by Ginger Booth
His dad, Nathan Acosta, wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m so proud of you, son! Just…rego impressed as hell!”
The captain and three kids stared at the man, Ben’s face burning. His dad hadn’t praised Ben in years. “Just the bus driver, Dad. Kids, your other dads are the heroes today.” Cope and Teke earned that.
“When will it be announced on the networks?” Nathan asked. “With video?”
Ben laughed. “Not my department. Check with Kassidy. But I bet she’ll wait til we’re all back at MO so she can make us squirm on screen. Kids, you want to be in on the interview for once?”
Nathan scowled, and sniffed the last of his tears away. “Benjamin Acosta, you will not advertise your business using these children.”
“I’m not a child,” Nico argued, the eldest at 16, and Ben’s by adoption. They were all legally Ben’s, though Socrates, Teke’s biological son with Cope, was more of a technicality than an adoption. He and Cope were married at the time.
“Fine, Dad,” Ben waved this away. “But I predict Kassidy will show wedding footage if we don’t produce the kids during the interview. You try to stop her. Love you! See you soon!”
Wow, he thought yet again, as he relaxed in the pilot’s seat. The last thing he expected was a first-pass, slam-dunk success. He was remarrying John Copeland because he loved the man, not the engineer. But every once in a while, like right now, he was blown away by the talent of the man he fell in love with. Whether Kassidy Yang could convey this achievement to the masses was another story. But Ben knew what it meant.
Many steps of follow-through remained. But Cope and Teke just reunited humanity across the stars. He was humbled by his role. Ben couldn’t wait to tell Sass.
He chuckled. Just how many preliminary steps could Cope demand before anyone could take that giant leap? Warp to Sanctuary in zero elapsed time to Sass’s eleven years? The engineer would no doubt prefer a dozen steps. Their credit line could afford maybe one or two.
On his return to Prosper, Ben ducked in on the team to deliver congratulatory hugs. But he quickly got out of their hair to pilot the ship back to MO. They were still deep in their data as he opened the cargo ramp in dock. The three kids flying at him, he expected, and the hug from his dad.
What he failed to anticipate was a grav lifter full of stores, and Jules Greer on a mission. “It’s about time, Ben Acosta! I got a wedding party to cook for!”
Abel Greer caught him in a hug. “Best to get out of her way when she’s like this.”
“I remember!” Ben assured him. “Looking forward to it! Hey, buy you a drink? Cope will be geeking out for hours.”
Abel laughed. “And the kids’ll geek out on the wedding cake construction. You’re on!”
Ben eddied out of the throng to sit on the couch for a moment in Prosper’s galley. The ceremony in Gossamer’s hold was lovely, and Jules’ supper spread stupendous. The flowing wine and his constant mellow smile were beginning to wear him out.
Sassafras Acosta-Copeland – Frazzie to friends and family, largely on account of her frizzy mane – flounced to a seat beside her own personal dad, his only biological offspring in the brood.
“Your dress is gorgeous, sweetie,” he assured her. “And I love your hair in the braids. Did my dad pick out that outfit?” She even wore pearls woven into her hair.
“Of course not. Jules and Portia took me shopping, and Kassidy did my hair.” Jules and Abel’s twins, Portia and Hamlet, a year and a half older than Fraz, ducked through the crowd today too, looking resplendent and devious. Ham already made off with a bottle of champagne. Ben was floored by how much Portia’s figure had blossomed since he last saw her. She towered a good 8 cm over her boy twin.
At 11, Fraz was coming along in a womanly direction as well, though Ben didn’t care to look too closely at his daughter’s bust.
“I lost a bet with Kassidy,” Fraz confided. “I bet her a credit you’d wear a wedding dress.”
Ben laughed. Fat chance he’d declare himself a frill like that in front of the world – three worlds if Kassidy had any say in it, as she surely would. “Why me and not Dad?” Ben was Dad-B. Teke was Dad-T, and Nathan Granddad. But Cope was simply Dad.
“Is this an IQ test?” Fraz returned with a vinegar smile. “I can’t imagine Dad in a dress. He’s wearing steel-toed cowboy boots. To a wedding.”
“He is,” Ben agreed. “He looks great. That’s kind of sad, though, that my friend Kassidy knows me better than you do, huh?” Always a space captain, he was never around much.
“Nah, she’s just old like you.”
