Nostromo

[preface: this story is the third part of the arc created in the Hyperion -- Agamemnon storyline, so will be meaningless without having first read those two stories. al]

Nostromo

C1.1

There was a moment when awareness first returned and the last icy tendrils of hyper-sleep began their slow, final retreat, and to most who experienced the sensation, it felt the nightmarish panic of suffocation in a dream -- just before the mind gave up on the idea of sleep. Deep within those last few, fleeting moments of sleep, the elaborate mechanisms of electro-chemically induced hibernation gave way to the organic, biologically mediated reawakening of consciousness, yet the brain simply could not shake off the reality that just moments before it had generated an electrical impulse once every ninety seconds that traveled down the vagus nerve and 'caused' a heart to beat. Yet, even so, the lungs did not expand and contract to push oxygenated blood around the body -- because the hyper-sleep chamber was itself a hyper-saturated oxygen-rich environment. Electro-compressive elements in the thermostatically controlled sleep suit continuously massaged this oxygen rich mixture, forcing gases deep within all the body's tissues, most notably the brain -- yet it was the brain that was the last part of Ellen Ripley to come back fully to life.

Her mind raced through the last dark corridors of the nightmare as she ran for the light -- and the oxygen -- her conscious mind now craved, and then, right there in the deep middle of her oxygen deprived panic the suit delivered its coup de grâce: a shock that opened her eyes and that also commanded a sharp inhalation of room air. Her body was on autopilot now, following a script written eons ago; she sat up in her sleep chamber as her eyes popped open, and then months of lactic acid stored in her muscles flooded into her stomach, causing her to retch even as she reached for the 'muscle milk' being handed to her. She drank half the one-liter glass in one quick slug, neutralizing the inrushing acid in time to prevent the worst outcome, then she felt helping hands reaching under her arms, lifting her free of the chamber.

"How are you feeling, Miss Ellen?" her Walter said.

"How long was I out?" she groaned, finishing the glass of hydrating fluids.

"Sixty four days. The ship is now in an elliptical orbit around Thedus."

"Great. We have any R&R lined up?"

"R&R? No, Ma'am," Walter sighed. "You do, however, have a meeting with the governor-general, Sir Walter Lockhart, at 0800 tomorrow morning."

"The governor, huh? No shit. Wonder what I've done now."

Walter smiled noncommittally, then he looked away. "I have no idea, Miss."

"Walter, knock it off, would you? Whenever you're holding something back you always look away like that..."

"Like what, Ma'am?"

"You look away...just like that...but then you kind of smile, too. You aren't going to try and tell me you didn't realize you were doing that..."

"I didn't..."

"Damn, Wally, you been around humans long enough...you really ought to be a better liar by now."

"I'm sorry, Miss Ellen. Are you telling me that you would like me to lie to you more often?"

Ripley shook her head as another wave of nausea hit. "No," she said, rolling through another grimace-inducing cramp, "but if you wouldn't mind, would you hand me that bucket?"

+++++

The last remnants of USNSF still maintained a "defensive presence" on the massive Lunar Gateway complex, but not so on Gateway Alpha, but the Lanar outpost was an irrelevant posting now that the Earth was no longer of any commercial value, and that was just one of the things that struck Denton Ripley as utterly insane.

The Earth, all of it -- every political institution and every corporate entity -- had simply packed up and left during Agamemnon's 25-years-long voyage -- even though Ripley, like everyone else in the Enterprise Battle Group, had aged a little more than a year during that same time. But now that he had learned the truth behind this great migration he was even more mystified. And alarmed.

After the combined fleets of the Russian-Chinese alliance and the American-Japanese space forces had been defeated by an "unknown faction" within the Tall Whites' armed forces, the U.S. Naval Space Force, then commanded by Admiral Stanton, had simply been unable to secure enough funding to rebuild the fleet.

"But how is that even possible?" Denton asked Tom Bretton, the current commander of the orbiting lunar complex. "I mean, with half of the fleet destroyed and the other half unaccounted for, and with Earth's defenses stretched to the breaking point, are you telling me that the Council couldn't earmark enough money to rebuild..."

