Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  "I would have been an experience, to be sure."

  Siers cut through, voice firm. "Jamet. Would it help if I flat out ordered you to stop?"

  She paused in the middle of confirming singularity power relay charges. Had he ever called her by a first name? Not a single instance came to mind. "Not really... Timothy." That felt intensely weird to say, like several rigid lines were being crossed. But strangely good at the same time. "But I appreciate it."

  Power relays took her confirmation and came to life, charging a greedy Krepsfield for singularity activation. Now all that was left was ordering it to create an event horizon, which would immediately bring every gravity-hungry drone in the entire system at the smelter, all at once. Jamet hovered one shaking foot over the console, lining up her shot. "Alright, everyone. For what it's worth-- this doesn't cancel out all the awfulness. But I want you to remember I tried, okay? This is for every fuckup Exec that ever made a bad call. Here goes."

  "Lieutenant, I am ordering you to-"

  "Don't fucking do it, princess!"

  "I am begging you sincerely, lieutenant-"

  Jamet dropped her heel toward the initiation toggle.

  And the thrice-damned Corporate WAM module took that moment to throw another quiz on the display, just in time to take the selection and throw back the angry razz of an incorrect prompt. "Are you fucking serious with this?!"

  "Lieutenant?"

  She switched legs, again, then alternated between squinting at the stupid questions and trying not to break the console with her foot. "Of all the stupid, insane, pointless-"

  "Lieutenant!"

  "-goddamn evil, self-inflicted-"

  "Jamet Reals, your fucking attention please!"

  The shock of hearing Siers swearing-- actually swearing, for real!-- broke her out of a storm of profanity and console-bashing. "Uh, sir?"

  "This is not a trick, I am not lying to you-- Comms, get a sensor image right this second-- there is an incoming vessel in the system."

  She was instantly suspicious, but put her leg down anyways. Actually it dropped by itself, traumatized muscles giving out. "Oh yeah? How many? Where? What kind is it?"

  "In the order you asked: One ship, not at the standard arrival point and mostly importantly," he took an audibly deep breath. "That is no known classification I have ever personally seen."

  Chapter 40

  Concurrent Experiences

  Timothy Siers, lately of the CES Kipper, happened to have lived a very long time. Seen a lot. Done things and had them done to him in turn, in several definitions of the word. When it came to life experiences there were very few things that carried a hint of surprise any more.

  But this... was weird. Even by his standards.

  Which also made it interesting in a way he didn't think was possible any more.

  He watched the forward workspace over folded hands, brows pulled downward and eyes narrowed. Three callouts were foremost on the full-wall display, the center of which up until a few seconds ago occupied the entire focus of the evening. It showed a long distance sensor image of a fusion smelter-- one of Julienne's old designs reworked, more than likely-- and the associated communications link they were holding open to speak with his wayward lieutenant. Audio only, which was an annoyance. He rather preferred visual communications whenever possible; seeing familiar faces, familiar features kept him anchored better in the present.

  In particular that face, lately. Ghosts of old memories drifted through her every expression: Submerged rocks suddenly lifting out of dark waters with each grin, every lifted eyebrow, in the lines of each angry frown. Dangerous currents there to cross, easy to get swept into the past. Other people, other places.

  Through no fault of her own Jamet made it harder for him to stay here. Stay in the now.

  He wanted a drink.

  On the right side screen the Kipper's sensors tracked one of their lifeboats, drifting slowly shipward on an intercept course. Not a terribly familiar design: The newer boats changed more often than he cared to track, following some obscure engineering spat between manufacturers. This one was outlandishly large and obliquely streamlined around the sides, capable of carrying far more than the single passenger aboard. Which happened to be his current Engineer and friend, Jackson Scr-

  Siers frowned. No, that wasn't right. Close, though, an easy mistake to make. Janson-- that was it. Janson Parks, a surprisingly long lasting companion. Big, like old Jackson used to be, but far more gentle about his physicality. Not to mention possessed of a forgiving personality that was far more rare than most people assumed it could be. Actually he was rather more like Jackson's daughter than the gruff technical leader her father turned out to be. Which further tangled the three together in his memory, making it harder to track the current person. But no matter: He kept a close eye on the lifeboat, wary both of problems and falling into old memories.

  But it was the third callout window on the far left that gave Siers something brand new. And that was a treat. In fact this entire trip was one long series of new experiences and he couldn't be happier about it.

  He pointed leftward. "Comms, if you haven't forwarded an image to our lieutenant yet...?" Long practice made the request into an open-ended question; Siers knew he had an old man's habit of repeating any recent request. Phrasing it as a gentle prompt came across smoother if it was a second or third time.

