Disclaimer, Credits & Summary: see Prologue


BENEATH THE SHADOW OF HIS WINGS

Chapter 1 - Interesting Times


The sprawling dockyards that kept Taisuke Technologies at the forefront of 
spacecraft design and manufacture encapsulated this entire planetoid, all 
its satellites and several purpose-built orbital stations. They 
were...humongous.

But a scale that was awesomely colossal from the comfortable viewing deck 
of a tourist shuttle rapidly became annoyingly gargantuan when your only 
propellant was your own bipedal physiology. Gage was now a good half hour 
into an undignified semi-trot across endless acres of plasticrete and it was 
getting old, fast.

Where were they for crying out loud? Was he seriously going to have to half-
canter around the entire planetoid like the lost half of a Pantomime horse 
to find...? Ah...the invisible psychic tug of his Sentinel suddenly came to life; 
finally.

Having already been hugging the shadows cast by the massive spacecraft 
'parked' around him, Gage moved deeper into the darkness towards the 
group of people he could see standing sheltered from view underneath the 
bulk of a partially constructed supercargo's hull. 

He approached them and did not bother to censor the derisive snort as his 
friends all looked like they'd been taking a Master class in Anxiety 101. 
"Why do I feel this urge to quote the opening lines of The Scottish Play?"1 

His best friend Trey Logan huffed a soft chuckle and Blair Sandburg grinned, 
but the others didn't - Saran van Den Mikhail, his own Sentinel Race Keegan, 
and Jim Ellison, the only living Dark Sentinel. Also present was IFP Navy 
Captain Daric Slater, commander of the USS Nimitz IV, and Brigadier Lincoln 
Jackson of the IFP Army, also a high level 'commander', real rank/title 
unknown, in the infamous Dark Angels organisation of smoke-and-mirrors.

If those latter two were present, and in full my-pet-gerbil-just-died mode 
too, then...Gage sighed aloud, "So, we are Going early?"

His capitalisation of the word was understood and though the rhetorical 
nature of the question had also been, they nodded - though more glumly 
than grimly.

"It's too risky to delay any longer else our bait-and-switch MO will be 
blown," Saran explained, "There have already been three sabotage 
attempts."

"Casualties?" Gage asked, his stomach flipping unpleasantly.

"None - so far," Brigadier Jackson qualified, "and admittedly the first two 
attempts weren't that malicious -"

"How can sabotage ever not be malicious?" Gage protested.

"There was no design to kill, injure or even destroy - equipment was 
interfered with simply to break down and delay the construction by naïve 
but sincere types." Jackson explained, "However the third sabotage 
attempt would have been a plasma bomb planted by a particularly rabidly 
fanatical splinter group of Humanity First."

Gage nodded sombrely, finding scant comfort in the 'would have been' 
which indicated the plot had been stopped.

"Unfortunately the racists - or speciests if you prefer - are bigoted but not 
stupid," commented Blair moodily, "and it only needs one particularly 
bright spark to notice how the USS Nimitz is still lurking in the corner 
instead of being routinely sent off as normal for him or her to tumble to our 
Cunning Plan."

Gage nodded in comprehension; the attempt to oust his control of the dig 
on Hyperion had shown that there was financial muscle backing some of the 
xenophobic - in the fullest extra-terrestrial sense of the word - groups 
around. Those types had surely been monitoring or trying to monitor the 
good guys, which was why everyone here had had to make their own way to 
this little rendezvous by a very surreptitiously circuitous and solitary route. 
All sorts of bells and whistles would have gone off if Race and Gage, or Jim 
and Blair or Saran and Trey had dropped off the radar together. 
Understandably, the separation from their guides had made the Sentinels 
very twitchy; even though Gage was standing right next to him now, Race 
was only slowly relaxing.

"How many days are we bringing the expedition launch forward?" Gage 
asked.

"Day after tomorrow." Jackson replied.

Gage spluttered, the archaeologist momentarily conquering Guide and, 
albeit fairly new, Dark Angel operative, "What?"

"It's that serious, Gage," Trey put in.

Instantly Gage sobered at the slight tremor Trey was not entirely able to 
eradicate from his voice. It signalled deep worry on Trey's part, and was 
doubtless responsible for Saran-the-human-iceberg's especially homicidal 
aura. Involuntarily, Gage's eyes flickered up in a subconscious, futile 
attempt to see through the hull of the sheltering supercargo. High above, 
floating in space surrounded by work shuttles and construction cradles like a 
queen bee tended by workers, was the virtually complete hulk of the USS 
Intrepid. 

