“It isn’t important, but I was thinking how dangerous it might be if I forgot and stepped over the line.”
“I understand,” Dutch said. “Until you have internalized that as part of your environment, it might be advisable to wear your PSE and leave it in standby mode. Its reaction time would be adequate to protect you from a full-gravity fall.”
“Agreed,” he said, toggling his suit to the right setting.
The door to his office disappeared open and Anju stepped in, followed by the Chancellor, Admiral Nakamiru, and Captain Jeffers. A second later Danel and Dr. Jameson brought up the rear. The three visitor’s eyes all showed the same overwhelmed reaction that he still struggled to hide in his own face. Jameson had already toured most of the new colony structure, so he grinned as he watched the others’ reactions.
“Welcome to wonderland,” Jeph said, stepping forward and stopping just his side of the gravity change. “The first thing I want to warn you about is the line on the floor.” He pulled a thinpad out of his pocket and let it go. It drifted toward the floor. Snagging it before it had dropped more than a few centimeters, he then pitched it to the table between them. It slammed down hard once it crossed the line.
“This is unbelievable,” the chancellor said.
“Not really,” he said. “I think we need to get used to it. This is what our future looks like.”
Tsiolkovskiy FleetCom Center: FleetCom Headquarters: Luna:
“The party is about to begin,” Ylva Visser said as she walked into the officers’ lounge and up to the admiral.
He nodded and pointed toward the table. He was looking at the main screen images on his thinpad. “I know.”
“The latest trajectory solution puts fifty-two ships within 10,000 klicks of here,” she said. “The first ones will be at zero relative in about an hour.”
“If they keep braking,” he said. “That’s going to make for a serious blockade if they just park there.”
“Ja,” she said, sitting down. “That’s enough ships to pinch our multicruisers hard, if they want to get ugly about it.”
“Where are the rest of them heading?” he asked, finishing the last bite of his meal and washing it down with a swallow of gojuice.
“Galileo or lunar orbit. Most of them are still a little hot to drop to orbit. Approach tracking says they look to be bending Earthward and then finishing their braking on the other side,” she said.
“What about that bruiser?” He said tapping his screen and zooming in on one ship close to the back edge of the second battle group. “What is that anyway?”
“The Clown Car,” she said, leaning forward to look at it over his shoulder. “In its previous life, it was a traveling amusement center. I had Boss scrub the recycled ship records and all it came up with that even vaguely resembled that superstructure was a ship called the Baileyville.”
“A circus ship?” he said. He’d never seen one in person, but he’d seen pictures. “They don’t look like that normally.”
“It’s pretty heavily modified,” she said, nodding. “It’s likely to have a lot of reactor power and more than a small amount of living space. They’re designed to keep a huge audience in comfort for hours at a time. The main auditorium on the Baileyville seated over 20,000 people.”
“That could be converted into any number of things,” he said. “I wonder if it’s a troop carrier?”
She nodded. “It’ll have lots of hard points for lasers too, and they could have converted all the space that used to be animal kennels and performer quarters, to hangar decks. It could carry squadrons of interceptors.”
“Or dropships,” he said.
“It’s got twenty escorts and it’s falling behind the main group. It might be braking for lunar orbit,” she said.
“We might need to consider whether we can keep the multicruisers in place once they get here,” he said.
“I’d advise we pull them back to the Lagrange transfer stations now and see what they’re thinking, before we decide if we can push back into position.”
“Damn,” he said, looking up at her and sighing. “There’s no way this won’t get messy.”
Katana: Outbound, En Route to L-4 Trojan Cluster:
They ate in shifts, they slept in shifts, they showered together. Sixteen bodies crammed into a ship designed for six. Saf had pulled together a crew roster of augments based on potential skill requirements for a contact. She would have included several more in her mission plan but after they reached the normal crew capacity of the ship, Tana had added resistance at every extra body Saf had wanted to recruit.
Ultimately, it was Joe that drew the line at the upward limit of the life support equipment. As Edison climbed up onto the CrewDeck, he was again reminded that the life support gear was not designed to fight back against the thick pheromone fogbank kicked out by the genetically engineered members of the overstuffed ship. It didn’t help that none of them were even the least bit shy as they went about their morning routines oblivious to the need for clothing or the impact of their hormones on his merely mortal physiology.
Staring at the deck plating with a conscious effort, he made his way over to the galley and hoped to find a cup of suitable stimulant to help him get a grip on the morning. As he approached, the porcelain cup and saucer full of what looked to be real coffee, slid into his line of sight. He glanced up to see Kylla, her cheek aperture sporting what looked distractingly like a jewel-encrusted eyeball. He blinked several times before his brain also absorbed that she was wearing a flesh colored thinskin and not standing there naked with three eyes smiling at him.
“Morning is hard,” she said, winking.
“Not yet,” he said, realizing he should keep his mouth shut until he’d absorbed enough caffeine to think before he said actual words.
“Is fixable,” she said, winking in a way that left him wondering if she was serious.
He shook his head and pointed a finger at his chest. “Dustpile, remember?”
She laughed and handed him the cup. “Boss lady wants to yak at us. Sent me to get you up.”
