Once again I am relying on Niven and Pournelle and the framework presented in The Mote In God’s Eye (and The Gripping Hand) to present the governmental framework of this last chapter of the Ripley triptych. Readers of these two books, and a whole bunch of others, will recognize the Co-Dominium – as it existed a thousand years after its formation, so your indulgence is in order here as I am creating a “backstory” to the creation of their Co-Dominium. And once again I’d implore you to read the two Mote books, as they really are among the very best sci-fi novels out there.

[Pink Floyd \\ Hey You]

A fairly short chapter to kick off this latest work, so maybe time for a cup of tea. Enjoy.

Nostromo

Chapter 1

There was a moment – when awareness first returned and the last icy tendrils of hyper-sleep began their slow, feral retreat – when those who experienced the sensation admitted to feeling the nightmarish panic of suffocation – and this was usually just before their mind gave up on the idea of sleep and real panic set in. Deep within those last fleeting moments of hyper-sleep, the elaborate mechanisms of electro-chemically induced hibernation finally gave way to the organic, biologically mediated reawakening of consciousness, and 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’ the heart to beat once. 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 bariatric environment. Electro-compressive elements in the thermostatically controlled sleep suit continuously massaged this oxygen rich mixture throughout the body, forcing these gases deep within all of 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 – that 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 then on autopilot once again, following a script written over the eons; 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?” 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…so sorry.”

“Damn, Wally, you been around humans long enough now…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 USNSF, such as it was, still maintained a “defensive presence” on the massive Lunar Gateway complex, but it 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 as he walked through the worn down station.

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 only a little more than a year. And now that he had learned the truth behind this great migration he was even more mystified.

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, still commanded by Admiral Stanton, had simply been unable to secure enough funding to rebuild the fleet. 

“But how was that even possible?” Denton asked Tom Bretton, the current commander of the gateway. “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 American Congress had simply ceased to function when the last arable land was covered by the ice sheet. Almost the entire remaining human population was located either in orbit, on the Moon, or on Mars. For three years every resource was allocated to building shuttles and getting the population up to the gateways, and then we found Sparta, or New Sparta – as it’s called now. Big bulk carriers were transformed into colony ships and about that time a new governing structure developed…”

“What? 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 the King is under pressure to reconstitute some kind of Senate…”

Ripley’s face was screwed up into a tight scowl and he was gnashing his teeth in pure rage. “A…king? Are you fucking kidding me…?”

Bretton pointed at the ceiling and shook his head. “Look, you’re going to need some time to get acclimated to these changes. Everyone understands that. But Admiral, 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. So, just so I’m clear, is everyone on this 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 now.”

“Saint Ekaterina? That’s Russian, is it not?”

Bretton nodded. “Yes. Apparently the Chinese turned on them after Mintaka and that was one time too many. The Russians swore allegiance to Leonidas about five years after they lost contact with their fleet and that was that.”

“So…no United States? No European Union and no Russia? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“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.”

“Counter insurgency? So that kind of implies we’re not all one big happy family…doesn’t it…?”

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

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

And now 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 being presented to him right now, and it was a stark choice. Revolt, or allegiance. 

But allegiance to what? Or…to who?

To something, or 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.

(c) 2023 adrian leverkuhn | abw | fiction, plain and simple

[Alan Parsons \\ Time]