A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, rendered and then overlaid on blue
Elian Bodega was known as the mild-mannered full fleet admiral – until he wasn't. The full fleet admiral and high command meeting after the Suliibruum Scream incident was bound to be intense, because needing to reverse a settlement decision made by the consortium the fleet served was always a problem, and when said system was 900 million people deep, that was a logistical nightmare.
Admiral Bodega, to his credit, had pulled off one of the greatest evacuations in fleet history – roughly 900 million settlers into the system over 45 years, roughly 900 million settlers out in less than 45 days. But he was not feeling like a hero.
“I was fifty years and almost everlastingly too late because we as a fleet are decades behind listening to the people who are combining the science with sensitivity to the fact that other sentient beings have their own realities that have nothing to do with what we want to do in that region – and we don't even know where we are also behind in other regions!”
“Who is going to tell Admiral Bodega about the latest boondoggle?” Lt. Cmdr. James Doohan, my third-in-command, said to me.
“That's an admiral's job,” I said. “Admiral Banneker-Jackson is crashing that whole party while we get the decontamination supplies we are going to need in order.”
My first officer, Cmdr. Helmut Allemande, paused for a moment to rub his massive hand across his forehead to deal with the tension headache that had hit him. It was his fleet family's turn to realize that in spite of their efforts, disaster had struck again from decades away.
The creature in the above picture is among the most beautiful and desirable in the galaxy to the human mind … crystals of gold in sky-blue fountains, self-contained in a beautiful creature that floats on its native planet's winds. Notably, no humanoid life lives on that planet, and also notably, the beautiful creatures use naturally occurring oil fields for nesting.
The consortium had approved five of the available six planets for settlement 47 years earlier.
One of the regional neighbors was not happy, and figured out how to market the creatures from the sixth planet as a kind of living Chinese lantern that bought good luck and prosperity – so the humans brought them over to decorate their evening and night skies on every planet.
Bonus points: when the creatures die, they tend to do so in the air, quite suddenly, no old age or decline notable to the casual observer, and leave no mess with an almost complete combustion – occasional fireworks, thrown in.
I assure you that if you were made of 70 percent radioactive cesium both in gaseous and crystal form, you would look that good, expire that spectacularly, and create that big of a mess. So long as the creature's oil-rich skin and impressive internal pressure tolerances kept all that out of air and water, there was no problem, but after 47 years of life cycles on five planets of those creatures dying in the air and raining cesium dust, there was a big problem.
What got my first officer's attention was the disappearance of half a settlement – a windstorm had blown one of the “living lanterns” out of the sky into a house, and the resulting explosion and fire had been ferocious and made everyone in the area very ill from radiation poisoning. Among the people assigned to the cleanup was Lt. Cmdr. Konrad Allemande, who reported to his cousin Helmut that, “it is literally like a small nuclear bomb hit, and we know nothing that humans brought to the settlement should have had that kind of reaction. Alert the fleet, and especially Adm. Banneker-Jackson: something is wrong!”
But, in reality, the person who had left the note 47 years earlier was another cousin, retired Commodore Wilhelm Allemande, who as a lieutenant commander had observed the beautiful creatures in their own inhospitable planetary habitat. He was credited as the discoverer of cesium-based life, and had noted: “These creatures need our protection, and in doing so we will protect ourselves. They are safe here, and we are only safe with them here.”
Konrad had gotten a phone call from Wilhelm, and both of them had called Helmut, who had called me, his captain, and my uncle, Adm. Banneker-Jackson, to the call. I called Adm. Bodega, but he was heading to Earth for the high command meeting … so, his adjutant fleet admiral, Joshua Feldstein, ordered us to run Adm. Banneker-Jackson out to crash that meeting and he would get permission, and then to make best speed to meet the flotilla he was reorganizing out of the evacuation fleet for the purposes of both medical evacuation and decontamination.
No rear admiral has ever dared crash a high command meeting. It's like bringing an ensign to a captain's conference. However, Adm. Feldstein set it up well, and, besides, a retired commodore was going to crash it anyway.
Cmdr. Allemande, and also cousin Konrad, are very soft-spoken. Commodore Allemande, being retired, not caring about his pension at already 95 years old, and sick at heart about the millions of lives affected that he had done the work to spare? Not so much.
“Everybody doesn't take being overlooked as well as your uncle does,” my first officer said to me about that. “My commodore cousin has a temper, and it is not often roused, but when you try to save lives for people 47 years in advance and nobody listens … and he and his wife will have to move in with my side of the family and specifically into my house, because no one else has the patience to listen to all that for the rest of his life!”
"Eure geliebte Community," I said gently. "Your beloved community."
"Ihre Deutsch wird immer besser, meine Kapitänin," he purred. "Your German is improving, Captain ... and I appreciate that you said that. Ursula, my wife, is of one mind with me even in these modern times, and even though so much of the burden lies on her because that is the nature of life as a fleet wife with husband in active service: we have to look after the old growlers, and she and the cousins in my branch of the family stay with that. Cousin Wilhelm is about to join the list, because he is not going to take this, and it will cost him everything."
Suffice it to say that the retired commodore was ready to assert his civilian no-longer-professional privileges, cuss the high command clean out in every European language he speaks, and burn his pension qualifications on the floor floor like cesium combusting in contact with air, but Adm. Bodega, having called the meeting, rose to the moment and also cured Cmdr. Allemande's headache.
“The high command has decided to set up a fleet working group to examine settlement decisions that may be missing key details such as you and Adm. Banneker-Jackson provided in your field career as science officers. I am glad you are here, and we will overlook the breach of procedure because of the gravity of the matter. Adm. Banneker-Jackson, would you mind if the commodore presents his own work?
“Not at all – please, Commodore, take my chair because you know I have these bionic legs and I can stand for days.”
So he did – quite vigorously, especially accounting for his age, and again, Adm. Bodega rose to the moment.
“Commodore, I see your recall is still very sharp – would you accept being recommissioned to be added to the working group led by Adm. Banneker-Jackson?”
“Most of the rest of the high command other than Triefield and Chulalaangkorn among the admirals are not worth a naked mouse's life in a German winter,” the commodore growled to his first officer cousin later, “but Elian Bodega is a mensch.” Quite a compliment from an old German about a non-German, indeed!
The elder Allemande's first recommendation to the fleet working group about said beautiful but utterly deadly creature: “Change the marketing materials so that people most likely to turn around and do the same foolishness again understand!”
Same pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, rendered and then overlaid in a different way on black!
And so, this much more threatening photograph has been used ever since to keep the survivors of that incident, wherever they were resettled, from even thinking of poaching creatures from inhospitable planets next door. The people who handled the poaching, where not dead of cancer and other forms of high-radiation harms, were also fined and jailed.
This, with the Suliibruum Scream incident, was a big wake-up call for the whole consortium about not only where to settle humans on new worlds, but who to send – the application process desperately needed an overhaul, and meanwhile, my uncle, the elder Allemande, and thousands of other people began the search through time, space, science, and culture to head off incidents like this in the making and also, in the future.
“And, Wilhelm is no longer growling and is happy,” the commodore's wife told me, “and he adores your uncle as much as Cousin Helmut does – he said Benjamin Banneker-Jackson is a real mensch too!”
“It's gotta be like a fleet reunion for a lot of those old guys,” Lt. Cmdr. Doohan said to me.
“But under circumstances we hope that, when we get to their age, we already have done the work to head off the need for a reunion like this,” I said. “They and we are going to be plenty busy, working that out.”