It had been designed and constructed using the latest alloys and components 
and would be finished off with internal systems so state-of-the-art they 
were still semi-fictional. The construction crews were just finishing off the 
décor and paintwork, and once those systems had been installed, the 
Intrepid would be ceremonially launched. 

Initially, spacecraft had been built like Lego or Meccano toys, starting at 
one end and working along or from the inside out, but when it came to 
building the truly massive ships like A-class liners, the massive military 
Battlestars or an A-Class Supercargo, which could only be constructed in 
space, the problem had become time. By the time the other end of the ship 
had been finished, sometimes months or even years later in the case of 
funding wrangles, the components fitted at the first end had been outdated 
or even obsolete altogether. Ships ended up with fantastic engines 
harnessed to outmoded control systems, or all-singing-all-dancing control 
consoles lumbered with ponderous mechanics. 

Taisuke Technologies - who else - had come up with the solution; ships had 
been completely constructed both inside and out down to carpets and 
wallpaper, and then internal operating systems such as life-support, engines 
and weaponry had been installed at the very end. Work crews crawling 
between inner and outer hulls and through service ducts with stern 
instructions not to scuff the paint or leave dirty great boot prints on the 
carpets didn't have as easy a task as fitting out an empty shell would have 
been, but such was outweighed by the greater advantage of ensuring the 
most modern systems were installed, rather than those that had been 
current when the ship's super-structure had been completed sometimes 
several years before.        

The Intrepid was the very latest from Taisuke Technologies and would take 
over from aging Nimitz IV as the IFP Flagship. It was half because of this 
that everyone and their mother was following the ship's construction 
progress by the hour and therefore knew its launch was imminent.  The 
other half of the reason for the grand public obsession was that it's - her - 
maiden voyage would be to lead the expedition put together to follow what 
Gage had discovered to be (or seemed to be) the aliens' "flight plan" away 
from known space, in order to, hopefully, catch up the aliens and make First 
Contact. 

Or so the Inhabited Galaxies in general thought.

The real plan, known only to...well...the eight people standing here and 
possibly a couple more, was that the USS Intrepid was a Judas goat, or the 
beautiful but scantily-clad magician's assistant who had everyone ogling her 
charms over here while the magician pulled the hidden lever over there. 
The First Contact expedition would be led by the USS Nimitz IV as that 
ship's swansong as the IFP Flagship. The Nimitz, carrying Race, Gage and 
the other most essential expedition personnel would leave Federation with 
no fanfare several days before the Intrepid was launched. The Intrepid and 
the lesser ships of the Expedition fleet would catch up to the Nimitz later 
and the public at large would be presented with a fait accompli. 

"What about getting folks on board the Nimitz without them realising they 
won't be getting off again for several months?" Gage enquired dryly. 

"We'll get what people we can to be on board on the day," Daric obligingly 
explained, "and just go. The rest will have to catch up on the Intrepid and 
the other ships."

"It's the best we can do," Brigadier Jackson admitted. "The Expedition fleet 
is just too large to give every ship in it the airtight security necessary for 
each, and so far we've been lucky that everyone's attention - whether 
enthusiast or disaffected - has been focussed on the Intrepid. But in line 
with what Blair has already said, all it needs is for the xenophobic 
contingent to decide to hedge their bets and attempt to do some sort of 
damage or sabotage to every ship in the fleet and some of them will slip 
through the net."

Gage shook his head, "I get it. Honestly, though I simply cannot understand 
the wilful idiocy of these people!"

"Your excavations handed everyone one hell of a shock," Blair pointed out 
to Gage. "Anthropologically speaking, humanity has always been rather too 
smug about our pre-eminent position as the universe's only sentient species. 
Only humans had art, culture and spirituality but now we're not unique any 
more. Even I find myself sulking a little about that."

"So it's my fault these raving lunatics exist?"

"Hardly," Blair contradicted, "That type of person will seize any excuse - 
just look at the Jacobins, the Nazis, the Radical Atheists and Islamists who 
made their foaming-mouthed dogma up out of thin air if they needed to. 
But its not just species culture, but species geography that has set everyone 
back by the ears."

"Geography?" Gage, as a xeno-archaeologist used to considering 'distance' 
on the scale of that between worlds rather than mere mileage, was thrown 
by this.

It was Daric Slater who cleared his throat, "It's the proximity of the aliens' 
worlds to Earth. In galactic terms, humans had aliens living at the bottom of 
the garden for who-knew-how-many aeons. It's inconceivable that 
occasionally they didn't pay a visit to the house."

