dusk phase. She waved a dark brown hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “No need. I’ll have one of the Spacers in the orchard take it up when dusk lighting comes on.” She gave me a wink. “You need to get your beauty rest for Evelyn. Or so I hear.”

  I blushed. Or at least I thought I did. Evelyn had indeed ambushed me after lunch. We had spent a good part of Second Watch in her quarters up on Science Deck. She was a great lover who taught me a few things I had yet to learn about female sensuality. Now it seemed our lunch time chatter had made its way to the shapely ears of Gladys Morales. Middle-aged she might be. Married and the mother of three she was. But she definitely knew how to stay well-informed.

  “Well, uh, yeah, I need some rest,” I said lamely, turning and dumping my basket of tomatoes into the floater carton. The thing was two feet high, two feet wide and four feet long. It was already filled with balls of green lettuce, cucumbers, asparagus spears, heads of broccoli, bags of shelled peas and a dozen other veggies that I recognized from past meals. There were even a few yellow fruit balls from the Melanchon trees. That surprised me. The fruit balls were few in number and we had no melong trees to grow more. Clearly Gladys had decided to share some unique fruit with the Mess Hall cooks as a make-up gesture for grabbing two floater cartons of Earth fruit for our trip over. I headed back to the woman who kept us all fed on real fruit, veggies and mobile meat like chickens and goats, which I could hear jawing at each other from their corrals off to the right. Behind me the gravlift shaft door whooshed open. Someone else had arrived. Which put an end to our friendly informality. I dropped the basket at the end of the row of tomato vines. “Lieutenant, see you—”

  “Cow killer! Get over here!” came a loud yell from behind me.

  Nehru. I knew that voice like the back of my hand. Or my dirt encrusted shoes. Putting aside a wish to stick a shoe up the man’s bum, I nodded to Gladys. “Lieutenant, hope your seeds sprout nicely. Guess it’s time—”

  “Stewart!” came a second yell.

  There was no way to further ignore the bastard. I turned, saw the native of Mumbai, now wearing his Second Shift uniform of Service Khakis, and saluted him.

  “Sir!”

  The man looked to Gladys who had stepped closer to me. Then he fixed on me. “You ignored my order! That is disobedience to an officer. I will report you—”

  “Sir,” I interrupted, keeping my right hand lifted in the salute. “I responded w
hen I heard my name called. Anyone calling me by name or rank or both will gain my quick attention. Sir.” I walked toward him, stopping a meter away. I lowered my hand. “You called, sir?”

  The dark-skinned native of India frowned like a thundercloud. His thick black eyebrows almost joined. His black mustache lifted. His dark brown lips opened.

  “Yes I did! Twice!” The man had a head of steam, that was for sure. Why, I had no idea. The boss of Second Watch must have flown down here from the Bridge in order to get here so quickly after the end of his watch. He turned to the floater carton. Walking over to it, he reached out and switched off the gravlift controls. No sound came but the ready light up near one corner went from green to red. “Pick that up! It’s broken. And follow me to the Mess Hall. Your betters need food that is not from dead animals!”

  I gave a sigh. Then I walked over to the carton. I reached to turn on the floater gravlift control.

  “It’s broken I said!” Nehru growled. “Lift that carton now! Or I will report you for disobeying a direct order during a time of war!”

  Now it became clear. The man was more than his normal upset at me cause I ate beef and had raised cattle on my family’s ranch. For whatever reason, the man wanted me in the brig, if he could arrange it.

  “Sir, yes sir!” I said, stepping over to the floater carton. Reaching down to its bottom with my left hand, I put my right hand on the carton’s top edge. Then I lifted it, swinging it to rest on my left shoulder. It was heavy. Maybe 400 pounds. But it weighed less than what I had held when I carried Bill and Warren away from the MPs. I met his brown eyes. “Sir, I have done as you ordered. What are your further orders?”