"By that point, there was no Council, Admiral Ripley. And for all intents and purposes, the World Congress had simply ceased to function when the last arable lands were covered with ice. Almost the entire surviving human population was located either in orbit, on the Moon, or on Mars. For three years, as the ice closed in, every resource was allocated to building shuttles and getting as many people as possible up to the gateways, and then we found New Sparta, or Sparta -- as it's called now. The big bulk carriers we ran out to Titan and Neptune were transformed into colony ships and about that time a new governing structure developed..."

"What new structure?"

"Well, for one thing, it's a monarchy. There's no president, no congress, nothing like that anymore -- although there's talk that Leonidas, the King, is under pressure to reconstitute some kind of Senate..."

Ripley's face was screwed up into a tight scowl and he started gnashing his teeth. "A...king? Are you serious...?"

Bretton pointed at the ceiling and shook his head, his meaning clear. This was a surveillance state, and an autocratic one, at that. "Look, you're going to need some time to get acclimated to these changes, but within a few days you'll need to record your oath of allegiance to the crown or..."

"Or...what?"

"You'll be provided with transportation down to the planet's surface."

"To Earth, you mean?"

Bretton smiled. "Yes."

"I understand. Well, just so I'm clear, is everyone from Earth on New Sparta now?"

"Oh, no, we're migrating to dozens of planets now. The biggest cities in the Co-Dominium are on New Chicago and Saint Ekaterina. We don't know much about the Chinese settlements right now, but they are on seven planets and expanding."

"Saint Ekaterina? That's Russian, is it not?"

Bretton nodded. "Yes. Apparently, the Chinese turned on their Russian allies after Mintaka and that was one time too many. The remaining Russians swore allegiance to Leonidas about five years after they lost contact with their fleet, and that was that. The Co-Dominium was founded."

"So...no United States? No European Union and no Russia?"

"Yessir. Now you've got the Co-Dominium or you've got exile to the planet's surface, but don't get me wrong. There's still a lot of grief about this in the outer rim planets. Levant, where most of the Muslim population settled, has a big dissident faction, and half the people on New Caledonia are always up in arms about one thing or another..."

"Is there a Navy?"

"Oh, you bet. Divided into two forces. Escort and counter-insurgency."

"Counterinsurgency? So that kind of implies we're not all one big happy family...yet..."

"Yessir, you got that right. There was a revolt in New Chicago last year. Refused to pay their taxes, again. So the Navy went in and read them the riot act, and told them to pay up or the Navy would blockade the planet. There's still not a lot of major industry down there, not enough to be fully self-sufficient, so blockade meant starvation and, well, death -- when you get right down to it."

"How many ships does this new Navy have?" Denton asked.

And Bretton just shrugged. "Depends on who I'm talking to, Admiral Ripley. If your allegiance resides with your oath of office to the old constitution, I'm not telling you anything beyond a rough outline of what happened while you were away."

And that, Ripley said to himself, was all he needed to know. The Enterprise Battle Group could form up and attack this New Sparta, or he and Neal Davis could swear allegiance to this new King, this Leonidas the First. That was the choice, and it was a stark choice. Revolt, or allegiance. And revolt meant war, didn't it?

But allegiance to what?

To something, or to someone he knew nothing about? How the devil could these people assume he or anyone in his fleet would do something so outrageously out of character -- unless they...

Unless they already had a fleet en route...

...to enforce the King's law.

C1.2

Once the Walter in Antarctic Traffic Control had linked up to and cross-loaded files with all the other Walters and Gordons in the battle group, Denton Ripley now had access to the pure, unadulterated historical record of the last thirty years, or the relative time Agamemnon and the Enterprise Battle Group had been away. More importantly, Lars Jansen now had complete access to all the computers on Gateway Alpha and in Armstrong Base, on the Moon. After Ripley had gone over the rough outlines with Gordon, Ripley knew it was time to get all the ships captains together for a council of war.

Including the tankers and Agamemnon, the Enterprise Battle Group numbered 34 ships, and this number included the Enterprise, which was an immense assault carrier, the heavy cruisers Wainwright and Saratoga, the Kearsarge -- a Mohican class troop carrier outfitted with an air wing of her own -- and six large tankers, with the balance of the fleet comprised of frigates like the Stavridis and Darwin. But Ina Balin had almost finished building a second X-ray Maser on Stavridis, and this latest version incorporated the moving mirror design developed by Pak's engineers.