“It’s working,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee and realizing he needed to drink more of it before it would work to keep his mouth behind his brain. He turned away to hide that he’d embarrassed himself again and scanned the crowded room. “Where is she?”
“Topdeck,” she said, bouncing past him and launching herself toward the ladder. She waited for him to catch up before she reached out and took the cup from him so he could concentrate on using both hands to climb. He sighed as she started up in front of him, leaving him no choice but to notice that her backside was as distracting as her front.
“Ah good you’re up,” Tana said as he pulled himself into the crowded upper deck.
“Not completely,” he said. “Oh god, stop me before I sin again,” he added with a groan as he bent himself into one of the open seats.
“I see it’s been a hard morning,” Saf said with a giggle.
“Please, just stop,” Edison said. “In all seriousness, don’t any of you have an off switch or something? How the frag can you get anything done with this much potential for distraction.”
“You get used to it,” Tana said, “Eventually. After we discovered what was going on, we looked for a way to reduce the pheromone production in the augments. It turned out to be a useful survival tool, so we left it alone.”
“Seems to me it would make things worse,” he said. “Doesn’t it start wars or something?”
“Actually, the opposite is true,” she said. “There used to be a species of baboon that used its sexuality to reduce stress and de-escalate fighting in their social organization.”
“You should try it, Eddy,” Saf said. “Stress will kill you.”
“At my age, sex might kill me,” he said.
“We could always experiment with that hypothesis … ” Kylla said before Edison shook his finger at her.
Changing the subject by sheer force of will, he said, “What was it you wanted
to talk about?”
Saf swiveled her chair around and opened a display on one of the forward windows. A cluster of small rings appeared superimposed on space ahead of them.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The ghost fleet,” Tana said.
“Shit,” he swore under his breath.
“That was my thinking,” Saf said. “They’re above the ecliptic by several million klick so it’s possible they won’t see us as we go by. Even if they do, they won’t be able to catch us.”
“How many of them are there?” Edison asked.
“At least 600 ships. Maybe more,” she said. “They’re spread out over a million klick so we can’t tell if we’re seeing all of them. They are at the extreme range of our whiskers.”
“We should get a message to Quintana,” Edison said. “He needs to know they’re coming for him.”
“They aren’t,” Tana said. “They’re headed the same direction we are.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Inside the Kanahto: Tacra Un: L-4 Prime:
“The Shan Takhu were apparently firm believers in hands-on learning,” Chei said as he walked down a long aisle that ran between glass chambers of some indeterminate purpose.
“Why do you assume this is true?” Rocky asked.
“This looks like a lab of some sort,” he said, stopping in front of a pedestal similar to the ones in the language matrix amphitheater. He laid his hand on the flat surface and the display activated.
“Could be manufacturing facility,” she said. “Is similar to additive printing chamber.”
Ian stepped up beside Chei and ran a finger up the side of the display and nodded his head. Kanahto trana shanak-che, ahn shanak-Un.” The display changed, and he smiled. “Is not primer teaching, is advanced teaching. I have ahn wath. Here.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yah,” he said, pointing to a door at the far end of the chamber. “We are cata Hector. It is oola ahn.”
“Really?” Chei asked. “We’re below the Hector?”
“Then you know the function of this equipment?”
He shrugged. “It is only one I was allowed wath,” he said. “It ahn mostly medical.” He walked toward the far door and stopped at another chamber. Putting his hand on the pedestal control panel caused it to activate and the lights in the corresponding chamber flashed on. Chei and Rocky both stepped forward and stared. The object floating lifelessly inside was Ian. Or at least it looked like him.
“What the frag is that?” Chei asked.
“Is me,” he said. “Not me as in me, really, but it ahn a tool of me.”
“A tool of you?”
“Yes it is my … proxy … is maybe the word,” he said, shrugging. “The crash knocked me out and I woke up here.” He slipped his hand along the edge of the screen and a table like thing materialized out of the floor beside the chamber. “I don’t know how long I was there, but when I could move, the proxy was inside there.”
“Must be hologram,” Rocky said. She had a hand-held scanner pointed at it, but was shaking her head.
“No. It ahn real,” Ian said. “But da-ahn alive.”
“So what does it do?”
“It heals for us,” Ian said, wrinkling his face like he did when he struggled with words.
“Heals for us?”
“Yah. When I am hurt, it absorbs hurt.” he said.
Chei shrugged and looked at Rocky. She looked as confused as he was. “It’s like spare parts, maybe?” he asked, looking back at Ian. “Cloned organs and such?”
Ian shook his head and pulled a multitool out of his pocket. He flipped it open and selected a cutting blade. “Watch the proxy,” he said as he pulled a slice across one of his fingertips with the knife. As they stared, the cut appeared on the proxy’s finger and Ian held his hand out to show them that it had disappeared on his own.
“What the frag?” Chei said.
“It absorbs my injury and heals for me,” he said. “It heals better, so the cut will be gone in a few hours.”
“You can’t die as long as this proxy is functioning?” Chei asked.
“I don’t know. I think it would have limits.” He shrugged.
“How does wound transfer to proxy?” Rocky asked, scanning his finger at close range.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But can transfer both directions.”
