The Black Ships
THE
BLACK SHIPS
Published by A.G. Claymore
Edited by B.H. MacFadyen
Copyright 2012 A.G. Claymore
This is a work of fiction.
Names, Characters, Places, Incidents and Brands are either products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark
status and trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction
which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these
trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark
owners.
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The
Black Ships
Japanese
Edo Period Kyoka
Awoken from sleep
of a peaceful quiet world
by Jokisen tea;
with only four cups of it
one can't sleep even at night.
Deliberate
Alternate Meaning
The steam-powered ships
break the halcyon slumber
of the Pacific;
a mere four boats are enough
to make us lose sleep at night.
Red Flag Mineral Co.
Sixty Meter Observatory
Mauna Kea, Hawaii
January 3rd, 2026
F
our degrees below freezing.
Mike Willsen
shivered as he crossed the atrium beneath the massive telescope array.
You’d
never know it was Hawaii.
The huge room was actually colder than the
outside. The heaters didn’t serve the large central space so it tended to
preserve the night-time cold until well into the afternoon.
He stopped at a steel door and keyed in his
passcode. The bolts in the door retracted with a low metallic groan and he
entered the control room, located off to the left side of the huge central
area. He shuddered in appreciation as he passed through the door, greeted by a
wave of heat and the scent of old coffee.
They had better coffee at the Onikuza
Center, where he always stopped on the way up, but he preferred to have his
caffeine while he worked. It was part of his comfortable weekly ritual –
drinking stale crystal coffee and recording images from other planets.
His regular stops at the center down the
slope weren’t optional. At an elevation of just under 14,000 feet, the
atmospheric pressure at the observatory was forty percent less than at Mike’s
apartment in Hilo. Without his two-hour stop at the Visitor Information Center,
he knew from experience that he would suffer from severe headaches and poor
judgment – well, worse than usual. As it was, he barely trusted himself
to drive the last few miles for fear he would send his jeep crashing over the
edge of the rough road.
He had come to admire the people of Tibet –
many of them lived their lives at even higher elevations.
Though the sixty-meter array was shared by
a large collection of universities and national agencies, this morning was set
aside for Red Flag’s weekly mapping of their facility on the Olympus Mons site.
Every week, for corporate records, Mike would record imagery of the tailings
ejected from tunnels bored into the side of the twenty-seven-kilometer-high
volcano in the Tharsis region of Mars. So far, the small team hadn’t managed to
find anything that would even come close to paying off the company’s
investment, but Red Flag had deep pockets and a long outlook. Though the miners
sent regular reports back to Earth, Red Flag wanted the imagery and so Mike had
to make his weekly pilgrimage. The rest of his telescope time was spent mapping
out likely locations for deposits throughout the solar system but it wasn’t as
time sensitive. He could do that remotely.
Mike walked over to the six-meter touch
screen that controlled the mirror and selected a macro that ran the imaging
process for him. He could set it to run remotely but, if it failed and he
wasn’t here, there’d be hell to pay.
Considering the carefree lifestyle he
enjoyed, driving up the mountain every few days to press a few buttons was a
small price. He enjoyed decent pay and very little in the way of
responsibility.
His only other tangible role was as a
liaison to the NASA center, farther down the slopes of the mountain. In recent
years, Red Flag had begun to turn their enormous resources to off-planet
exploration. With the growing Sino-American space rivalry, it was only a matter
of time before extra-terrestrial sources of ore would become commercially
viable. Red Flag had been working closely with NASA and the ISS for several
years and had managed to include a small, exploratory mining mission when the
ISS had launched the Vinland colony to Mars the previous year. It was little
more than a hole in the ground and a small habitat, but the potential payoff,
if there
was
a payoff, was enormous.
Habitation on Mars was now a fact, though a
very fragile one. It wouldn’t be long before a local source of minerals would
be needed to support the next steps.
Mike’s claim to fame at the NASA compound
was his specialty in geology. His first doctorate had been in physics but upon
its completion he had realized that he had no desire to go out into the ‘real
world’, as his father liked to describe it. He had developed a sudden passion
for rocks and soils, much to his father’s dismay, and had launched himself back
into the world of academics.
As he approached the end of his masters
degree in geology, his father had made it quite clear that he would no longer
support his academic inclinations and that he had better open his mind to the
possibility of getting a job. That conversation had terrified Mike. He really
couldn’t see how others did it – going out there and finding an employer, being
responsible for children and mortgages.
Surprisingly, he didn’t have to find out.
His father had made his fortune in the mining industry and an old partner of
his had offered to take Mike on. Ed McAdam, a gentleman of few words, had shown
up at the University of California’s Berkeley campus looking for him.
To call it a conversation would have been
stretching it. Mike couldn’t remember saying anything. Ed simply appeared next
to him in front of the Hearst building, told him that he had a job running the
remote sensing operation in Hawaii and that if he failed to report for work in
three weeks – one week after completing his latest degree – he would be fired.
He handed him a card from his human resources department and strolled away.
He knew his free academic ride was coming
to an end and he had been studiously avoiding the whole job and life issue as
the graduation ceremony approached. Suddenly, out of the blue, an easy answer
had been dropped in his lap. He liked easy answers. Maybe he wouldn’t have to
grow up after all…
Hawaii sounded nice. He had always liked
the idea of surfing. Only the idea, of course, as he had a nearly pathological
certainty that every shark in the Pacific was waiting for the day when he would
finally rent a board and take his first lesson.
Still, Hawaii sounded nice.
Now, after a year on the Islands, he’d
managed to avoid surfing, though he did enjoy swimming – as long as there were
other, less agile swimmers around for the sharks to eat first. He had just been
down to the beach for a quick dip before coming to the mountain, but he still
wasn’t fully awake. He walked over to the percolator to find that Franka had
left a half pot from three hours ago.
He poured cream into a cup of the stale
brew and watched it form a tiny storm cloud as he walked to the table in the
middle of the room.
He looked up, hoping to spot one of the
miners on the close-up.
His coffee mug struck the floor, ejecting
its contents in a graceful wave.
After a moment of stunned disbelief, he ran
to the screen and touched the security menu, closing all of the shutters and
locking down the door.