The Hand of Grethia: A Space Opera Read online

  The Hand of Grethia

  Chapter 1

  Jan Smith peered through the bright shining window of a towering office building’s ground floor as the city streets began to fill up. He looked at his watch, glaring into the window as if it would help him see the showroom better and grimaced with the impatient regret of precious time passing. He looked up into the sky for a quick view of the taxis above, like fish swimming in an ocean, sending dappled shadows on the buildings in the slanting rays of the morning sun. He turned his gaze back into the showroom and continued to pound on the windowed doors, as if it would do him any good.

  Suddenly, the heavy metal-framed glass door opened and Jan quickly walked through. He went directly to the main counter. Round waist-high black crystalline tables with holographic viewing terminals stood on thick teal carpeting. Partitions, with screens discreetly advertising space yachts for sale, provided privacy for discussion areas on the perimeter away from the windows. The room was empty except for Jan and the door opener, who hastily retreated behind the counter.

  He didn’t like the way the salesman’s expression turned when he saw Jan. Perhaps he thought Jan didn’t appear like a bonafide buyer. “Good morning. My, you are a tall, blond one, aren’t you?” the salesman said. “And what can I do for you, sir?” the opener said with nasal greeting. A supercilious smile split the face of the trim, impeccably groomed middle-aged man. His clothing consisted of a tasteful combination of gray-blues from his lighter trousers tucked into dark soft boots to his nearly white tunic framed by a tight fitting medium colored jacket. The silver buttons had an antiqued patina. He had slicked back his balding gray hair, making it appear that he wore a tight fitting cap.

  Jan twisted his fingers in frustration. “I am waiting for my ship to be finished. There was some problem with the delivery of the main computer. Look, I’ve got to get it soon. I’ve waited eight months. I’m taking it on the very next Space Quest and I’m getting pretty anxious. I found out today that my salesman, Drolin Dackwiler, died three weeks ago and no one told me.”

  With that, the salesman shook his head, clicking his tongue. “Poor Dackwiler. I told him to get more exercise. I’m sorry for the delay. What is your name and address?” The salesman raised his eyebrows inquiringly as he moved to a desk and placed his fingers on the keyboard section of the desk, ready to punch the information in.

  “Jan Smith, 56-332 Drusten Building, Thistle Zone, here in Impollon.” Jan scowled and looked out the window as the salesman’s fingers worked on the keyboard. Then the fingers tapped on the counter for a few seconds until the information appeared. Jan couldn’t see what was on the other side of the holoscreen.

  “All right, Mr. Smith. I have your order here. Mr. Dackwiler put a hold on the order. Let me see, here’s a note. Ah… The delay... Mr. Dackwiler was going to offer you a special arrangement on your yacht. This says you have a unique opportunity to install a new experimental main computer, due out next week as it happens, a Series 202X. That model seems to be much improved over anything out presently. It’s abilities in the areas of ship navigation, diagnostics and auto-controls are parsecs ahead of anything else, according to Dackwiler’s note.” The man sighed and waved his hand, dismissively. “I, personally, haven’t heard of it. Dackwiler was really our technical specialist, especially on the, ah, Space Quest requirements. I’m a little leery of experimental items. Sometimes they don’t work and it’s terrible bother to get them properly serviced,” the salesman said somewhat more disdainfully than he needed to. Now he tilted his head up so he could look down his nose at Jan.

  “What’s the deal?” Jan said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What is the deal Dackwiler wanted to offer me?”

  The man pursed his lips for a few seconds blinking with dawning comprehension, and then continued with the ghost of a laugh, “Oh, for another 80,000 credits--my, that must be some computer--it will be installed in your ship. It appears he took the liberty of including the prep work for the computer at no charge. He shouldn’t have, you know. It says that delivery can be effected next week. Everything seems to be waiting on your decision. Do you wish the computer? I personally don’t recommended it,” the salesman said, softly tapping his foot with fastidious impatience on the thick carpet.