“What?”
“Proxy can do major … changes,” he said. “The chamber does the work on the proxy and then it … uploads… to the real person.”
“How do you know this?”
“Eleven years is a long time,” he said, blushing. “I ... and I made upgrades.” He glanced down at the front of his work coveralls and shrugged.
“Upgrades?” Rocky asked.
Chei realized what Ian had upgraded. He wanted to laugh, but didn’t need to make Ian’s embarrassment worse. “Anju needs to see this.”
He nodded, thankful for Chei’s discretion. “I am not a doctor. She could do un.”
“Could this repair Alyx’s spine injury?” Rocky asked.
Ian nodded. “Most likely.”
“We have to show this to Anju.” Chei said. “Otherwise she’ll never believe it.”
FleetCom Military Operations Center: Lunar L-2 Shipyard:
“They’re holding position just outside of the defense net,” Gabriel Ducat reported from the OpsCom station. “We can’t touch them, but they’re in position to cut off anything that comes in or out. In any direction.”
“We’ve got a supply shuttle en route from TFC that will be in range of their weapons in a few minutes. Should we warn them off?” Erin Sage asked. She was hanging on the Command Deck over the Approach Control station.
Admiral Quintana stared at the screen for almost a minute before he nodded. “Give them the option of pushing the line or turning back,” he said. “I don’t want to put another crew in the position of sacrificing for our sake, but we’ve got to know if they’re bluffing.”
“Supply Shuttle zero-five-six, be advised of potentially hostile vessels in your approach corridor,” she said, taking over the com position. “Zero-five-six, please confirm.”
“SS-056 to L-2 Approach. We see them. Stand by, they’re hailing us,” the shuttle pilot said. She sounded calm, but this was about to be the moment of truth, and she had to know that. After several seconds she came back on. “Zero-five-six to L-2. They are saying they will fire on us if we continue to approach. What do you want us to do?”
“It’s your call Zero-Five-Six,” the admiral said, cutting in on the channel. “We don’t need you being a hero today.”
“Understood, Admiral,” the pilot said. “We’re aborting approach and returning to Tsiolkovskiy.”
“Well that tells us what their intent is,” the ExO said. Hamid Roudini was small and always looked angry, but as he watched the shuttle turn around, he looked like he was about to explode.
“We’ve got enough muscle to keep the corridor open,” Ducat said.
Ylva Visser glared at the Operations Officer and shook her head. The first officer had no fondness for Ducat or Roudini, and it showed every time they disagreed over strategic policy. “If we do, they can reinforce longer than we can lose ships,” she said. “Until we’ve got more cruisers in place, we can’t afford to start bleeding.”
“Even then we can’t afford it,” Quintana said. “It has to be the last resort.”
“We can’t hold out indefinitely,” Ducat said.
“We won’t starve,” Visser said. “We won’t be able to keep building new assets, but we can hang on as long as we need to. Unfortunately, now that they know we won’t push it, they will escalate. It’s just a matter of time before they come at us somewhere else and use that to draw us out of position so they can attack here.”
“They’ve got at least a hundred ships downhill from here,” Quintana agreed. “Until we figure out what to do about it, they own Zone One.”
“We can order
more multicruisers in from the main belt to level the field,” Roudini said.
“Bad idea,” Visser said, glaring at him like he was a fool. “Do you know why we aren’t looking at 500 ships out there? It’s because we have some of their fleet playing whack-a-mouse and chasing us around hopelessly. If we stop that and bring those raiding parties down-system then there is nothing to keep the rest of their fleet off our asses.”
“We don’t know if that plan is working—”
“Then why didn’t they bring the rest of their ships in and just stomp us flat in one round?” Quintana said.
“The problem is that they’re going to do to us here what we are trying to do to them there,” she said. “What do we do when they bring the clown car into action? To me, that says they’re planning to attack ground based targets or take over stations. As long as that thing is in lunar orbit, we know they have one of two targets in mind.”
“Tsiolkovskiy and New Hope City,” Erin said, floating up onto the command riser. She was the newest member of his command staff and seldom spoke out, but she and Visser shared similar attitudes. “My money is that they’ll go after NHC first.”
“Why? Tsiolkovskiy has more strategic value,” Roudini said.
“Their orbit perigee is over southern Sinus Iridum near the New Hope Landing Center,” she said.
The first officer nodded. “They weren’t the only ship to take that orbit were they?”
“No,” Erin said. “We’re tracking ten Sagan Class and six Hawking Class ships with them. Plus a few other support ships.”
“You think they will hit NHC?”
“Eventually,” Visser said, nodding. “But sixteen escorts seems light for coverage on a major assault.”
“It was enough to get us to pull our coverage out of there,” Roudini said, glaring at her. “We had five multicruisers in place. We should have forced them back and not the other way around.”
Quintana held his hand up and cut off another round of the same argument they’d had for days. He’d agreed with Visser and decided that keeping the ships out of a premature engagement was the preferred strategy, and in his mind that ended it. “Putting them at the Lagrange transfer stations lets us keep an eye on the supply depot and means they’re only a few hours away if needed,” he said.
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