Second Born

Chapter 1

Approaching The Medusan Star System

"Excuse me, Captain," announced Diana, "but you asked to be notified when we were half an hour from breakout."

I looked up from the Mosin Nagant rifle I was tuning up, a souvenir of the family's last expedition to Old Home Terra. Father's native guide had been a good one. Coupled with information I had gleaned from patient searching in the Novalbion Royal Library that I owned in datacrystal format, we'd set down on the ice sheet over an arsenal in a place that had been called 'Russia' in the era before the Great Exodus, when all of the human race who could had fled a world dying of glaciation. Each of the many hyperships had headed in the general direction of a star the scientists said had planets in the Goldilocks Zone that were known to be uninhabited and hoped for the best. The aboriginals descended from those who had remained behind for whatever reason were few in number and primitive savages by our standards.

We had had to melt and carve a tunnel down through more than 1500 feet of compacted snow and ice, but the effort paid off when we found an entrance into a subterranean storage complex simply crammed with antique weapons preserved in grease and cases of ammunition. He and I had turned a handsome profit on what we had brought back, because genuine antiquities from the Before Time are rare; and projectile-throwing firearms rarer still in a culture of pulse-lasers and electroshock guns. A second expedition with a proper cargo ship was planned for my next vacation from New Birmingham Combat Armaments.

"Thank you, Diana. I'll be up directly." She nodded and winked out.

Perhaps I ought to explain. Diana is the computer that runs my yacht Peregrine, an ex-Novalbion Royal Navy twenty-man scout of the Knight class, the smallest craft capable of hyperspace flight in the Fleet. The Peregrine began life as HMS Percival, one of the first-generation Knights. As a sublieutenant, she had been my first command. Percival fought throughout the entire Junker War and had been damaged more than once in combat. Declared surplus during the demobilization following the war, I bought her for scrap value and refitted her for one-man operation. Diana is the main reason I can fly her solo on long hyperflights. Not only does she control the ship, she is also programmed for human interaction. Manifesting as an Old Earth actress named Diana Rigg from some entertainment file she unearthed in the Library records, she's good company on long jumps. Even in hyperspace where one travels at the rate of one light-year per hour, stars with habitable planets are far apart.

Settling into the command chair on the bridge, I called up the hyperspace chart and compared it to the view on the main display. We seemed to be a touch to the right of the system and a little above it. Above was okay; right wasn't. I energized the controls, the stick on the right arm of the chair and the throttle on the left. I drifted her left and changed scale, taking bearings to get a fix and then altering course slightly to move Peregrine to where I wanted her.

"Countdown to breakout by tens, and ones for the final five, Diana," I ordered.

"Aye aye, Captain," said Diana. "90 seconds ... mark. 80 ... 70 ... 60 seconds ... 50 ... 40 ... 30 seconds ... 20 ... 10 seconds ... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, breakout!"

Stars and planets that had been invisible in hyperspace brightened, enlarged and appeared in the viewscreen and out the ports as the hyperfield collapsed and Peregrine dropped back into normal space. You have to be careful jumping into and breaking out of hyperspace. Drop out of hyper too far outside, and you'll have a long, fuel-wasting run in normal space to get to the world you are trying to reach. Drop in or out too far inside the system, and there can be hell to pay -- gravitational effects from the hyperfield can throw you off course like a stone skipping on a pond, perhaps into an asteroid belt, the sun, or a large celestial body like a moon or planet. Few navigators are good enough to make "baby steps," that is, hyperjumps lasting mere seconds within a solar system without running afoul of the gravity well. My reputation as a Royal Navy deep space navigator had been built on an intuitive understanding of the difficulties of hyperspace navigation and how hyper intersects with normal space in terms of its currents and eddies. I had "the spaceman's eye," a gift as rare as the seaman's eye among ocean sailors. It accounted for the fact I had received my first command less than two years out of the Space Academy and had contributed to my rapid rise through the officer corps, even in wartime.

Diana threw the fix on the display. Medusa, my destination, was about two light-seconds ahead and 30 degrees below me. I reached over, closed the cover over the button that activated the hyperdrive and turned the key that locked it down. The normal space drive was idling; I've never come out of hyper with my engines cold, a fact which has kept me alive more than once. Throttling up, I headed in on a normal approach.

"Orbital Control on Channel 4, Captain. Audio component only."

