Theogony 1: Janissaries (2 page)

The president may not have caught on to the fact that they
were aliens before his security detail did, but he was an excellent politician
and backroom dealer, and he did well at connecting the dots. “You sound like
you have lots of personal experience with them. I take it from your statements,
Mr. Arges, that you have been on our planet for a long time.”

“You are perceptive, Mr. President,” said Arges. “Yes, we
have been here a long time. Please, call me Arges, not Mr. Arges. We do not go
by honorifics.”

“
I knew it!
” shouted Sara, coming back into the room
with a large book in her hand. In a more normal tone, she repeated, “I knew it,
I knew it, I
knew it!
” Everyone looked at her, surprised at her
outburst.

The president looked at Sara and raised his eyebrows at the
breach of protocol. “What exactly did you know?” he asked.

Looking at the president, Sara asked, “Have you ever heard
of the
Theogony
?” She looked back at the two male Psiclopes in time to see
a worried look pass between them.

“The Theogony?” asked the president. “No, I haven’t. It
sounds Greek, though. Something to do with gods or religion, maybe?”

“We had to read it in one of my Classics classes during my
freshman year at the University of Washington,” said Sara. “The
Theogony
was a story that was written down by Hesiod around 700 BC, but had probably
been told orally for a long time before that. The story tells about Zeus’
release of three Cyclopes from the pit of Tartarus. They helped Zeus overthrow
the Titans by giving him some gifts.” She smiled. “I had to go back and look it
up, but I thought I remembered it.”

Calvin looked at her quizzically. “Umm, thanks Sara, but I’m
not sure why we needed to know that.”

Sara playfully punched him in the arm. “There were three
Cyclopes that helped Zeus overcome the Titans.  Their names were…” she paused
for effect, “Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. I think we have the original
Cyclopes of legend here; there’s no way that those three names would be
together otherwise.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Brontes. “That’s us!”

Both Steropes and Arges looked at her sharply, and Calvin
could feel the tension between them as the two men stared at her. Finally,
Arges sighed. “Indeed, we are those Cyclopes of legend, although the name has
lost its original meaning over the ages. We had not intended to speak of this.
There are many things that you are not ready to know, and more that we are not
ready to tell.”

Sara looked at the book she had brought from her room. “The
Cyclopes were named Brontes ‘the thunderer,’ Steropes ‘the lightning,’ and Arges
‘the bright.’ In the
Theogony
, the Cyclopes provided weapons that were
used to help overthrow the Titans. They made a thunderbolt for Zeus, a helmet
of invisibility for Hades, and a trident for Poseidon. They also created
Artemis’ bow and arrows of moonlight and Apollo’s bow and arrows of sun rays.”

Steropes nodded, “Indeed we did, although those were just
our normal items; they just appeared to be magic to the humans of that time.
For example, a laser rifle could be explained as a bow that fired magic arrows
of sunlight. With a little different frequency laser, voila, it now has
moonlight arrows. No big deal.”

He paused, composing his thoughts. “As I was saying, much of
human civilization at the time was located in the center of the Pacific on an
island where the Marianas Trench is now. Generally, we Psiclopes stay awake for
about ten years, but then we have to rest and meditate for a year. We had been
here for some time, watching you, when a Drakul ship landed while we were in
one of our meditative states. A human named Zeus happened to stumble into our
cave while fleeing them, and he succeeded in waking Arges from his meditative
state.”

Arges took up the tale, “I quickly deduced that the
adversary he was fleeing was a Drakul and woke the rest of the team. We armed
the humans, and the Drakuls were beaten back. The humans took horrific losses,
but there were only ten Drakuls; even losing 100 humans to every Drakul, that
still was less than 1,000 humans killed. When the last couple of Drakuls saw
that they were going to lose, they detonated a large antimatter weapon, hoping
to crack the planet and destroy human civilization for all time.”

“The Drakuls didn’t blow up the planet,” said Steropes, “but
they did succeed in blowing up the island and causing a tidal wave that circumnavigated
the surface of the planet, scattering the few humans that survived literally to
the ends of the earth. Zeus happened to survive the blast and ended up in
Greece afterwards.”

“Let me guess,” started Sara. “The cave you were in was
named…”

“It was named Tartarus by the locals,” finished Steropes
with a sigh.

“I’m curious,” asked Ryan pursing his lips. “Were you part
of the assault on the Drakuls, or did you let the humans do all of the dying?”

“Our religion forbids us to kill or take a life in any way,”
said Arges, “no matter how repugnant that life form may be. We practice ahinsa,
which is a belief in kindness and non-violence towards all living things,
including animals, because the energy of all living things is connected. Avoidance
of verbal and physical violence is imperative because violence engenders negative
karmic consequences.”