  "Doing it now!" The young woman currently working Comms hammered console options like they personally offended her, all fire and furious hurt. The smelter link pulsed once as a file winged itself across the distance, although Siers noted she kept the connection open afterwards. "Not that our dropout traitor deserves to know what's going on. You seeing this, Princess? Huh? This is what you almost missed! How's that feel?!"

  Small arms threw themselves in the air, then crossed over her chest in a huff. Siers smiled slightly, hiding it by smoothing his mustache down: Emilia, their Comms, delighted him. Em to friends, although those seemed few and far between for the prickly woman. She had the black hair and braids that reminded him of Tierson's second child, with cheekbones and a stubborn jawline that had him thinking of summers on the mountain long ago. But that visor on her eyes jarred Siers every time, rainbow and flashing, like nothing he'd seen before. No memory to get caught on with that thing: The visor was all new, all now. A perfect memory anchor. He didn't confuse her name often.

  Raw suspicion came back over the comms link. Jamet, hurt and cagier than a feral cat: "That looks fake as hell, Em. If you're taking snapshots of entertainment dramas that's- well, honestly it's pretty sad. But I've got another freaking minute of quizzes over here so keep right on trying."

  Siers half listened as Comms (Emilia, Em, visor visor flashing bright) immediately devolved into a bombastic exchange with the unseen lieutenant (eyes like Sera's, quick and cunning). They yelled at each other like sisters fighting over some entrenched hurt, all personal insults and slander over shared experiences. But while Siers heard the words, in his head they sounded like two people who wanted to be family and didn't know how. Which was exactly as it should be.

  So he disregarded their conversation for the moment, choosing to direct more attention back to the callout window as the ship's long range sensors got a better image of... something.

  It looked rather like a slender oval with a slightly thickened bottom, long and sleek, but built on a scale that rivalled warships in size. Gunmetal grey, but occasionally rippling somehow with a fast sheen of blue, there and gone again in an eyeblink. Long, slightly curved lines swept backward from a blunt nose almost entirely to the base in a way somehow suggestive of a flower closed up against cold rain. Actually, the more Siers let the image stir through his memory the more convinced he was: The vessel on screen brought to mind nothing so much as a stylized blossom, each folded petal overlapped defensively against harsh vacuum. A thick, broad ring of silver light circled just behind the base, where a bud would meet the stem on the actual article. It slowly rotated in place
without touching anything, clearly a part of the ship without being attached to it.

  "That is rather beautiful," a high pitched voice said from nearby, tone cracking on the 'ah' in 'rather'. "Does it look like a flower to you?"

  Siers nodded, then glanced backward briefly. Paul. That was the man at Environmental right now. Taller than anyone he had ever met, that jarring voice too distinctive to ever match anyone else's. Even Siers' incredibly long memory couldn't blend the man into anyone else, not even by accident, making him one of the few crew members he felt safe addressing by name every time. "I was just thinking that, actually. It's rather unique; I'm not entirely sure how something like that even operates." Which was a partial lie-- he had some guesses, especially regarding that bright ring of light. But better to hand it off, step back, listen. Surprises came best that way. "Thoughts?"

  The gangly man crossed the distance between Environmental and the CEO station in a single long step, deceptively fast for such a small distance. Siers rather liked small details like that. "Is it a transit-capable ship, do you think? Was it here when the Kipper showed up, or came in while we were distracted?"

  "Those... are rather interesting questions." He made a grabbing motion at the bridge's workspace callout, then tapped the console to move the images to a more local device for manipulation. "Are you asking if it was here originally and we never noticed?" There it was-- that small thrill of something surprising that he wouldn't have thought about himself.

  Paul nodded, washed out blue eyes easily peering over Siers' shoulder at the console. "I am wondering if it is, for lack of a better word, an accomplice to our manufacturing friends."

  "-oh you're going to bring that up? Then how about-" Emilia shouted.

  Jamet sounded incandescent. "-some stupid, obviously fake images aren't going to-"

  They both ignored the raging tsunami. Instead Siers tapped the image of the flower-ship once to get a popup of the sensor data, then selected rough coordinates for where the device thought the vessel currently waited. "I don't think we had a sensor pointed that way the entire time we've been here. But let's backtrack to check our arrival. The ship went through some... fairly dramatic turns, so it is entirely possibly we might have been pointed in the correct direction through one of them."

  "That was put rather diplomatically," Paul shared a sideways glance with Siers. Which considering their respective seated-versus-standing positions made the exchange look slightly like a praying mantis eyeing a meal. "Would it be fair of me to ask a question regarding the lieutenant?"

  Outwardly Siers calmly keyed systems for a database query, retracing the Kipper's flight path through the system. Inwardly, though, he was diving through an ocean of personal experiences, hunting through dark reefs filled with relationships both romantic and platonic. He surfaced again within moments, empty handed. Paul's tone hadn't implied anything troublesome. "Feel free, although I would hope you're not asking something personal about her."

