Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to Spamprovs' Challenge #4.

The Committee's next session was held under the big cognac-colored evoak again, but not much had yet been accomplished. It was almost entirely due to two things: the lingering heat of an Indian summer, and the surprising entertainment value provided by the spacer forces.

Gary and the other chiefs of space had announced that the new Guardian-class ships would be named collectively by their crews. Of course, all names had to be approved, and that was a good thing, as the names ranked from amateurish to acceptable to "probably testing the limits." Gary was presently sharing them with his Committee coworkers.

"Perro Pequeño," Ruth read aloud from her microcomputer screen. "Little Dog? Well, that seems tame enough."

"Anatomic Difficulty?" Dina shook her head. "Sounds like someone's got a bone to pick. You know what I mean!" she laughed, making throwing motions at Jack, who had merely raised an eyebrow at her statement.

"I guess you can't say morale is flagging after this," Tomo said. "Ooh, Copy Failure! I like that. Man's Image – nice. I see a lot of angry and hate names, though."

"I've got a file set aside just for those," Gary said. "Some of them are pretty bad. Monkey Killer, stuff like that."

Wasn't it funny, Dina reflected, that one's xenophobia could be toward one's own genetic kind, one's creators?

"We really should be getting work done," Ruth said, but even she didn't sound that interested. Instead, she opened the portable CO2 cooler and removed a frost-rimed liter can of iced chai. She shook it, poured some of the foamy drink into everyone's plastic cup, returned the can to the cooler, and drank her share.

"It's too hot," Jack said. "We should move the meetings indoors until things cool off."

"Right," Tomo concurred. "But for now... Ruth's right, too. If we're going to take time off to come out here, it should be for a purpose, because we could laugh over ship names at our desks. So. Is there anything new to report from last time?"

There were a few minutes of silence as everyone checked the last meeting's minutes to refresh themselves.

Gary spoke first. "Obviously, the Guardian ships will be ready to leave the system soon – they're in final quals now. So far everything checks out, although they're not as fast as I'd like. They're faster than what we arrived in," Gary added, "but if we're going to seriously try to kidnap Earthlings, I wish we could have even faster ships. We don't know, still, what they've been doing."

"I've been thinking about that," Tomo said. He picked a blade of yellowing grass and chewed on the white stem end. Talking around it, he continued: "We should do a test run back to Sol first. Make sure we know what we're getting into. If the Earthlings are gearing up for war, we need to be prepared for that – and frankly, reproductive research will be low priority for us," he said, looking at Dina.

Dina nodded. "I know. Our personal survival comes first. If we don't keep current on Earth's progress, and they attack us, our work would be for naught."

Of course, Dina thought, if Earth managed to put together a fleet and came to attack Eta Vulpeculae, the Androsynth wouldn't have much choice. Run, or fight and die. Earth had a population of billions, gross, to pull workers, spacers and soldiers from; the Androsynth had fewer than fifty thousand. Short of some serious hocus-pocus, the Androsynth would lose any toe-to-toe fight. Their best hopes lay in Earth not coming after them, or finding said hocus-pocus – or developing some fierce technology – capable of wiping out huge numbers of Earthlings at once. It was this aspect that daunted most Androsynth thoughts of security.

As if following her thoughts, Kurt spoke. "We have many more Guardians built than we're going to send to Earth, correct? Why not have some of them search the nearby regions of space? There may be an alien race nearby, one whose technology we could harvest, or perhaps some legendary 'Precursor' artifacts."

Tomo rolled his eyes. "You don't believe in the Precursors, do you? There's no evidence they exist. There's nothing except some stories passed off by Earthlings years ago in fiction. There's no Precursors and no magically uninhabited alien cities filled with goodies for us to use."

"Still," Gary interrupted, "it's not a bad idea on the whole. We've mapped out our own Vulpeculae star very well, and know our system like the back of our hand. It would be a good shakedown mission to find out what's nearby." He tapped at his microcomputer, and sent starmaps through the baseband network to each of their machines in turn. "There's the six other Vulpeculae stars to look at, and three other constellations nearby, close enough to check out: Mensae, Lalande, and Mira. Between Vulpeculae and Sol is mostly empty space, but we could have some Guardians break off to examine what little is there: Raynet constellation, and the Zeeman, Vela and Canopus single-star systems. Canopus is getting pretty close to Sol – " the map zoomed in on everyone's screen – "but Sirius is closer still, almost too close for comfort. By the time a ship reaches Sirius, it should be ready to fight or flee at once. That is, of course, presuming they've discovered hyperspace in our absence."

In its own way, that was key. Dina gave silent, heartfelt thanks that it had been an Androsynth, a series JOR-15, who had discovered hyperspace first – and that he had never given it to his human masters. The discovery had led to the Androsynth Exodus, and their own freedom here on an alien world. It also, she hoped, had bought them enough time to develop technology, particularly weapons technology, far in advance of Earth's.