Calvin looked puzzled, both due to the big words, as well as
the implications of what Arges was saying. “How is it, if you can’t fight or
kill, that you haven’t been wiped out by some other civilization?”

“Although it is against our beliefs to fight and kill,”
explained Steropes, “it is not against our code to hire others to do so when
necessary. It may seem to you that this is morally ambiguous, but to us it is
permissible, when undertaken for reasons of self-defense and species’
propagation. Like now for instance. In the past we have often hired other races
to crew our ships and fight our battles for us. Are you familiar with the term
‘Janissaries?’”

“I think so,” answered Ryan. “Aren’t those the Christian kids
that the Persians took and raised as a group to fight for the Persian Empire?”

“How the
hell
did you know that?” asked Calvin,
stunned. He’d never heard of Janissaries before.

“Easy,” said Ryan, “my mom was a Persian who fled Iran when
the Shah fell. She wanted to raise me with a sense of my cultural background.
She made me take classes in Persian history.”

Arges nodded. “Master Chief is correct,” he said. “Many
times we have used Janissary-like races to fight our battles. Although we will
not take a life, there are many like you who will. The last time we fought the Drakuls,
we used a Janissary race called the Eldive. That was a terrible time and a
horrific confrontation. During the conflict, the Drakuls tracked a damaged vessel
back to the Eldive home planet and blew up their world with a series of
world-breaker bombs. The Eldive fleet was only crewed with males; the Eldive
did not believe in allowing their females to fight. Because of this, all of
their females were lost when their home world was destroyed. Believing they had
nothing left to live for, the Eldive fleet conducted a suicide attack on the Drakuls’
home planet, which was guarded by a massive fleet. They destroyed the Drakul
home world and most of their fleet with kamikaze-style assaults; what few
Drakul ships survived were attended to by one of our other Janissary fleets. We
thought that we had eradicated them from the galaxy, but it appears that we may
have been mistaken.”

“This does, however, get us back to the point,” Brontes said
after a couple of seconds of shared sorrow as they relived the events. “We have
a spaceship to go and find out why the communication relay has stopped working,
but we do not have a crew for it. It is cruiser-sized, necessitating a crew of
around 400 people, not counting its indigenous air wing. If you intend to man
that, you’ll need another 100 people to operate the half skrong of Zeebats.”

“What the hell is a half skrong of Zeebats?” inquired Ryan.

“A skrong is the basic combat unit of fighters,” said
Steropes. “Each skrong is a double handful, or 12, fighters. A half skrong is
six. Our recommendation is to at least bring Calvin to fly one of them.
Eventually, you will need pilots for all of them if we continue to use the ship,
so it is better to start flying them sooner rather than later.”

“COOL!” said Calvin. “I’m in! Where do I sign? Is a Zeebat a
type of fighter or just the word that means ‘fighter?’”

“A Zeebat is a type of fighter, one of the most up-to-date
ones that we have,” said Arges. “There are other types of craft that can be
used in a variety of strategic, operational and tactical situations, but none
of them are on the ship, aside from our two shuttle craft.”

“How up-to-date is ‘up-to-date?’” asked Calvin.

“The schematics for them are only 3,000 of your years old,”
said Arges. “They were the most tactically-relevant fighters that existed when
we came here.”

“Oh,” said Calvin, crushed. “So they are the tactical equivalent
of driving my grandfather’s car?”

“The answer to your question is unknown at this time,”
replied Arges, “as it is impossible to know the extent to which the rest of the
galaxy has improved its armaments. The Zeebat had just been developed by the
Eldive at the time of the climactic battle; it is unlikely that the Drakuls got
the opportunity to disassemble and reverse engineer them. Assuming they haven’t
captured any fighters from another advanced culture, the Zeebat was a ‘next
generation’ fighter, to use your terminology, beyond anything the Drakuls had
at the time. Please remember, they are not theoretical scientists. Their
talents lie in reverse engineering other civilizations’ craft, not in inventing
armaments of their own.” He paused, considering. “Regardless, I believe that
you will still be impressed with the functioning of the Zeebat, Calvin. While
the design is 3,000 years old to us, it is still several hundred years beyond
anything you would likely have derived on your own, barring an unlikely
breakthrough in technology.”

“Okay,” said Calvin, looking a little happier.