  Jan looked less agitated. “Next week, eh?” he said half to himself calculating the implications of the offer, then more directly, “I’m barely able to buy the ship, but yes, I want it. Can you get me the specifications for the 202X? Dackwiler really knew his stuff. If he said it was a lot better, then I believe him. Here is my debit card.” Jan handed over the card. That swipe nearly eradicated his account.

  In the four years since his mother’s death he had used up most of the cash, a few million credits, of his inheritance on the Space Quest.

  ~

  You only live once, he nervously mused, while he endured the long taxi journey to his place of employment. Mr. Freemen, the executor of his trust, would not be pleased, but at least Jan had a good job with Smith Mercantile. Rollum Freemen was his mother’s lawyer and the custodian of the trust his mother left him. According to Mr. Freemen, the trust would begin paying income, in Jan’s favor when he turned twenty-five, next year.

  And now, the next critical step, he needed permission for extra time off. The taxi continued on his way out of the city to his place of work twenty miles away. Jan reviewed the list he had made in his mind months ago. With his ship, he could finally complete it and start fulfilling his dream, the Space Quest.

  Jan walked into his small, sparsely furnished office to find a message stuck on his desk. He tapped a code on his keyboard and an urgent tag had been added to the appointment with his boss. Nothing good about that.

  The Office of Economic Planning was the heart of the administration of Smith Mercantile’s success. Analysts and planners dictated the future of billions of lives on the discovered and rediscovered planets that the company virtually owned. He had received quick promotions and was in charge of the routine planning for an entire planet after only 20 months on the job.

  He walked across a field of workstations to the other side of the building’s floor and took an elevator up to his superior’s office. He knocked and walked in. Herid Grodewell looked up from his holoscreen and asked Jan to sit down for a minute. While he sat, he continued to think about his immediate preparations for the Space Quest while he sat in Grodewell’s office.

  “Jan, I have reviewed your request for additional vacation leave for the Space Quest. You know that you are asking for an additional two standard months. I’m sure you have been told that these requests are routinely granted for Space Quest participants when the recipient has been willing to assign a ten percent share of his or her winnings to the company. I thought there would be no problem, but somehow it has gotten kicked up to the highest level. You are to see Artis Smith, himself, in 15 minutes. You’d better leave at once to get to the headquarters building on time.” He got up and shook Jan’s hand. “Good Luck.”

  Jan didn’t like the expression on Herid’s face, too much sympathy. He turned around and left the office with his stomach doing flips and his palms beginning to sweat. Jan’s relationship with his estranged father had turned out to be more of a hindrance than an advantage. Artis had only spoken briefly to Jan once since he joined Smith Mercantile, and then only because they had bumped into each other at a company function.

  ~

  Artis Smith’s office nearly glowed — white walls, white ceilings, white carpets. On two of the walls, motion paintings swirled and misted in pastel colors in mostly green and cream shades. Antique military displays from licensed planets flanked the main door. The remaining
long side of the room consisted of a huge window looking out onto a vista of meadows and farmland. In the distance, gray spires Impollon, the capital city of Impollon IV, shimmered in and out of focus along the edge of the low hills. Everything met his specifications.

  Artis sat in a white chair behind a white desk, the only furniture visible in the large room. Manipulating touchpads inset to the desk’s surface and voicing quiet commands, he looked on images that appeared in the air. His hands whirled and shifted as he punched the glass surface of his desk. A low tone broke his concentration. Artis quickly saved his work and shut down the screen. He took a deep breath to collect himself as his eyes rose to the office entrance.

  The door slid open. “Hello father,” Jan said as he stepped into the room.

  “Jan, come in and be seated,” Artis said as flatly as he could manage. His hands fingered the keys and a portion of the floor rose up and formed into a chair for the visitor and pointed to it. “Sit.”

