1
The old diesel-powered train made its way smoothly down the tracks, taking its few occupants from the only real metropolis on the planet, Ceta City, to the small settlement town of Meridian Station and other, more distant, near–ghost towns. It was a trip one of the passenger cabin’s occupants had taken many times.
That occupant was a certain Jared Clement, once of the rebellious Rim Confederation Navy, and now, for the second time, in the 5 Suns Alliance Navy. The difference this time was that he wore the rank uniform of a Fleet Admiral, rather than merely that of a spaceship captain. It wasn’t a change he was entirely comfortable with, but it was a reality, and something he decided he would just have to get used to.
Sleeping gently on his shoulder was his adjutant and primary military and personal confidante, Tanitha Yan, now a captain of her own ship, the Five Suns Navy battlecruiser Agamemnon. The Agamemnon was the most advanced ship in the Five Suns Navy, currently nearing completion at the Kemmerine Station dry docks. She’s a beauty to behold, thought Clement, thinking both of the ship, and of Yan. As much as he may have wanted it, their relationship had to remain platonic and professional because of the strict Navy protocols against fraternization, particularly in the higher ranks. Yan was special to him in many ways, but he wouldn’t trade her value to him as an officer for the comfort of having her as his wife. Not yet anyway, but, maybe someday.
She snored gently and quietly on his shoulder as she slept, and he dared not move his arm, which was falling asleep, lest he wake her. Outside, the bleak gray landscape rushed by with no vista or natural feature of any interest. Most of Ceta was a flat gray and brown plain with just a minimum amount of low rolling hills and the occasional river or creek with sparse trees to break up the monotony.
A train going in the opposite direction, toward Ceta City, rumbled by slowly on the parallel track. It was packed full of refugees, families with grim faces and carrying all their worldly belongings with them. The outer communities were failing at an ever more rapid pace than the rest of the planet, and people were abandoning their farms and towns in droves, heading to the city looking for some sign of hope to relocate, either on or off the planet. Unknown to them, the potential “cascading failure event” of which the first Trinity mission was born was already in motion, and well ahead of its expected schedule. Ceta was growing barren, and simply couldn’t support its already meager population anymore. It was the grim reality the Five Suns government faced every day, but refused to talk about, at least publicly. Clement was the front man for the fight, and he would rise or fall based on the outcome of the planned migrations from the Rim worlds to the Trinity system. It was a responsibility he took very seriously, and one that he felt he couldn’t ignore if the people he loved were to be saved.
The passing of the refugee train left Clement feeling hollow. These were his people, and Ceta was the front line in a war of attrition that could lead to the total breakdown of Five Suns Alliance society; one planet collapsing, the people being forced to migrate to the next, followed by a second collapse . . . and so on.
The expert’s best models showed the inner core worlds of the Five Suns Alliance collapsing within three decades, but personally Clement knew that timeline was unreliable. He believed it would be half that, if they were lucky, which was why the Trinity worlds were so critical to humanity’s future. They were rich and bountiful planets, all orbiting a single stable red dwarf star. Perfect for colonization, and with only a small “native” population of humans, who’s presence on those worlds was still a mystery to unravel. Clement’s thoughts turned to that first Trinity mission, and his interactions with “Mary,” a beautiful and carefree native girl on the planet designated Bellus. She had shown him the “Hill Place,” an artificial construct built on a mountain that seemed artificial in its own right, reflecting a level of technology the natives clearly did not have. That was a place he wanted to return to, to seek the answers to its mysteries. At his core he was a man who wanted to explore. Now, he felt increasingly like a merchant ship captain stuck carrying cargo between two insignificant ports of call.
He turned his attention back to the bleak landscape of his home world as the train slowly rolled forward.
Ceta was a place no one in their right mind would want to live, but three generations ago Clement’s great-grandparents had decided to stake a homestead out on this dreary plain, more than thirty kilometers outside of Ceta City. They had been poor, kicked off one of the inner Core Five Suns Alliance worlds for some minor violation of law, most likely tax arrears or a civil fine they couldn’t pay. The story went that they had taken a judge’s offer of a clean record if they agreed to relocate their family to the Rim. Much of the details of this story were unclear, and his father didn’t like to recite it often, if at all. Clement thought that in some way his father was embarrassed by it, and didn’t want it circulating outside of the family.