Unfortunately, that same Androsynth had met his end during the Clone Revolt, dying during a rare successful attack on the moonbase by UN forces. His had been a rare talent even among Androsynth, to discover hyperspace – had he lived, who knows what he could have come up with?

Dina was brought back to the present by Ruth: "Fourth Horseman. I like that one. Classical reference that still bears some menace in it. Anyway, that all sounds like a good plan to me – using the extra ships to explore locally, presuming some will remain here to protect EV2."

"Of course." Gary closed off the starmap. "It wouldn't do to have someone attack us while all our defenses were gone – and the Guardians truly will be our first line of defense. If there are any alien civilizations nearby, we have to wary of them, too, at least at first. Although I have to admit, I hope there aren't. If said aliens were hostile, and in numbers superior to our own, I'm not sure we could do anything except pack up all our people and move again – and we don't have the orbital stations this time." The stations had been disassembled and used for the first shelters and manufactories.

"Should we look into building some sort of escape ships, just in case?" Kurt asked. "I hate the thought of just sitting here unable to bug out if worse comes to worst."

"I don't think so," Jack said slowly. He shook his head. "If anything were immediately nearby, I suspect we would have known by now. Now that the background noise from the Vulpeculaes can be reduced or eliminated from space channels, it's very quiet out there. We don't even get Earth transmissions, because the earliest radio broadcasts haven't gotten this far in space. Plus, if we build them, that signals two things: that we are afraid we will have to leave, and that someone will have to man those ships and maintain them in case we do need them. I'm not sure we can spare the extra manpower.

"The benefits of our work ethic are hampered by our lack of numbers. Any Androsynth set aside to build, staff and maintain escape ships is an Androsynth not building, staffing or maintaining something already in progress. We're lucky that we don't have to constantly build housing, but there are any number of other projects currently in process that I'd rather not have beggared by building so-called escape ships."

Kurt's face showed how he felt about Jack's statement. "You'd have us just wait for something to arrive, then?"

"I don't think we have much choice in the matter. The fact remains that we have a limited population to do the work and plenty of work to be done." Jack would have continued, but Tomo held up a hand.

"It appears we're at a bit of a deadlock," Tomo said. "I suggest..." he pulled his microcomputer to his lap and began typing. "I suggest we hold a vote on it. I'm setting up the vote now, and it will be anonymous. Ready?"

"Excuse me," Dina said. "Am I right... that is, we six are responsible for this entire decision?"

"Of course," Tomo said, surprised. "We're in charge of things, aren't we?"

Dina's heart rate skyrocketed. I'm one of the leaders? And I didn't even know it? I thought we were... "I thought we were just committee members," she stammered.

"Well, we were at first," Gary said. "But what with one thing and another, we're actually responsible for a good deal of what goes on. Most people don't want the responsibility, you see."

"And since you're head of Reproductive Research," Jack picked up the thread, "you have a vested interest in how our society develops, and thus we wanted you – and your ideas – in the top echelons." He frowned. "I thought – well, it's not important now. Unless you'd rather not be here?"

They waited for her response.

I can't believe it. It was like having ammonia waved under her nose – a sharp, unpleasant realization that she was responsible for so much, and that she'd been, perhaps not quite tricked, but it appeared the truth had been varnished a bit.

Yet it was a position of authority – and she would, truly, be shaping and changing their world and their future. And wasn't that what she'd always wanted? To save her people from their fate? She might be head of reproductive research, but as Jack had noted, there was much other work to be done.

"What's not important?" she asked Jack.

He shrugged. "I thought you'd gotten my email about it. That's all."

Dina quickly checked her old email. It would have to be some time back, before she started attending these meetings. After a few minutes' searching she did find it, at last. And at the bottom of the invitation to join the committee was the statement: "Accepting this position confirms willingness to work with the highest ranks of Androsynth on Eta Vulpeculae 2, until such time as you choose to step down or are incapacitated..." It went on for a bit.

So she'd misinterpreted the (vague, she mentally grumbled) invite. But she'd been doing the work for months now and no one had complained of it – they thought she'd known all along she was one of them. And now that the first shock was over, Dina felt a sort of belligerence instead: Why shouldn't I continue? I've always wanted to make myself known in Androsynth history... and this way I will.

She did hope this wasn't a Faust sort of bargain, though, accepting the power of Supreme Boss, as it were. But she had no way of knowing.

"Well," she said, smiling at the group, who had patiently waited for her. "Let's get this vote going, then."

Jack looked relieved. Looking back on previous meetings, Dina realized that the two of them often were of similar mind – or at least she thought so. He'd certainly made efforts to keep her in discussions and sought her input.

Now she just had to decide which way to vote.

Two minutes later, the committee, and de facto leaders of the Androsynth, recorded the vote: no escape ships would be built at this time.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com