  After a pause that Artis intentionally let go too long to put Jan off-stride, he began words that he had rehearsed over breakfast. “I know why you have come.” He put up his hand to forestall any comment from Jan. “And unfortunately I can’t do a thing to stop it.”

  “Stop what, sir?” Jan said.

  The boy had much too much composure for one so young. Artis barely restrained himself from frowning. The fact that they looked much alike including Artis’ blond hair when he was that young, only made talking to the boy more uncomfortable. “The company will have to let you go. You’ve asked for too much time.” Artis said, looking out the window avoiding Jan’s face. There were times in Artis’s life where he enjoyed lying, but this was not one of them.

  “But sir, Smith Mercantile is run by you.” Jan said, his composure was cracking. “They shouldn’t have made such a big issue of my being gone for six months to participate in the Space Quest. It’s been done lots of times. My work is sufficiently caught up that my absence will have minimal effect. Why fire me for asking?” Jan’s voice gave away escalating emotions. That only made the tableau worse in Artis’s mind.

  Artis waved his hand as if brushing an insect away from his face. “I might as well be honest, I don’t want you working for SM any longer. The leave you requested seems an easy enough excuse. I’ve never liked your involvement in my company, in fact, there are many in the organization who are extremely disappointed by your success. You... you are too much like your mother.” He let Jan stew for a bit before he continued.

  “You can go to the Quest this year, Jan. You can do whatever you want. I am sure you will find enough money to live in comfort for the rest of your life when your trust comes due. As for ready cash, you’ll quickly find another suitable position elsewhere. I heard you sunk most of your mother’s cash accounts on a ship.” Artis actually admired Jan’s focus on the contest. In many ways, he wished it were he going back out into space, finding more planets.

  Jan nodded. Artis could see him fighting a host of emotions within.

  The time had come to end the interview. “I wanted to personally release you from service with my company. Keep in mind that I’ve got my own family, the family I’m interested in, to occupy my time. You are not a member of that family and none of us are really comfortable with you poking around in our company. Our time is finished. Good bye and good luck on your Space Quest.” Artis punched the keys and Jan’s chair retracted slowly.

  Jan had to struggle to keep his balance as the chair disappeared. “I’ve known about your feelings for me.”

  Artis frowned despite his attempt to maintain a stoic face.

  “I have never asked for anything out of the ordinary,” Jan said. “Thanks for your candid remarks and for the brief opportunity I’ve had to help the company. At least I appreciate your telling me this in person. Your intent certainly hasn’t been misunderstood.” Jan, obviously tried to keep from looking bothered, but his flushed face betrayed him. He turned and left his father.

  As the door slid shut, Artis Smith’s eyes lingered on the space where his first child had stood. “I loved your mother, Jan. If not for the clash of our inner drives and egos, I could have continued to love her. All that’s much too late now, I cast the die that took you out of my life, long ago. Smith Mercantile is better off without you,” he said aloud dismissing with a wave, the now absent son.

  He turned his head and looked pensively out the windows at a dark storm gathering on the horizon threatening the city in the distance. Thoughts of Jan returned, unbidden and unwanted.

  “What storms have I sent you into? I’ll never know. I should care, but for now...” With a sigh of resignation, he made a hushed command and the screen shimmered to life again above his desk, drawing his full attention. He seemed to be talking to himself, but let his focus take him deep into his work, conversing with his computer connection—his encounter with his son all but forgotten.

  ~~~

  Chapter 2

  A jumble of thoughts raced through Jan’s mind as he stalked out of the reception building to the taxi line. Once aboard an air taxi, Jan collapsed. His reactions had gone from rage to a level of despair to, finally, resignation. Had he expected anything more from the father that disinherited his mother and her child fifteen years ago?

  What did Jan feel for his father? Certainly a pride for what the man had built up. Turning a small trading company into a commercial giant was no small feat. Both his mother and his father created the core concepts that got SM going, but Artis took that and, with his ruthless exploitation of the planets he virtually owned, built a massive enterprise. And now, although approaching retirement, Artis Smith still ran the company as if he were still young, succeeding by tapping into the tremendous drive that still existed within him. His awesome force of personality had barely diminished through the years.

  Yet, Jan also felt the smallness of a man who could not bear a wife who was not as morally flexible as he and, in many ways, was much smarter than him. Jan never knew nor understood the relationship, although he knew the source of its demise.

  At least I was fired by the top man, he thought to himself as the car abruptly rose into the air and disappeared toward the outlines of Impollon, currently in the clutches of a summer thunderstorm.