When he couldn’t take the tingling in his arm anymore, Clement leaned in and gently shook Yan on the shoulder. This stirred her and she woke.
“Are we there yet?” she asked in a quiet voice, her eyes still closed.
He smiled. “Not yet, but close enough I thought I should wake you. Plus, you were cutting off the circulation in my arm, so if I wanted to save it I had to act.”
She quickly pulled back and opened her eyes. “Oh god, I fell asleep on your arm? Why didn’t you tell me? Did I drool on you?”
“No. And if I’m honest, I was enjoying the human contact.”
She gave him a sarcastic smile and then smacked him in the bicep with her fist.
“See? I didn’t even feel that. You’ve killed my arm.”
“You’re a liar, Fleet Admiral Clement.”
He had no answer to that.
“How long was I out?” she asked, rising up and stretching but keeping her attention on him.
Clement looked at his watch. “About forty minutes,” he said. “Just enough time to recharge the batteries.”
“I think that train station potato soup knocked me out,” she said, leaning back in her seat with a sigh. “Too many carbs.”
“Umm,” he said. “Ceta is not a place to come to if you don’t like carbs, Captain. Keeps the people alive.”
“Yes, that and the occasional musk ox steak,” she replied.
He shrugged. “Sometimes we have to eat our work animals,” he admitted as he rubbed out his arm.
“Not as good a cuisine as the Kemmerine Station food,” she needled him.
“The steaks on Kemmerine are replicated protein. So are the prawns.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Still, they’re tasty.”
“Cuisine is not something we on Ceta brag about,” he admitted.
“Nor should you.”
He shook his head at her. “This is the second time I’ve brought you to my family home, Yan, and yet you persist in making fun of my backwards little planet.”
She turned her head to him and smiled.
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s too easy to do. Not like when I took you to meet my family on Shenghai.”
“Yes,” he replied. “I couldn’t really make fun of your family’s estate and servants. It was hard to mock. And I didn’t know your father was an oil magnate.”
“Oil magnate? You make it sound like he’s a criminal. He’s just a businessman, and my mother is just a teacher.”
“Just a businessman, and a teacher . . . in Advanced Particle Wave Physics. Sure. That’s like saying my parents are land baron’s, not potato farmers.”
“Isn’t everyone on Ceta a potato farmer?” she said to him with her best “innocent eyes” look. But Clement knew better. Behind those eyes was the mind of a devious devil.
“Be nice,” Clement said, waving his finger at her in a mock warning. “Some people grow wheat and corn.”
“As I suspected.”
He sighed, reflecting. “Why do you come on these trips with me, Yan?”
“Your mother likes me. She writes to me all the time, checking up on you, you know.”
At this Clement grew alarmed. “My mother writes to you? About what?”
“Like I said, about you. She’s worried about you.”
Clement closed his eyes and sat back in the couch. “She wants her son to settle down and have a family.”
“That’s about it.”
“And she wants that to be with you.”
“Of course.”
“But she realizes that’s not possible, right? I mean, I am working hard to save humanity here.”
Yan laughed. “I’ve explained that to her, but she’s not buying it. She wants me to have your babies.”
Clement opened one eye to look at her. “Busy saving humanity over here . . .” he said, pointing at himself.
“She specifically asked me to come and visit again, she liked me so much the first time. And you don’t exactly have a reputation with the ladies. So yes, as a mother, she’s worried there will be no more Clements.”
Clement closed his eye again. “After I get our colony established maybe I’ll settle down on a patch of land on Bellus and marry one of the local girls. Have a dozen Clements. Maybe that Mary girl. She was pretty cute.”
“I’m pretty sure she was more interested in me than you.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely sure, based on your little tryst together at the pond. Still, a man can dream.”
Their verbal fencing reached a stalemate then, and they both remained quiet the next few minutes while the train began its deceleration into Meridian Station. Yan started in on him again.
“Well, maybe, someday—”
“Not today please, Xiu Mei, not today,” he said.
She sighed. “Please don’t call me that,” she said. “In my culture that kind of intimacy is reserved for married couples or permanent partners, of which we are neither.”
