All The Pretty Stars

I took another drink as I looked at the stars silhouetted against the night sky. There were so many of them tonight. Looking at them through the evening news on the screen above the bar, they looked almost pretty. If you didn’t know any better. Or if you did, but were drunk enough not to care. Or even if you did care, but were drunk enough to ignore that caring feeling.

I didn’t remember all the chemistry I should have. I’d spent the last ten years teaching biology after all. I know that oxygen burns orange. The little orange stars that would light up in a flash - sometimes close enough to make those of us watching squint to protect our eyes - and then disappear forever would be the human fighters. The human piloting it, disappeared forever along with it, as I couldn’t see any ejection pods. I take a sip of my drink in honor of the brave men and women who probably hadn’t had something even remotely like this situation in mind when they enlisted.

The blue (violet?) stars would have been the Invaders then. I seem to recall that potassium chloride burns that color, but I could be wrong. It’s been a while. And I’m drunk. I suppose it means they breathe a different atmosphere than us, if they breathe at all. Or maybe their ships are made of different metals. Doesn’t seem unreasonable, what with them being from another star system. I don’t know for sure if their ships are even piloted by living beings or, if whatever they are, is even recognizable as life by our standards. But, based on how this day has been going so far, I’m willing to bet that every little dark blue star is an alien pilot getting winked out of existence too. I take a sip of my drink in honor of the brave alien men and women (I guess? I’m too drunk to go down the alien gender rabbit hole right now) who probably hadn’t had this in mind either when they/it enlisted, if their military is anything like ours. It does seem that military bureaucracy is one of the few universal constants.

I feel a twinge of sadness welling up from somewhere beyond the booze. First contact should have been a happy, joyous occasion, not a scene from one of those ancient alien invasion movies that people used to enjoy, back in the Dark Ages. Yet here we are. Score one for the xenophobes.

My glass is empty. One minor tragedy among a day of major ones. At least I can do something about this one. I raise my hand and signal to the bartender without taking my eyes off of the newsfeed on the screen above the bar. He refills my glass, also without taking his eyes off of the screen, and wanders back to the other end of the bar, which is fine with me. I’m lousy company.  

I raise the glass to my lips and continue watching. I choke a little as I try to swallow. This isn’t the schnapps I’d been drinking. I don’t know what it is, but it’s much stronger. The bartender must have been too distracted by the news and not paying attention. He wasn’t known for competency (or hygiene) anyway. Oh well. I’ll drink whatever at this point. Desperate times.

The liquor burns as it slides down my throat. It reminds me of the stuff my wife uses to take nail polish off of her finger nails. She’s not going to be happy about this. About me getting drunk before lunch or the fact that humanity’s first contact with alien life started (probably) an interstellar war or the fact that everything that’s happening is pretty much all my fault.

I could have, should have, quit while I was ahead. I’d done what Thalia had asked me to. I’d solved the murder, unravelled her “conspiracy,” saved the day, etc… Why couldn’t I have let it go?

The news feed changes. Instead of showing the space battle from the station’s external cameras, the anchor has started speaking with a group of talking heads. One is explaining the possible dangers to Hinterlands, with the station being in such close proximity to the battle. Another is speculating on the nature of the aliens, as if that type of speculation was even remotely useful. A third is blathering about the philosophical implications of our species' first contact with another sentient race. Not like that's going to be useful either, if the fight gets any worse.

What Fritz had done was wrong, dammit. I knew it, he knew it and der Hurensohn had even admitted to it. But it had kept the peace. Covering up a murder. Just one murder, Fritz had said. An agent from Earth who, if he’d sent that transmission, would have destroyed our way of life. A space station like this has a very delicate balance to maintain. There’s no room for error. Even with support from Earth, ten light years away, things are delicate. If Earth withdrew their support, that stability would be more important than ever. We wouldn’t survive the unrest that would follow if word got out that Earth had cut us loose and we were on our own. Fritz was right and he’d murdered the agent to keep his report a secret. A small price to pay for keeping the station running.

Then Thalia had to start snooping and drag me into this mess. She wanted a detective and, contrary to what she thought about me, I was a good one. At least I had been. Turned out, I still had it. I’d helped her piece together what had happened and confronted Fritz at the Chancellor’s Quarters. I still couldn’t believe that nutsack had gotten himself elected Chancellor. There’s a reason that most people around here call the Chancellor’s Quarters das Toilettenhauschen. Folks around here are not known for their subtlety.  

But I just couldn’t let it go. He’d gotten away with murder. Right under my nose. He was my partner! He’d done something wrong and gotten away with it, even if his reasons were good. I mean good is a relative term here, but in a world of crappy options, it was probably the best. Even Thalia had agreed with that and agreed to keep quiet, after all her bitching and moaning about our moral obligation to finding the truth or whatever. I usually stopped listening to her pretty quick when she got started on that.

Turns out that I was the one with the moral obligation to the truth. I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let him get away with murder.  

So I sent the signal. Sent the original report to Earth and a copy of the murder investigation. I figured that we had at least twenty years to sort it out. (I was kind of hoping I’d be dead by then.) How was I supposed to know that the transmitter allowed instantaneous communication with Earth? What else hadn’t they shared with us? And what the hell is hyperspace anyway?