"On speaker." There was a hiss and a voice speaking oddly accented English, the language of the spaceways for reasons lost in the sands of time.

"This is Medusa Orbital Control to unseen ship bearing 334 degrees true, elevator plus 30 degrees, range 2 light-seconds and closing. Please identify."

"Yacht Peregrine, Novalbion registry, Edward Wellesley commanding as owner-aboard. Request free pratique and a landing orbit to Aytont Spaceport." There was a pause before Orbital Control replied.

"Practical grant, Pellegrine. Landing orbit orders follow." A short squeal followed, the landing instructions; Diana decoded them and displayed the orbit to follow. I altered course to conform as I replied.

"Instructions received and understood, Control. Complying. See you dirtside. Out."

"Their English needs a little practice," Diana observed as I brought us down.

"We can't all be graduates of New Rugby School," I pointed out.

Once we were down, I ordered Diana to secure the ship for groundside routine. I went to customs, where I was quickly cleared and my passport stamped. I reflected that I was indeed out in the boondocks, since the place still used ink and rubber stamps instead of scanners and encoders. The Medusans had both spaceflight and aviation capability, but had purchased them from other planets rather than developing them independently. Their culture, in the midst of bootstrapping itself up to human standard, had a ways to go. If they hadn't, I wouldn't have been here. As was the custom of traveling salesmen from off-planet, I took a taxi to the Novalbion Embassy here in Medusa's capital of Aytont. It wasn't automated. It wasn't even self-propelled. Not only was it not automated, it was drawn by something called a tharn that looked like a cross between an elk and an ox.

I showed my passport to the Royal Marine on the gate. He summoned another bootneck to guide me to the office of the military attaché. He came from behind his desk to meet me.

"The Buccaneer, as I live and breathe!"

"Hurry, it is indeed a pleasure to see you!" We exchanged hugs, George "Hurricane" Andrews picking me up and setting me down. He'd been my squad leader at the Academy. I still remembered our first meeting.

Of yeoman stock, Hurry had had that class's general resentment of titled nobility. I was an "hon," the second son of the Earl of Islington. My brother Robin was Viscount Westwood, one of Father's lesser titles; but younger sons are not allowed courtesy titles under Novalbion's rules governing titles and forms of address. I had noble rank, but no lands or attached income to support it. Primogeniture is the rule on my home planet, as on most planets of the Empire.

Hurry had read my name on his muster sheet, the Honorable Edward Wellesley. Like the Royal Marine he aspired to become, he had gotten right in my face.

"So you're an 'hon,' are you? Your dad has a title?"

"Yes, sir."

"I suppose you think that being an 'hon' entitles you to special privileges, eh, mister?"

I figured I was already in his bad books because of my father the Earl, so I had nothing to lose by cracking wise.

"Well, I suppose if you send two of us midshipman-candidates to haul garbage cans from the galley to the recycler I am entitled to the cleaner handle, sir."

Hurry had looked at my straight face and erupted in bellows of whooping laughter. After that, everything had been okay between us. He'd taught me a lot about what it meant to be a good and trusty friend of the Monarch, and we had become fast friends. When I was captain of the David Stirling, a long range heavily armed commando raider, Hurry had been the commanding officer of the Royal Marine strike force assigned to her. Now he waved me to a seat on his couch and sat next to me.

"I read in the Naval Times that you retired just after the war. That rather surprised me. Buccaneer Wellesley hanging up his cutlass and pistols? I expected you'd be a full admiral one day."

"Not after being wounded at the Battle of Spica V, taking command of the Third Battle Fleet and bringing the old Achilles back so badly shot up she had to be scrapped. I was Master of the Fleet, the lead navigator for that operation. The Admiralty faulted me for jumping in so close to the planet. Even though we broke through the Junker and Demon defenses quickly, won the battle and took the planet away from them, the Battle Fleet took what the chairwarmers thought was too much serious damage to too many of the warships, and far too many casualties. The fault was laid at my feet as the officer who assumed tactical command of the op after the Admiral was killed. The First Space Lord wanted someone to blame for all the deaths, but he couldn't court-martial an officer the Palace was calling a true hero. So they gave me the Imperial Order of Merit for winning the battle, a Cross of Valor for taking command of the Achilles, fighting her in the fleet action and getting her home -- and as soon as I got out of hospital, an honorary promotion to Captain and my retirement papers."