"Which is just what the Pure Human League and others have latched onto." 
Jim Ellison's tone was redolent with disgust. "Your discovery that the aliens 
had Psi abilities - or at least telepathy - at the same time Kessler's vile 
empire was destroyed focussed attention squarely on empaths."

Saran added grimly, "The pure human contingent has seized on that as an 
example of how far the 'psi disease' has contaminated the pure human 
genome, and now they have further ammunition because they are claiming 
that Psi abilities are not naturally human at all but corrupting spores sown 
amongst weaker, more susceptible humans - our inferior stock - in some 
sinister alien plan to mutate humanity into telepathic alien slaves or wipe us 
out altogether."

"You're kidding?" groaned Gage at such drivel.

"I only wish," Brigadier Jackson sighed, "and I'm sure you will all see many 
repeats of the speech given by Roud Stokes of the Pure Human League, in 
which he actually declared that Psi abilities were bio-bombs secreted in the 
human genome by the evil aliens who would one day hit the detonator 
button and only pure-bred non-Psi humans would be saved from having their 
brains implode inside their skulls." 

There being no polite response to that one, Gage just shook his head 
incredulously. 

"There has also just been a new complication to add to the already 
unhappily large number of variables," Saran admitted. "In that sector of 
space, the Dalesian System borders the Sentrus System, the IFP and the 
Matriarchy System. With greatly inconsiderate timing, the Bey of the Sentrus 
System has managed to get himself killed, leaving two competing heirs to 
the throne." 

"Bey?" It was Brigadier Jackson that asked, going up yet another notch in 
the estimation of all present for the fact that despite his great rank and 
position in the Dark Angels, he was not a man too proud to ask questions 
and tacitly admit he didn't know everything.

"Equivalent to an emperor, more or less," Saran responded. 

"Why is that our problem?"  Race Keegan interpolated with faint 
exasperation.

"I have been formally requested to adjudicate the dispute." Saran 
admitted.

Jim, like Saran a Body Heir and thus familiar with the nuances, frowned at 
this, "Doesn't the Sentrus political system have a protocol for dealing with 
competing heirs?"

"This is the first time a Bey has died without a clear line of succession."

All present were aware of how literally cut-and-thrust life in the inner 
circle of power could be and several pairs of eyebrows raised up.

"How the Beys manage that?" Blair asked with interest. 

"A variety of circumstances including blind luck and pure chance," Saran 
shrugged elegantly, "not least of which was being Bey of the Sentrus System 
itself. The system consists of ten solar systems with several hospitable 
planets in each and a healthy smattering of ore, gem and mineral deposits, 
but it's all very average - nothing a warlord couldn't get more cheaply and 
with less effort from planets that are much militarily weaker or completely 
uninhabited. Even when the Sentrus System really was the far frontier of the 
Frontier Worlds way back when, it was considered boringly staid particularly 
in contrast to some of its wild, woolly and 'full-of-fleas/never curried below 
the knees' neighbours."

"So the Sentrus System Beys tended to die of grand old age at two-five-oh 
surrounded by fat great-great-grandchildren and have heirs already in 
mature middle-age at accession?" Blair rapidly summarised.

"More or less," acknowledged Saran. "To be honest, this death is hugely 
embarrassing for them. The current Bey was actually testing out one of 
those personal float-chairs, you know, like an airskiff-for-one? The Bey was 
sitting in the seat and either larking about with the controls or he misheard 
an aide's instructions - he hit the wrong command key and the float-chair 
promptly flipped 180° downwards and smashed his head with lethal force on 
the store's faux marble floor tiles - crushed his skull like it was eggshell in a 
split-second."     

"Why the IFP LEO High Commissioner?" Gage enquired at that point, more 
because he didn't want Saran dragging Trey into any danger whilst Gage 
would be too far away on the Nimitz looking for real-life Roswell Greys to 
help than overwhelming concern for Saran van Den Mikhail's health. The two 
men were still cordially receptive to each other rather than heartily 
welcoming. "What about the President...why involve the IFP at all?"

"Easy, for the past quarter-century the Sentrus System has been angling to 
become part of the IFP," Saran explained, "so instead of a straightforward 
assassination-bloodbath until the survivor gets the golden bauble, both 
interested parties are trying to be adult and civilised about it all. Of course, 
that complicates the issue because the President of the IFP would be seen 
to be having a vested interest in the outcome."
 