Clement sat up then. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
“Thank you.”
“And just so you know, I do consider us to be partners, of a kind,” he said. She said nothing to that.
And now the conversation was truly over.
Once they were secured at the station Clement pulled their luggage down from the top rack and they made their way out into the dim gray-and-orange sunlight of Ceta. They waited alone at the train dock for about ten minutes until their scheduled ground car pulled up. Clement loaded their luggage in to the trunk of the car and then hopped into the passenger cabin with Yan. The old-style electric vehicle said nothing verbally, but a visual display panel showed their programmed destination as CLEMENT FAMILY FARM and set an estimated time of arrival of twenty-one minutes. Clement leaned back and looked at Yan sitting across from him as the car started to rock and roll on the rough gravel road.
“Ah, home,” he said.
She smiled.
Clement’s mother, Abigail, waved to them as their car pulled up in a cloud of dust and dirt outside of the large single-story ranch-style house. It was a common enough design on the planet, and not distinguishable in any significant way from a thousand others. Faded yellow siding with white trim paint completed the rural décor.
Clement got out first and hugged his mother, then extended a hand to Yan, who stepped out of the car and was also greeted with a hug. He unloaded their luggage, nothing more than overnight bags, and closed the trunk. Once he was clear of the car it backed itself up to the family charging station and plugged in to recharge, waiting for its next call.
The three of them went inside and Clement stored the bags at the doorway, then they went into the dining room. Yan and Clement sat down at the large table made of reclaimed hardwood while his mother disappeared into the kitchen and then returned with a setting of tea and scones. She poured for them and then sat down on the opposite side of the table, the large picture window looking out on the family wheat fields at her back. She looked out once and then turned her attention back to her son and his companion.
“Your father is still out on the far forty, claims he’s checking for pests in the wheat crop, as if there were any bugs on this desolate rock,” said Abigail.
“He’s just like me,” Clement said, taking a sip of the sweet tea, “he hates both arrivals and departures.”
“He does at that,” agreed his mother. “I’ve paged him. He doesn’t have much excuse not to come now.” She turned her attention to Yan. “I don’t suppose our sweet-tasting tea is much to your liking, Tanitha.”
Yan smiled as she swallowed. “It is very different to what I get at home, but equally as pleasing, really Abigail.”
Abigail smiled. “I think I’ve had enough of the formalities between us,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Just call me Abby. Everyone else does.”
“Abby, then.”
“I just call you mom,” interjected Clement.
“Yes, and I only call him Jared Robert when he’s in trouble.”
“Which I imagine was quite often when he was growing up,” said Yan.
Abby smiled. “Oh, absolutely. One eye on the ground and always one eye on the sky. Our young man here was never destined to be a farmer.”
“I’m forty-five now, Mother, almost forty-six. I don’t think that qualifies me as a ‘young man’ anymore.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she admitted, then turned back to Yan. “So what does he call you? Tanitha seems very formal.”
“He just calls me Yan,” she laughed.
“Oh that’s terrible! Jared you must do better than that!”
He shrugged. “She calls me ‘Clement’ most of the time, except for the occasional ‘honey bunch.’”
“I do not call you ‘honey bunch,’” said Yan, cocking her head and giving him an annoyed look.
“Oh, you two are bad! You need better names than that. Tanitha, what would you like to be called?”
“Well, actually, we were just having that discussion on the train,” she said. Abby looked to her son, expectantly. He sat back, taking his tea cup and saucer with him.
“It did not go well,” he admitted. “We’re sticking with Yan and Clement for now.”
“I’ll just settle for Cletus,” came his father’s deep voice as he rounded the doorway into the dining room. He placed his hat on the hanging rack on the wall and then sat down next to his wife and across the table from his son and Yan. He was a big man with a bald head sprinkled with short white hair, and wearing his typical worn work coveralls. To Clement, his father was a caricature of the rural farmer. Cletus merely nodded at his son and Yan as he sat down.
“No hug for your son? Not even a handshake?” chided Abby.
Cletus shook his head no. “We both know why he’s here.” Then he looked at his son. “So, get on with it.”
Clement put his tea cup down and leaned forward on the table. “The first colony ship leaves for Bellus in two weeks. I want you to be on it,” he said.