Stavridis's skipper, Dean Farrell, had been with Ripley's first task force on the Hyperion mission, and like Ripley, he was an Annapolis grad. Unlike Ripley, Farrell had studied history and philosophy at the Academy and had always been considered an intellectual; he was also fiercely loyal -- to Admiral Stanton, to Denton Ripley, and to the United States Naval Space Force, and pretty much in that order, too. Like all Navy captains, Farrell had a deep interest in engineering, but he'd enjoyed developing camaraderie even as an XO, and under Farrell, Stavridis was soon considered one of the happiest, well-run ships in the fleet.

So Ripley wasn't at all surprised when Farrell showed up a half hour before the Admiral's council of war -- and even the pile of books he carried seemed to fit the moment.

"What on earth do you have there?" Denton smiled as Dean walked into the Admiral's in-port conference room.

"Homework," Farrell smiled back.

"Oh?"

"Denton, I have a Gordon onboard, so I think I know what this is all about."

"So, what's all this stuff for?"

"Background," Farrell said. "In case anyone's interested."

Neal Davis from the Enterprise came in next, and he too looked troubled -- as did each and every skipper as the group staggered into Ripley's suddenly far too small conference room. After everyone was seated, Joan Carson distributed drinks and snacks, then Ripley called the meeting to order.

"Does anyone here not have access to the Walter Downloads?" he asked as all eyes centered on him.

And several hands shot up.

Ripley nodded. "Okay, here's a quick summary of what happened. As all of you are well aware, what passed as a few months for us -- because of the amount of time we traveled at faster-than-light speeds almost thirty years passed here on Earth, and a lot has happened while we were away."

He paused and looked around the room, measuring the mood. The rumor mill had been running hot for days, and the anxiety level in the room was palpable.

"The United States of America is no more," Ripley stated. "For that matter, the old nation-states we are all familiar with are now all gone, and as I'm sure you've all noted, the Earth is now entirely encased in ice. There is a continuing human presence at McMurdo, but the ice is increasing in thickness, on average, at a rate of 30 centimeters per annum.

"Approximately seven hundred million people were evacuated from the planet's surface over a fifteen-year period, and yes, that means more than nine billion souls are entombed in the ice."

He paused and let that figure sink in.

"About 28 years ago a Company survey ship located and charted a planet that's now called Sparta, and a BAPist cult managed to get the upper hand, politically speaking, on that planet, and they established a monarchy..."

A hand shot up. "A what?"

Ripley turned to Captain Farrell: "Dean, you want to take this one?"

"Sure. I'm sure most of you remember basic 21st-century history, the economic collapse of 2008, and the Obama period that followed. This of course spurred on the revisionist ultra-nationalism of the Trump period, but it wasn't until a few years later that one of the key philosophers of the Trump period was uncovered. This man billed himself as The Bronze Age Pervert, or BAP, and it turned out that this BAP had a number of acolytes in the Trump White House. BAP was a devotee of Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher that lay at the heart of Naziism, and BAP carried the idea of the so-called übermensch, or superman, into the 21st century. Here's his manifesto, by the way, if anyone is interested," Farrell said, holding up his tattered copy of Bronze Age Mindset. "This edition was published in 2018, by the way, and BAP, like Nietzsche, like Hitler, and like Ayn Rand, was dividing humanity into two groups: the men who accomplish great things and all the rest, which he referred to as subhuman slaves, and that's putting it charitably.

"I'm sure that you all remember that after the tectonic events in the Pacific Northwest, when Rainier and Hood and Shasta erupted and the North American plate shifted, the resulting climate shifts brought on the current ice age, but looking over the Walter Downloads it appears that BAPists had by the mid-21st century almost completely infiltrated the remnants of state governments in the western US. There are indications that the space agencies in the US and EU were compromised as well, and that many of their members were well placed within the Weyland Corporation. It now appears that these BAPists decapitated the federal government's response to the threat of encroaching ice and that they may have executed key members of the Senate and Council..."

"And that," Ripley said, "makes this King Leonidas our common enemy."