“Everyone is getting a little ahead of themselves,” remarked
the president. “While there’s no doubt that we will help you, we can’t just go
flying off without working out how all of this is to take place. Certainly,
we’ll need to bring in some senior officers to determine how we want to man
this ship that
no one has even seen yet
.” He looked at Calvin. “You, in
particular, may be a little junior for this mission.” Calvin’s face fell at the
news.

“Oh, no,” said Arges, “we definitely want Lieutenant Hobbs
onboard. We have been scrutinizing his performance for a while now, and he
must
be the leader of the military forces with us. In fact, we would like to have
the entire unit that he led during your latest conflict onboard the ship with
us. They have proven that they are able to successfully adapt to constantly
changing situations.”

“In that case, I’m sure that Lieutenant Hobbs’ participation
can be arranged,” agreed President Jacobs. “What help and support can we expect
from you?”

“We will provide all of the things necessary for this
mission,” said Steropes. “The ship, arms and armor for the troops, the Zeebats,
and everything else that is needed. We will also begin making our technology
available so that your country will have access to it. If you are to have any
chance against the Drakuls, your economy will need to expand beyond anything it
has ever seen previously, as will the rest of the planet. You have not yet
begun to see the horror that is the Drakuls. Pray that you never do.”

“I will need to go back to Washington and talk with some
people to see what we can do to support you,” said the president. “The first
thing that we will need is a point of contact at one of the bases nearby where
you can use a secure phone, because I do NOT want this information getting out
until we are ready for it.” He gave the group a look that included the Sommers,
as well as the military personnel. “I don’t know how long all of you have known
about our new friends, but you have already proven your discretion. To say that
this is a matter of national security would be the understatement of the
century. If what they say is true, it is a matter of
global
security. We
cannot allow this information to get out to the media or to any of the other
countries before we are ready. The panic and chaos it would cause would be
overwhelming!”

* * * * *

“All right,” said President Bill Jacobs, looking around the Deep
Underground Command Center’s (DUCC) new conference room, “What are our options
for assisting the Psiclopes?” Four years and nearly a billion dollars in the
making, the DUCC had become operational a couple of years earlier. Originally
envisioned in 1963, the command center was built to provide a facility for key decision
makers in times of crisis. It was constructed to survive any attack made on the
United States, while giving leaders access to the people and information they
needed to make critical decisions. As the president and his team needed to be
able to access the DUCC at a moment’s notice, it was built under the West Wing
of the White House. With over 100,000 square feet of space, it was built to
house a staff of over 300 people. It was still so new, though, that most of the
people who would inhabit it in an emergency hadn’t moved in yet, and the lack
of ‘personalization’ led to what the president thought was a very austere
working environment. Even the walls were blank and boring. It was, however, the
most secure facility on the planet, which made it the ideal place to hold this
meeting. Even the Psiclopes, he thought, wouldn’t be able to spy on them here.

The president had asked all of the military service chiefs
to join him in the DUCC, as well as the Secretary of State and the heads of the
CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security. All of them had been read into ‘Olympos,’ a
new, special access clearance program that had been established for dealing
with the Psiclopes. If you weren’t in the program, you didn’t know about the
Psiclopes. Period.

The meeting itself was a ‘ghost meeting,’ similar to the
meetings that were held in preparation for the mission to capture Osama Bin
Laden seven years previously. The meeting wasn’t on the attendees’ calendars.
No staff or aides were present, no agenda was written down, and no notes were
taken. In fact, the only paper in the room was a pile of folders in front of
the army’s chief of staff.

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral James Wright,
spoke first. “The most difficult part of this is going to be finding a crew of
400 sailors to man their ship. You can’t just take that many people away and
not have it be noticed. The only thing worse than grabbing a crew of 400 from
one of our ships would be to try to take 400 people in small numbers from all
over the navy. People might not notice as quickly, but then it won’t be a
‘crew;’ no one will be used to working with anyone else and things won’t flow
as easily as if the group all came from the same unit. It would also make
trying to select who goes a nightmare. It’s far better to use a full ship’s
crew. We can’t have people trying to work things out in space ‘on the fly.’ 

Most of the senior officers in the room nodded their heads,
with the exception of the air force’s chief of staff, General Joseph Simms, who
was sitting next to the CNO. The air force had fought hard to be the branch of
the military selected to man the spaceship, although the navy had been chosen.
The chief of staff’s hand went up.

“If I may,” he said, “the air force has come up with a
variety of manning solutions that we would be happy to implement.” The chief of
staff’s tone of voice always sounded whiney to the president and grated on his
nerves. Especially when he was more interested in jockeying for position than
solving the problem at hand.