  "I would never. But just in case... consider the question withdrawn." He watched Siers start a three dimensional simulation of their arrival, pulling the imaginary camera view backwards until a red dot hovered in the far distance. "That is quite clever. Are you seeing if the ship was ever pointed at that position?"

  "Is it a bad idea?" Siers thought that was unlikely, but he'd been wrong before.

  Paul shifted slightly, eyebrows going up. "No, I just would not have thought of it right away."

  "Ah, thank you then. Let me know if I'm missing something." There was always a chance, and Paul had surprised him before. "I'm going to advance forward at a fast- excuse me, one moment." He raised his voice slightly and put an edge of command in it. That was a learned trick over the years: He'd found one usually didn't have to shout to get attention if the tone was correct. "Comms?"

  Emilia instantly went from hunched over her console, red faced and yelling, to an embarrassed board-stiff pose. "Uh, sorry. Yes? Sir?"

  Siers ignored the changeover, quietly amused. "Would you mind sending the lieutenant some full motion recordings of the new arrival? Perhaps she can spot something unique about it-- in particular I'm curious about maneuvering ability." And also it was nearly impossible to fake real time motion capture, which should solve the argument.

  "Oh!" Comms (Emilia, his memory whispered. Em) looked surprised, then triumphant. "Yes sir, I can do that. Ohhhh, also you can't fake video on the fly so that's gonna be the end of a certain know-it-all's stupid plan!" She whirled on her console, dragging windows and dumping icons into the open comm line. "Got something for you, Princess! Get a good look and I'll be taking my freaking apology in flavored caf when you get your stupid self back on board!"

  "If you think another couple of stupid, fake- oh." Jamet sounded surprised, then angry (that was interesting-- he made a note), then fatalistic. "Well, fuck."

  Emilia crowed. Siers turned away again, stroking his mustache to hide a small grin.

  But not from Paul, who happened to be at just the right angle over Siers' shoulder to spot the subtle pull of smiling cheek muscles. He looked thoughtfully from a delighted Comms (Emilia) to Siers, then back again. "That was rather deftly done. Sir."

  Part of experience was knowing when to roll with being caught. "It was. Could I ask you to not mention it to either of them?" He smoothed the mustache back down, smile tucked away again for future use.

  The tall man nodded, then pointed to their shared console. "Of course. Also I think you have a match, there."

  "Ah, you're right." On his console the Kipper was caught halfway through an acrobatic twirl around a derelict hauler, the incoming ramming ship frozen above and behind like a swooping black shadow of death. But directly in front of the ship, caught full in the sensor cone before the Kipper took severe damage from debris, was a region of space where the flower-shaped vessel should be. "That answers the question," Siers muttered. He tapped the area, blank and empty. "It was not here when we arrived. After this we never have a view of that area until we met up with the habitation ring."

  "Speaking of which-- do we have any sensors pointed that way with a history to backtrack? When did it arrive?" Paul took a knee, putting his head at an even height with Siers. "And where did it come from? The angle of approach as it comes in should be a good clue."

  There it was again: Surprise, and a small amount of delight. This was why he hadn't checked out long ago-- the right people could always bring something new to the experience. Something interesting. "That is a rather good thought. Hold on, jumping to our docking now."

  On screen the Kipper leapt through days of on-board problems, skipping ahead to just before docking with the habitation ring. Hours before the meetup he slowed the display down to barely three times normal speed for easier viewing. Siers and Paul both kept an eye on the sensor sweep from the ship's much-diminished and damaged equipment mounts, watching for any change. "There!" Paul stabbed a long finger downwards. "Freeze!"

  The sensor cone overlapped where the flower should be, showing nothing. Siers made interested noises, then slowly advanced the simulation. "Not here when we docked... and right about now is when we took our rescuees on board..." He frowned as the time kept advancing, nearly through a full day. "After our rest cycle now. Coming up on our lifeboat launch."

  They watched as the Kipper's lifeboat popped out of the indented holding cradle, moving at a snail's pace until it reached safe distance. Then it was gone in a terrifyingly large flash of rocket fire, streaking so quickly out of view is left afterimages on the display. Paul smiled. "Even though I know how rough that was on Janson, it is still incredibly funny to see from an outside view."

  Siers almost corrected him to "Jackson", but stopped. It was Janson now. In the here. "You're not wrong. But we still haven't seen any arrival. Let me widen the view until the smelter and the ship are visible at the same time, then advance again." On his console the small boat flashed across the system, then abruptly slowed again to a snail's pace before docking with the smelter airlock
. "That's... odd. We're almost caught up to real time now. Did they arrive less than-"