Hurry heard the bitterness in my voice, whistled and shook his head. "It makes being a brevet half-colonel seconded as a diplomatic attaché seem suddenly attractive. At least I can hope for a battalion and perhaps a regiment one day." He was struck by a sudden thought. "Say, doesn't the IOM carry a title with it?"

"No, just an honorific, a small tax-free pension for life, a coat of arms if you don't already have one, and a little prestige among the common folk. I am now His Excellency Baron Edward Wellesley plus alphabet soup, if you please, entitled to wear a six-pointed silver palisado coronet that no one will mistake for a territorial gold coronet with six silver pearls. Why?"

"Because the Medusans have a nobiliary system that is somewhat similar to ours. They won't understand the difference between a Baron of the Imperial Court of Novalbion and a landed baron. That coronet of yours will get your foot in the door at the Royal Palace. I heard you had gone to work for NBCA as an armaments salesman. Play your cards right, and you may wind up making your pitch to King Berit of Medusa rather than one of his generals. Better for you, if that's why you're here." He pressed a button on his communicator and said, "Honey, bring the coffee service, please."

A minute later, a Medusan entered the room. She put me in mind of a North German barmaid: medium height, stocky, a very large bust in a boned leather bustier, no tapering at the waist, with well padded, tight buttocks that filled the back of her translucent skirt; broad hips, and from what I could see through the gauzy fabric necessitated by the heat of the climate, thick legs ending in proportional feet. Her skin was a dark orange and the black hairs on her head were noticeably coarse, like those of a horse's tail.

She set the tray on the low table in front of us. Her hair moved like tentacles, some wrapping around the cups to set one each in front of Hurry and me, others hoisting the sterling coffeepot to pour and lift the creamer and sugar bowl with its cubes and tongs to offer them to me.

"Cream and sugar, sir?" she asked in accented English.

I dumbly nodded. The tentacles poured cream into my cup, added a single sugar cube and stirred it with a teaspoon. Hurry's cup received two lumps of sugar and no cream. Setting down the cream and sugar, she walked with a solid grace out of the office. I looked after her.

"Yes, their prehensile hair takes some getting used to," Hurry said as he sipped his coffee. "Both sexes wear it as long as it will grow, waist length usually. They use hanks of their hair the way we use our fingers. Most Medusans have six 'tendrils,' for lack of a better word, that they can work. Some can create more tendrils than that; a few of their fakirs can control individual hairs, or so they claim.

"And did you notice the tits on Honey? She's got the typical figure of her people. Great boobs, nice asses and of course, that hair! Of course, if you're a leg man you won't get your jollies here."

"So I take it that Honey is, shall we say, more than just your secretary?"

Hurry leaned back with the slow smile I remembered from our days at the Space Academy that he reserved for moments when he was well pleased with one of his squaddies. "That she is. You know as well as I do from Xenobiology that the Great Architect who designed the Universe favored bipedal humanoids with male and female genders as the design template for intelligent life forms. We aren't fertile with the Medusans, which for humans a long way from home is a plus.

"Their culture does not place any value on virginity or restrictions on sexual activity in private. They are not naturally monogamous, but they are highly honorable. Some of them, like Honey, enjoy bedplay with other species but rarely let things get serious. Opportunities will find you if the exotic does not put you off. No reason you can't combine pleasure with business now that you're retired. You needn't worry about what Mater and Pater might think were you to bring one home. As a rule, Medusan girls are homebodies."

I started to get up, but Hurry held up a hand. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Oh, I thought I'd have breakfast in bed, review the Life Guards and then take tiffin with the Queen," I said sarcastically. "I just landed today after 600 hours in hyper, for heaven's sake! Diana can do only so much with the processing machinery and even with a well-stocker larder, shipboard food does get monotonous. I'd like to see about finding an apartment since it will likely take awhile to make the sale I hope to make, and I'd like to eat something that's different from what I've been eating for the past three and a half weeks -- "

"Half a mo, Buc. Novalbion is what, 500 hours from here?"

"502.7 hours in hyper to be precise, Hurry. Why?"

"You just said you took 600 hours to reach Medusa. Where did those extra 97.3 hours come from? Didn't you come direct?"

"I came the long way 'round. There's pirate activity in the vicinity of the Sarawak system. The Peregrine is fast, even faster than when she was a warship; but she only has constant repeater pulse-lasers for defense. Even if she still had the shock-cannon, red tips, screamers and homers she had as the Percival, without a full crew she couldn't take on an Alphan pirate raider and win. The Demons are working up to something. Have you heard anything?"