"If the President found in favour of the side most useful to the IFP, the 
losing party would howl stitch-up," Gage conceded, "and if the President 
found in favour of the other side, the losers would declare that the 
President was either a political weakling too scared to risk conflict or else a 
shallow self-server only interested in image over substance."

"In a nutshell," Saran acknowledged. "Since High House Syal is about the 
only member of the IFP Oligarchy that has no political or commercial 
interests in the Sentrus System, and since the LEO High Commissioner is 
legendarily neutral -"

- and since only a suicidal maniac would accuse Saran van Den Mikhail the 
Winter King of being anything other than completely impartial, Gage 
mentally inserted into the man's explanation -

"I was formally asked to sort out their mess. Since Sentrus borders Dalesia, 
given Dalesia's current...ah...instability, I deemed it prudent to agree. The 
power vacuum that existed - however briefly - until Alphonse de y l'Almonte 
made his granddaughter his Body Heir would have been very tempting to 
certain parties. We don't want to give the likes of the Eternal Empress of 
the Atewam Empire fanciful notions."

Nobody with any sanity wanted to give the flawlessly beautiful - and 
serenely sociopathic - Empress of the Atewam fanciful notions. Even as the 
latest in a long line of cheerfully homicidal mass-murderesses to occupy the 
Lion Throne of Atae the current 'Empress Atah'...the 29th or 30th incarnation, 
it was hard to keep track...tended to make her ancestresses look demure and 
restrained.

Saran was continuing to speak, "...the most problematic wrinkle of which is 
that the late Bey initiated the terraforming of Cent Rho IV last year."

Gage understood immediately, "Which his successor will control and benefit 
most from the large quantities of galacs generated in revenue."

"...Or possibly lumber him with a socio-politic and economic millstone round 
his neck," Brigadier Jackson put in. "Our man in the Dalesian System 
reported that he found indications the late Bey authorised the terraforming 
without knowing - or without bothering - that an astro-phen survey of the 
Cent Rho solar system had not been done."

"So if a wormhole nexus or a Franklin Fold turns up nearby to Cent Rho IV 
six months from now the golden goose instantly becomes a white elephant," 
Gage realised.

Trey's mouth compressed, "And if Saran chose in favour of the faction 
hostile to IFP membership there is no way the new and suddenly bankrupted 
Bey would ever believe that he didn't know it was there all along and the 
factions in the Senate who'd like to oust Saran in favour of a 
more...malleable Commissioner would have a field day."

Saran flicked his fingers in a gesture that consigned the potential public ruin 
of his personal integrity to insignificance, "Such an outcome would be 
disastrous on every front. The IFP would acquire a very angry enemy on its 
already volatile Frontier Worlds border plus decades of careful diplomatic 
work with other worlds and systems interested in joining the IFP would be 
irretrievably destroyed. Above and beyond that the Sentrus system itself 
would be financially destitute, politically weakened and economically 
vulnerable to conquest - either by direct military invasion, political coup 
d'etat or economic puppet-masters handing out loans like sweets in return 
for de facto rule...and the citizens of Sentrus System would have no access 
to the pension, employment, medical and social benefits of being in the IFP, 
which to be frank, they sorely need."

You are in deep, deep shit...Gage didn't voice this thought aloud to Saran 
because he strongly suspected he didn't need to - or to anyone else here. 
Just because Trey was the most personally shy and politically naïve of all 
those here didn't mean that he was stupid; Gage could already see a slight 
darkness in Trey's gentle eyes, a slight but ever sharpening edge to the look 
he gave you that had never been there before. No doubt within another 
couple of months, Trey Logan would be one of the savviest political 
operators in the Inhabited Galaxies - after all, his tutors read like a Who's 
Who of political giants - Saran van Den Mikhail, the Vicereine of Olban and 
Matriarch Madjhuri of High House Syal to name but three.

Instead he asked, "When can your guy report for sure?"

"His next debrief is six days." Jackson replied.

By which time Gage and Race would be hundreds of light-years away 
hurtling in the opposite direction to known space aboard the Nimitz IV, 
where Gage could do nothing about helping or protecting his friends but 
hope and pray.

"What if Kyros tumbles to your man?" He asked.

Puzzlingly an expression of ironic humour flickered briefly across Brigadier 
Jackson's face. "I have no concerns about that."

Gage had plenty, but realised there was nothing he could do. Wryly, he 
realised why the Chinese maxim, may you live in interesting times, was a 
curse.

To be continued...

(c) 2007 Catherine Stewart