The Oort Federation: To the Stars

Oort Station Prime-Detention Facility

OORT STATION PRIME—DETENTION FACILITYAs a jail, it wasn’t much, a room with two beds, a couple of tables, a Link, and a small bathroom with a shower. What made it unique is that it was part of the OS Prime cylinder. It had eight windows, two facing outward, away from the Solar System, two facing toward the Solar System, two facing the direction of rotation, and two facing away from the direction of rotation. There were two ways into the room—through the airlock from space and through a one-way portal. The only way out was through the airlock, unless someone entered carrying a hyper-disk.

Two captured Asterians lived in the facility, Adrhun Gloalorn, from Aster’s inner planet Frohlic, and Masin Arcah, from the second planet in Aster’s life zone, Rogan.

The aliens were bipedal humanoids with six digits on each hand and foot. They were shorter and stockier than the average human, with skin tone ranging from light to dark tan, judging from the two captives. Their faces were much like human faces with flattened noses and very thin lips. Their ears articulated like cat ears, and their hair looked like human hair.

Adm. Jerry Culp received his exalted rank during the workup for the Asterian invasion. Before that, he was a U.S. Navy SEAL Commander. President John Butler had loaned Culp and fifteen of his SEALS to the Oort Federation to assist in setting up defenses and rooting out resistance from Chinese and Russian dissidents. Culp and his people stayed on after the attack, becoming the nucleus of the nascent Oort Federation Space Force (FeSFo). His former SEAL team members formed a Special Operations division under Master Chief Petty Officer Sam Bunker. All Culp’s people had been uploaded. The uploads were part of the force and, except for Petty Officer First-class Cameron Goff, worked together with their flesh-and-blood counterparts. The flesh-and-blood Goff had been killed with nerve poison by Chinese dissidents.

Culp assigned Bunker the task of managing the two Asterians. Bunker was shorter than most of his men but strong as an ox with lightning reflexes—about the size and build of an Asterian. No one had been able to best him in one-on-one combat, and he gave an excellent account of himself when there were four or five. Like Culp, he was fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, and Cantonese, but his fluency was less eloquent, more attuned to the street lingo of his potential opponents. When he received his current assignment, he resolved to learn the languages of his two prisoners, surmising such knowledge would come in handy someday.

Bunker took charge of the Asterians the moment the lab people released them following their capture. They were definitely different from each other. One, who identified himself as Adrhun Gloalorn, was lighter-skinned with lighter hair. The other looked like he had spent a lot of time in the sun, and his hair was dark. He called himself Masin Arcah. Both were about Bunker’s height and stocky build. They had flattened noses like south sea islanders, but with virtually no lips. Oddly, their ears were higher on the head than humans and resembled cats’ ears, rotating to locate a sound source.

When they were released to Bunker, they wore coverall-like military uniforms, tan for Gloalorn and rose for Arcah, that clearly had not been cleaned since their capture. By gesture and example, Bunker got them to remove their clothing, outer and inner layers, for cleaning. He gave each a robe, but it appeared to him that they had no body shame. Their external anatomy was similar to human—genitalia, vestigial mammary glands, and body hair, but they also sported a five-centimeter tail from their tailbone.

Bunker held no malice against the Asterians. He figured they were pilots doing their jobs, far distant from strategic decisions. They obviously were glad to be alive, and Bunker was more than willing to accommodate their needs—within the framework of their being captured enemy warship pilots.

Bunker assigned Petty Officer Second Class Lars Watson, his former platoon medic, to work with him and the Asterians. Every day they spent hours looking at pictures of objects and other things, identifying their alien names, and teaching the Asterians their English names.

“Master Chief,” Watson said during the first such session, “I think these guys speak different languages. The words Arcah supplies for objects are not exactly the same as those from Gloalorn.”

“I agree. Let’s try to determine their planets of origin.”

Bunker showed them a sketch of the Solar System with the inner planet orbits. He pointed to Earth and said, “Earth.” Then he pointed at Watson and himself.

From his Link, he projected an image of the Solar System and their home star Aster. He pointed to the Solar System and then to Watson and himself. The Asterians got it. On a piece of paper, Gloalorn sketched their sun, Aster, and then four planets. He vocalized the name of the third planet, “Frohlic,” and pointed at his chest.

Arcah pointed to the fourth planet, vocalized its name, “Rogan,” and pointed at himself.

Slowly over many long days, Bunker and Watson began to comprehend bits and pieces of both languages and gain an understanding of the Asterians’ backgrounds. Long ago, they were one people living on Frohlic, speaking many languages. Eventually, the Frohlicans consolidated into a single, integrated people with a single language. Once they achieved space travel, they discovered Rogan, habitable, but uninhabited.

They colonized Rogan, but eventually, the two cultures went to war. The war drove both civilizations back to pre-industrialization. Over a thousand years, they worked themselves back up to becoming spacefaring again, with two different languages and two entirely different cultures. Beyond that, they refused to elaborate.

The Asterians spent much of their time on their Link, perfecting their English and learning about Earth’s history, its many cultures, and about the Oort Federation. Watson showed them current men’s clothing fashions and asked what they wanted. Both declined, stating that they preferred an extra set of their Asterian military officers’ uniforms. Watson made the arrangements.

To Bunker, the Asterians obviously knew they were constantly being monitored. They found a way to communicate with each other privately.

“Maybe it’s something like our Pig-Latin,” Watson told Bunker.

“And maybe not,” Bunker said, “but does it matter?” He grinned. “They’re not going anywhere, and their ability to conspire to anything is almost non-existent. I’m going to recommend to the admiral that we gain their trust by giving them some time each day without any monitoring.”