"Not as such; but there have been a few Medusan merchant ships that never arrived where they were going over the past year. Last month an Alphan ship called here for fuel and to trade. Medusa is at peace with the Alphans, but I can tell you the Monarch wasn't happy at their visit. Those red-skinned devils with their poison-tipped tails were bartering goods for supplies; food, booze, artifacts and machinery from systems nowhere near their homeworld and their last three ports of call according to their logbook.

"Further, they left a dozen dead Medusans behind them when they lifted. Not all of them were risk-takers or women with a taste for the novel in bed partners. If I can trust my sources in the War Ministry two of them were Royal investigators working undercover, monitoring the Alphans.

"I have a report ready to go via homing pigeon, but the only navigation program I have for it is direct to Bishops Rock Outpost. If the Demons are planning a war, they'll have interceptors looking for our pigeons at the usual navigation waypoints. This is important enough that I don't want to wait and send it by ship the way I usually do.

"Could you -- would you -- reprogram my homing pigeon tomorrow to follow the route you used to get here?"

"Why wait? Let's do it today, if there's a possible threat to the Empire!"

Hurry smiled as he reached for his broad-brimmed straw sundowner hat. I had the feeling that my old squad leader might have played me just a little bit, but I didn't mind. Duty always comes first.

At the port with Diana's help, creating and proving up the indirect route program didn't take long. Four hours later, Hurry and I watched his pigeon wink out of Medusan space. With any luck, Hurry's report would be in the hands of the Admiralty and the Foreign Ministry within a month. His relief at getting the word out was palpable.

On our return to the Embassy, Honey told Hurry that she had made the calls he had requested on his way out the door. She had located a residential hotel that did not object to renting to aliens. I thanked her and gave the slip of paper she wrote for me in Medusan script to the cabman the Marines on duty at the gate summoned. I'd had Medusan crammed into my brain by a teaching machine before I set out and I'd practiced with Diana while Peregrine had been in transit; but machine-impressed language feels stiff, written or spoken, until you have the chance to use it for awhile among native speakers. I could read it and understand it but it did not yet feel natural.

The manager spoke a little English, which he proudly tried on me as he showed me through the apartment. It was similar to what I might have expected in London on Earth circa 1880 Old Reckoning. No electricity, but they did have gaslights. No elevator, but no need for one with only three floors. Though it was the planetary capitol, Aytont was not densely populated and there was plenty of land for municipal expansion. Buildings still spread horizontally rather than vertically. The bed was shorter than I'd have preferred, but the sheets were made of something that felt like finest 2400 thread cotton. That was a luxury I could easily live with.

I conveyed my acceptance to the manager, who whipped a pen case and inkbottle out of his belt pouch with two tendrils while opening the registration book with another. I knew from my briefing crystals Medusa had a monetary metal economy, and he seemed happy with the bezant I handed him as a deposit. I made a mental note to enter the current exchange rate between bezants, argentes, kuparis and pounds sterling into my handset.

Chapter 2

Aytont City

The next day, I presented my credentials at the Palace as Hurry had suggested. I included one of my calling cards, not the one with the NBCA logo and my name, but my personal card with my rank and coat of arms with the palisado crown embossed on it. After a short wait, I found myself being entertained by the Court Chamberlain. There was an interesting character.

He was a student of heraldry. As a young diplomat, following first contact with humans he had become fascinated with the science of heraldry. He had been stationed on Nouveau Paris and Novalbion at different points his career, and had mastered both the old Continental and British armorial systems. Through his efforts, Medusa had codified and standardized its heraldic rules, bringing order out of chaos. The King had rewarded him for that massive effort with a landed barony. Two of the Chamberlain's proudest possessions were bound editions of DeBrett's Peerage of the Novalbion Empire, and Gough & Parker's Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry. Heralds being a traditional lot on Novalbion, though both books are available online and in datacrystal format, print editions are issued periodically. Sensing this, I was pleased to be able to offer him a facsimile edition I had aboard the Peregrine of the Almanach de Gotha that I had captured from the Junkers on one of my raids. He unbent considerably after that. Over Medusan tea, a staple export to Novalbion, he extended an invitation to the Ambassadors Ball King Berit was giving that evening.