  ~~~

  Chapter 3

  Jan was ready for the next stage in his life and it would be a short one—the Space Quest. He made it through the week before he took delivery of his ship, continuing to work on his lists. The day came when he finally took possession of his ship and grinned the entire time from when he started it up to when he first broke through Impollon IV’s atmosphere. Now Jan owned a vehicle that could take him wherever he wanted in outer space and that meant the Space Quest.

  The Imperial Exploration and Salvage Administration sponsored the Space Quest. The IESA was the legal body that certified the discovery, rediscovery and classification of new planets. In the course of history, through wars and political upheavals, the sphere of mankind had expanded and contracted. As it expanded, planets were discovered and settled. As it contracted, civilization left pockets of people cut off from the mainstream of humanity. A major contraction had just ended and the Space Quest had been created to find the pockets and bring billions of human beings back into humanity’s outstretched arms.

  Men like Artis Smith had taken advantage of the situation and licensed newly discovered planets from the IESA for raw materials and rediscovered inhabited planets that could be exploited for cheap labor. If the rediscovered planets were insufficiently advanced technologically, they would be subject to the “custodianship” of a commercial entity. Some of those outstretched arms did not have the rediscovered planet’s inhabitants best interests in mind.

  Jan’s time with Smith Mercantile had taught him how to take every economic advantage of a licensed planet. He could go to another trading company and get a substantial position utilizing the experience he had gained at SM. In fact, if he was successful in getting a high placing in the Space Quest
, he could start his own company. Successful participation in the Space Quest had led to the blossoming of quite a few careers.

  The contest consisted of finding beacons that the IESA placed on newly-discovered planets. Getting through the Space Quest by finding more than a single beacon could make a man or woman’s career.

  He dropped into orbit around one of the three Space Quest training planets, known to entrants as Space Quest One, Two and Three.

  “Get us a landing slot, computer.”

  “You are granted permission to land at Narnum 344-Z-008.” a location-less voice stated to Jan. “If you are training for Space Quest, proceed to coordinate 12. If you are here for any other reason, proceed to coordinate 4.”

  “Coordinate 12,” Jan said. Excitement built within him. “Computer, what are the readouts on the planet; atmosphere, biologics, toxins, current weather.”

  “Space Quest One is an Earth-normal planet. Its atmosphere is Nitrogen/Oxygen in habitable concentrations. The autodoc is now ready to prepare you for the planet. It is currently midday at Coordinate 12. One solar day is 37 hours long. Please enter the autodoc. Treatment will take forty minutes. I will have all necessary telemetry ready prior to your entry into the autodoc,” the computer said.

  Jan was impressed with the level of sophistication of this 202X computer. On his initial Space Quest training on Impollon IV, he had to research a specific planet’s information for twenty minutes at his rented training ship’s autodoc terminal to arrive at the same data. He stepped to his terminal and verified the computer’s recommendations for five minute, finding no errors.

  Jan entered his second cabin and laid down on the autodoc. Jan had bought the most sophisticated autodoc he could buy. Dackwiler had told him that a good autodoc could mean life or death on a rediscovered planet. It looked like a bed on the bottom with a mechanical nightmare on the top. As the clear lid closed, a sedative wafted through the air. Jan drifted off and came to forty minutes later.