“Damn it, general, we have been over this!” said the
president, raising his voice. “The decision has been made to use the navy to man
the ship. Don’t waste my time on your inter-service rivalry!” The president
wanted to squash this early, or it would linger throughout the meeting. While
all of the services had worked together well during the Sino-American War,
things were rapidly going back to the way they were before it.

 “Well, we still have those solutions, if anyone wants to
look at them,” General Simms muttered.

“Anyway,” said the CNO, “we have decided that it is better
to use the crew of a ship so that they have unit cohesion. Space is too
unforgiving to do otherwise.” He looked around, but no one disagreed this time.
“It looks like we can use the crew of the USS
Vella Gulf
,” he said. “The
ship is about to make its last deployment before being decommissioned. There
are about 35 officers and 350 enlisted on the
Vella Gulf
, putting it
right at the target number the Psiclopes said was necessary to run their ship
effectively.”

“Won’t people miss a ship like that?” asked the president.

“We’ve already begun working on a cover story that will
help,” answered the CNO. “Instead of deploying with the carrier battle group,
it will deploy for independent anti-piracy operations. Before they deploy, the
ship will have a communications failure that will prevent the crew from having
internet access while on deployment. That way, families won’t expect to be in
contact with them on a daily basis. We’ll work out the rest of the deception
plan as we go along.”

“Sounds good,” said the president.

“Moving on to the air wing,” continued the CNO, “we have
come up with several options. For the same reasons listed previously, it is
better to take a squadron, or part of a squadron, and keep it together for the
ship’s deployment. As we really don’t know much about the fighter craft that
the Psiclopes have, well, nothing really, we thought that the best solution
would be to pull one of the Hornet squadrons that just got back from cruise.
They are used to flying with each other and their re-deployment won’t affect
any of our long-term plans.”

“As I understand it, Lieutenant Hobbs squadron was just
about to go
on
cruise, not come back from it. Isn’t that correct?” asked
the president.

“Well, yes, sir, that is correct,” said the CNO. “That
squadron, the Blue Blasters of VFA-34, is due to go on cruise in a couple of
months. Pulling them from the deployment schedule now would cause a huge
disruption to our rotation, so I thought it would be better to use a different
squadron.”

“
IS NO ONE LISTENING TO WHAT I AM SAYING?
” roared the
president. He was a big man with a big voice, and he used every decibel he had
at his disposal. He took off a few decibels as he continued, “There is a race
of cannibals that may be coming this way. They are technologically
way
ahead of us. We need to do everything possible to get ready to meet this
challenge. The only thing that we have going for us is a group of three aliens
who need our help. These aliens have only asked for a couple of things, one of
which is to have Lieutenant Hobbs’ group be part of the manning for this
mission.
I don’t know why they want this group, but damn it, that group is
going to be part of this mission! Am I clear on this?
”

“Yes sir!” said a chastised and embarrassed CNO. The people
on both sides of the CNO looked embarrassed just to be sitting next to him.

“Good!” said the president at a volume that was not, quite,
yelling. “We don’t have time for hidden agendas. We don’t have time for
inter-service rivalry. We don’t have time for anything that doesn’t make us
stronger as a nation! We don’t just stand to lose;
WE STAND TO GET EATEN!
I, for one, do NOT want to be on any alien’s menu, especially ten foot tall
carnivorous frogs that suck the blood out of their victims while they are still
alive!” Several of the people in the room had obviously not heard about the
dietary practices of the Drakuls, and there were many faces around the table
that went decidedly green with the announcement.

“Now,” said the president, calming himself, “can we get past
all of this crap and figure out how we are going to not just preserve our way
of life, but that of our entire planet?” He looked around to see everyone
nodding in agreement. “Good,” he said. He looked at the CNO and asked,
“So...what are we going to do about the attached air wing?”

“The other option we looked at, which I think would probably
work better, is to use four pilots from the Blue Blasters,” replied the CNO,
“including Lieutenant Hobbs. We will also use four pilots from the U.S. Air
Force (USAF), to be drawn from the F-35 community. That way, we are better able
to spread out the experience that they will get on this mission, so that they
can train more pilots in both of the services upon their return.”

“Out-
STANDING
!” said the president, rubbing his hands
together. “Now we’re starting to make some progress here. Just maybe we
can
save the world, after all.” He looked at the army’s chief of staff, General
John Dixon. “What is the plan for the ground force?”