"But...does it, really?" Neal Davis said. "I mean, let's think this thing through, Denton. The United States no longer exists. There is, literally, no admiralty. No Council, not even the Senate. As the armed force of a democratically elected people that reports to a civilian command authority, we literally, well, we're stateless and therefore have no legitimate purpose. This Leonidas may not be our elected leader, but he is, apparently, the leader of what's left of the human race, so let's face facts. We could go in tomorrow and wipe Sparta off the map, but in the end, we'd only be hastening the end of mankind..."

Denton smiled -- because this is exactly what he'd wanted to happen: a spirited discussion of the options facing the fleet -- because somehow he was going to have to build a solid consensus among his skippers before any action could be taken, and he'd need everyone's support.

"Well," Dean Farrell replied, "let's look at the problem another way. Leonidas wasn't elected, he was self-selected, and probably with the support of a group of corporate sponsors, so his leadership is anything but legitimate, at least as far as we're concerned. And there have already been revolts on New Chicago and on Asia, so there are already strains in the system, and with this sort of leadership. Also, this new empire has limited resource processing ability and an almost primitive warfighting capability..."

"For now!" someone said.

"Yes," Farrell said, "precisely. In ten years they may be armed to the teeth and ready to take us on, but right now it appears they are comparatively weak -- so we have a tactical advantage."

"You're forgetting something important," Judy Ripley interjected.

"Like what?" Neal Davis replied.

"This Leonidas has corporate patrons, and these patrons run all eleven planets in this new alliance, and the Weyland Company is the biggest of these. That said, we have to assume that the Company is well armed with the organism."

"But that's a ground force, and besides," Farrell said, "employing the organism all but dooms the targeted group, be it one of our ships or a planet. That's a Doomsday Weapon, pure and simple."

Ripley nodded. "Mutually assured destruction. But how the hell could they expect to use it against us?"

+++++

Thedus had been discovered a few years after a Company probe transiting the Coalsack sectors had run an automated scan of the planet as it passed. When the results of the scan were transmitted to New Sparta, the Company dispatched an assay team to the planet to confirm the results of this first incomplete scan; when the results were confirmed several colony ships loaded with construction engineers and miners were sent to begin constructing the infrastructure necessary for large scale mineral extraction. Habitation modules under large pressure domes were the first things built, then the first ore processing modules were shuttled down to the planet's surface. Crushing ferrous oxide under pressure released oxygen -- which was then processed and stored to provide breathable air inside the domes, and not long after that milestone was passed, facilities to distill liquor and to provide testicular release followed, and five years later more than nine thousand miners called Thedus home. When the second brothel was completed the miners knew that life was good.

And as it was a small planet, one that would be resource depleted within fifty years, the Company had decided against terraforming or building long-term settlements there. More a planetoid than a planet like Earth, or even Mercury, Thedus had less than one-tenth the gravity of Sparta -- and while that made walking problematic it did make it economical to load minerals on the planet's surface and then boost the payload into a low orbit. Because of these significant cost savings, miners working on Thedus were very well paid indeed and productivity had remained high since Day One.

Sir Ian Tarkanian was the current governor general, and he "positively loathed" his latest posting. A tall, lean man with peregrine eyes, Sir Ian had made a small fortune transporting wealthy refugees from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa up to his orbiting colony ships, and ever since he'd lived the life of a wealthy sybarite wherever he happened to land. Accepting his peerage had come with the proviso that he take the offered assignment on Thedus and remain there for at least two years; now he was counting down the days until he could hop on one of his ships and return to Sparta. That he would be called Sir Ian, or Governor Tarkanian for the rest of his life, was only the very sweet icing on a very large cake he would happily call his own for the rest of his life.

His office, by any standards but especially so for Thedus, was garishly decorated in a red velveteen velcro material trimmed with ornately shaped solid gold trim -- the gold freshly mined and processed from the vast deposits beneath Tarkanian's feet. And while the Company took the biggest percentage of the haul and the Crown the second biggest, the sitting governor also took a decent percentage of all the minerals, ores, and precious metals extracted from the planet, and which would in the two years of his posting see Tarkanian move up the list from modestly wealthy to the obscenely rich. As such, his far-flung commercial enterprises also ensured he was dialed into all the comings and goings within the imperial aristocracy, and it was said that he knew who was in and who was most definitely on the outs long before anyone else on Sparta.