Fritz didn’t know either. Mr. Dead Guy’s transmitter had been sending “Everything’s okay” messages at regular intervals for ten years, and Fritz had been more than happy to let it. It makes sense if you think about it. Bare minimum contact, to minimize the risk of blowing their agent's cover. Just a quick message at predetermined times saying, "Everything is good. Don't do anything that might involve spending Earth's money on some backwater space station just yet."

Needless to say, the cycle was broken when I decided to let Earth know that their agent had been on ice for the better part of a decade now. They took it well. If you consider them immediately cutting off all funds and supplies and sending a fleet to take control of the station and planet-side mining colony taking it well.

I was very surprised when Earth called back, about ten minutes after I transmitted the report, rather than the 20 years I had expected. Oh and they called Fritz too, to see why he’d been murdering their citizens. He wasn’t super happy with me, when Thalia and I arrived at Station Command, escorted by an embarrassing amount of security guards.

We watched out the viewport as the Earth fleet arrived to take control of the station. Turns out they’d mastered some kind of faster-than-light travel in the past ten years too. They’d been busy little bees, hadn’t they?

It was strange watching them. The front of the ships seemed to arrive first, with the back ends - stretched out behind them - seemed to snap into place like a rubber band. The running lights left streaks behind them too, as the light was too slow and had to catch up to the ship a second later. There was a sound like a cannon shot as each ship snapped into a space where there had been nothing less than a second before. I don't know how that could happen, but it did. It was disorienting. Fritz looked green. I wanted to vomit. Thalia did.

I demanded to know why we hadn’t heard about any of this before. Fritz looked at me with a cold fury in his eyes as he calmly explained that Earth didn’t really care about us all that much. They’d decided to start colonizing the galaxy in the opposite direction of our station. As such they’d been debating cutting off support for the last ten years. They didn’t feel like we were even worth sharing the new technology with. My transmission a few hours ago had sealed the deal.  

They’d been mobilizing a fleet for training exercises, preparing to use their fancy new faster than light drives to hop out of the Solar System for the first time. Then my transmission came through and, since ten light years was just a hop around the block now, decided to send them our way so the soldiers could have some on-the-job training. 

Then the aliens showed up. They didn’t appear to use the same tech that we did. A bright point of light appeared first. It slowly grew to what looked light a swirl of grey thunderclouds, lit from behind by the mother of all lightning storms. Eventually, although it probably wasn’t as long as it seemed, a hole opened in the middle. Just a black hole in space. Then, alien ships of all sizes swarmed though. 

The ships just sat there for a while, floating in the void. We watched from Station Command, watched nothing happen like our lives depended on it. It was possible they did. Then someone took a shot. It was probably inevitable. Some bonehead always took a shot. I don’t know if it was the aliens or the Earthies, but someone did and now the war was off and running.  

Thalia and I had been escorted from Station Command as quickly as we’d been escorted to it in the first place. As we returned to the civilian sectors, all non-essential personnel were being herded into the station’s shelters. Thalia and I got separated. There was no point trying to look for her. There was no point trying to get home to the wife and kinder either. I’d never make it that far before the total lockdown went into effect.  

I wandered into the closest bar I could find. It was designated an emergency shelter. Most bars were, which I’d always found hilarious. We sure know how to set our priorities, don’t we? It’s the end of the world as we know it and, by God, you’ll feel fine if you do it right.

So I sat and watched. I saw the Earth fleet and invaders arrive, over and over again on the news feeds. I saw the battle and all the stars playing out, again and again. I couldn’t even tell if it was new footage or the same old stuff on a loop. I saw the talking heads talking, talking, talking and not managing to say a damned thing. And I saw a recorded message of Chancellor Fritz saying that he would do everything that the office of Chancellor required of him in this situation, as if anyone had the slightest clue what that would be.

The door to the bar flew open with a bang. Light flooded the bar, causing the lurkers there to shade their eyes from the unaccustomed phenomenon. Three shadows wandered in from the bright outdoors.

As the door shut behind them, I recognized Fritz and two of his security detail. Big guys, not much for conversation but homicidally loyal to whomever was Chancellor. Super.

“Detective Schmidt,” Fritz began.

“Johann is fine, Fritzy,” I interrupted. He snorted in fury.

“Chancellor Wolfe if fine, Detective Schmidt," he replied. “If you’ll come with me please.”

“Sorry, nope, can’t do it,” I said. “Lockdown orders. Got to be a good citizen and stay here and out of the way so you and all the other high-priced help can solve all our problems.”

“Let me rephrase that. Detective Schmidt, you will accompany me to Station Command. The Admiral of the Earth fleet would like to speak to the man who sent that transmission and started this war. Come on.”

Damn.

I stand up and signal to the bartender, who’s been watching with his jaw dropped, that I’m going to need one for the road.

“Put it on Fritz’s tab,” I say as I stand to leave.

I take one last glance at the news report as I stand to leave. My picture is up there now. That’s new. I grab my drink and follow Fritz out without reading what it says about me.  

I’m guessing I should’ve ordered more than one.