General Dixon was more of a rule follower than the other
senior officers. A prior Ranger who was used to getting hard tasks and
accomplishing them, he had worked closely with his five ‘Olympos’ staff members
to develop a plan that met the president’s goals. While some people might
uncharitably call him a ‘suck-up,’ he considered himself to be an excellent
staff officer that worked hard to exceed his boss’ expectations. A short man at
5’6”, exceeding expectations was a trait that had carried him through the ranks
of the Rangers. He just out-worked the competition. He looked at the Secretary
of State, Isabel Maggiano, and said, “The Secretary of State and I have come up
with several options for the ground force. As I understand it, the ship has
room for approximately 35 ground force members, not counting Lieutenant Hobbs,
who will be the unit’s commander.”

General Dixon pulled out a sheet of notes from the top
folder. “Based on his lack of training, Lieutenant Hobbs would not be my first
choice for the position, but I understand the need to have him in charge. I
know that he did well during the war; however, I think it’s important for his
XO to be very experienced, so I have a First Lieutenant from the army’s Delta
Force in that position. Normally, a platoon doesn’t have two officers, but I
thought it would be appropriate in this case, especially as Lieutenant Hobbs
will have other duties as a pilot, as well. The officer that I have in mind is
a prior enlisted soldier, with lots of special forces time under his belt.” The
president nodded. That made good sense and met the desires of the Psiclopes,
while still strengthening their force.

The general continued, “The rest of the platoon will be
broken down into two forces. The first of these, the ‘space force,’ will be
made up of 16 men led by Master Chief Ryan O’Leary. These men and women will
primarily train for combat in space. There will be another 16 men, under the
leadership of Master Sergeant Aaron Smith, who will be primarily responsible
for any ground-based combat. Although both groups will have their own areas of
expertise, both will also cross-train in the other’s specialty, so that both
groups can be prepared for all occasions.” He looked up at the president and
said, “That part is all pretty straight-forward. Here’s where Isabel and I have
come up with some options for you. If you are going to brief any of the other
countries about the Psiclopes and this mission, we would like to include them
in the make-up of this force. It will allow them to participate and will
hopefully strengthen our ties with them. It will also allow us to bring in some
other experience and ways of thinking.”

He paused, looking around the room. “The bottom line,” he
continued, “is that we just don’t know what our troops will face out there.
Having a diverse group, with a wide variety of experience, will help them to
survive any situation.”

“That makes good sense,” said the president. “I had been
weighing whether to tell our allies before the mission or afterwards. I think I
will tell them ahead of time and try to get you the people you are looking
for.” He paused. “You have obviously been giving this some thought. Who are you
looking to recruit for the mission?”

“The Secretary of State and I
have
discussed this
quite a bit,” he agreed. “Here’s our plan.” He looked down at his notes.
“First, we’d like to reward our allies that came in on our side of the war. Not
only to show that we appreciated their support, but to tie them into our plans
going forward. Once it comes out that we have made extraterrestrial contact,
the political arena is going to be a nightmare.” General Dixon looked at the
president. “I don’t envy you at all with that,” he commented, “but Mrs.
Maggiano and I have tried to help make that transition smoother.”

He looked at the list. “Japan and Korea both risked a lot to
join us and helped make our defense of Taiwan a success, especially Japan. I
would like to have one of the Japanese Special Forces Group soldiers and a
Korean soldier from their 707th Special Mission Battalion. The Brits have
always stood by our side, and I would like to have one of their Special Air
Service troops for the ground force and a Special Reconnaissance Regiment
soldier for the space force. Also from our NATO allies, I would recommend a
German soldier from their Paratrooper Battalion 263 and an Italian Naval
Special Forces sailor. The last three would come from nations that helped in
the war: a sailor from the Australian Navy’s clearance diving teams, a
Chilean combat air controller and a member of India’s Commando Battalion for
Resolute Action, their COBRA group.”

“Nice touch on including India,” the president said. “Their
moving troops toward the Chinese border was very helpful in ending the
conflict, and it will be good to have their billion people on our side moving
forward, both for the economic engine they can bring, as well as for a
counterweight against further Chinese aggression.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Isabel Maggiano. The Secretary of
State was a short and stocky woman who always wore some of the tallest
high-heeled shoes she could find so that she didn’t have to look up as far at
her contemporaries. “We also looked at the Russian Spetsnaz, Israeli Egoz
Reconnaissance unit and French Naval Commandos, but each of those nations comes
with baggage. The Russians are still mad at us for sinking their destroyer
during the war. They might have kept the secret, but they might not have, just
to spite us. Having the Israelis would have caused a lot of difficulty with all
of the Arab nations, especially since none of them are included. As far as the
French go, they were the only NATO nation to not give us their full support
during the war, and anyone they sent might be more interested in industrial
espionage than in helping the team.”