“What, and leave all this?” said his father, gesturing wide with his arms.
“Cletus . . .” said Abby in a warning tone.
Jared continued. “I’ve reserved eighty acres of the most fertile growing ground you’ve ever seen for you. A new modular home will be there and waiting for you, the most modern equipment you can imagine. Nearly anything will grow there, year-round. Fruit, vegetables, rice, grain, anything you can think of. And you can trade what you don’t eat for things that you want. It’s my own personal homestead. There’s a freshwater lake within walking distance, stocked full of fish. It’s the chance of a lifetime. You just have to tell me that you’ll take it.”
Cletus Clement looked uncomfortable, and shifted in his chair. He looked to his wife, who remained stoic, leaving the decision to him. Jared started in again.
“Mom, remember when you used to make strawberry jam and preserves? How long has it been since you were able to do that?”
“Nine years,” she replied, looking down at the table. “Fruit won’t grow here anymore.”
Clement looked to his father. “And when was the last time you fished?” he asked.
“No need,” he replied. “I can get what I want at the market.”
“If they have any,” his wife added.
Clement leaned back again. “It was the summer of my twelfth birthday. I remember it. The lake was gone the next year.”
“You may be right,” said Cletus.
“You know I am.”
Now silence descended on the table. Yan and Abby exchanged glances, and Abby picked up the tea tray to take it into the kitchen. “Could you lend me a hand, Tanitha?”
“Of course.”
“You can’t leave,” protested Cletus to his wife. “We haven’t made a decision yet.”
Abby stopped and turned back to her husband. “Well, I have,” she replied, “the rest is up to you.” Then she disappeared into the kitchen with Yan.
Now the two Clement men were left alone in silence for a good long while, then: “It’s difficult to change your ways at my age, son,” Cletus started.
“You’re only sixty-six, Dad. Life expectancy, even on this rock, is a hundred and eight. You’re not old, you only want to act that way. On Bellus, I can hire hands to do all the hard work. You can ride in the combine and just supervise all day, in between trips to the lake.”
“You make it sound tempting, son, no question, but . . .”
“But what?”
His father hesitated.
“This is our home,” he said. Jared stared at his father, who wouldn’t look back at him.
“Our family had a different home once too, then we came here. But Ceta can’t support us anymore, and Bellus offers us the prosperity of a lifetime.”
“You keep saying ‘us.’ Do you mean the Clement family? If you don’t settle down and have children soon, there will be no more Clements.”
“With whom would I settle down? There’s no time anyway. I’m busy trying to save as many of our people as I can.”
His father nodded his head. “You could do worse than that lady in the kitchen,” he said.
“I’m aware of that, sir. It’s just not possible while we still serve in the Navy. And right now I have no intention of leaving the Navy, and neither does she. I only brought her here again because she and mother are good friends.” At this point he paused, seeking the words to reassure his father of the choice he wanted him to make. “There will be more Clements someday. Maybe not this year, maybe not for five more, but there will be more Clements.”
Cletus eyed his son. “I’d just like to know that if I leave this place, I’d be going somewhere that I can leave something behind. A legacy, for my grandchildren.”
Jared was very uncomfortable with the conversation, but he understood his father’s concerns. “You will be, I promise.”
“What about the natives? I’ve heard there are people there already. Will we be running them off their land like conquering colonists?”
Jared shook his head. “We have extensive mitigation plans in place. Bellus is full of untouched, bountiful land, enough for everyone. And the natives there will always be protected, always share in the bounty that the colonists produce, and they’ll be free to live their lives how they want, either their way, or ours.”
“So I won’t be stealing from anyone?”
Clement shook his head. “No sir, that won’t happen. And I can say that because I’m in charge of the program.”
Cletus looked at his son. “You were never going to be a farmer, were you, boy? I should never have let you have that telescope.” He shook his head. Jared smiled.
“I think my destiny was always somewhere other than here,” he said, then extended his hand to his father. “Do we have a deal?”
“Do I have a choice?” said Cletus.
“No, you don’t,” came Abby’s voice from behind him. Cletus turned and saw his wife at the dining room door, with Yan standing close behind her.
“I guess I don’t,” he said.
Then he reached out and shook his son’s hand.