Jules drifted toward them and caught that last. She laughed out loud. “Frazzie, they’re about to cut the cake. Want to help?”
“Thank you, Jules,” Ben breathed. “Always and for everything. But Fraz is really proud of that dress, and the cake is magnificent.”
“Of course,” Jules purred. “Now that you’re remarried, can we keep the house?”
The two couples bought a mansion together when they returned from Denali, raising their kids together from opposite wings. Abel called out, “Jules, we agreed not to bring that up!” This brought a gaggle of guys shifting toward Ben. Cope even claimed a seat in Frazzie’s spot beside him.
“What I want to know,” Aurora butted in, joining the circle, “is when we’ll have monthly service between Denali and Mahina.” The bald Denali envoy hadn’t returned home in all this time.
Ben shrugged. “I want to know when we’re going to Sanctuary to pick up Sass.”
“Me, too,” Abel surprised him. “And they’re connected. Aurora, did you hear that Sanctuary has a whole collection of space ships? Sorry, Cope.”
Cope founded the Thrive Spaceways company to build next-generation space ships to serve the Aloha system. So far demand kept failing to meet the cost of such ships, while slowly the reliability of the old ships failed, and their numbers dwindled.
Aurora argued practically, “But what can we trade them for ships? Sounds like Sass barely got them to talk to her.”
Cope raised his glass, “To Sass Collier and Clay Rocha, and the new crew of the Thrive! Wish you were here!” Everyone drank to that.
“But I do wish she were here,” Ben complained to Cope. “I hate to think of her stranded. She and Clay should be hugging us today. Sass would love this party!”
“Hear, hear,” Jules murmured. Kassidy probably would have agreed. But the vid star was busy choreographing a half dozen camera drones as they swooped around this conversational group and the cake.
“Me, too,” Cope allowed. “But we talk to her on the ansible. That’s more than we expected for another dozen years.”
“But that’s the thing,” Ben argued. “She doesn’t need to lose another dozen years. And her situation sounds horrible. We should go get her.”
“And Ben sails to the rescue!” Eli tipped his glass in salute. The botanist lived with them on Prosper these days.
“He’s not sailing anytime soon,” Cope countered. “Sass doesn’t need rescue. She’s a big girl, Ben. Sooner or later, there’s bound to be some kind of colony disaster. Sass can turn one of those to her advantage.”
Abel nodded. “Those are lucrative. But Aurora, to your point, I don’t think Sass brought along anyone with the chops to negotiate a trade deal. Interesting point. When you do go, Ben, bring me along.”
“Abel Greer, what are you saying?” Jules cried in horror. “No way, no sirree-bub! We’re done with all that!”
“Why?” Abel asked. “I mean, business sucks here at the moment. And opening up trade between star systems, that’s a big deal. That’s real, Jules. Legacy stuff.”
“Oh, dear,” Cope breathed, teasing. “We’re all gonna make the rego history books, huh?”
“Not me!” Jules said, hands raised to ward off evil. “This is the first time I’ve stepped foot in space since Denali! When we got home to Mahina I dropped to my knees and kissed the ground!”
“You did not,” Ben countered wi
th a smile. “You were too busy running to the creche to meet your babies. Cope and I didn’t outrun you, only cuz Dad brought Nico to meet us.”
His heart was full. The re-wedding was perfect – he had his brilliant husband and family back. Their breakthrough with the probe was awe-inspiring. Their 18-month odyssey to Denali could now be accomplished in hours. And they didn’t even need the planets to align. Just for this evening, he basked in success.
Tomorrow he’d itch to undock and get back into space. Because whether his husband realized it yet or not, Ben Acosta and Prosper were headed to Sanctuary as soon as he could manage it. Hang on, Sass, I’m coming to fetch you home.
36
Hugo Silva clutched his stack of deluxe nanite-blocker hoods, made by Corky. He trudged sadly toward his office by default, because it was that time of day. Getting kicked off Thrive was a new low for him.
He got on so well with the newcomers from the Aloha system. They made great strides together on understanding how Shiva had enthralled his neighbors. For years, he’d gone through the motions. What could one man do against a society of puppets? He was a computer programmer, a geek, not a social activist.
His neighbors didn’t like him much even before they turned into puppets. He hated spectator sports.
His face burned. Despite all he knew, he’d allowed his own children to become marionettes, jerked around on Shiva’s strings. He excused this because he was only one man, a single dad with three kids. Oh, when he had them home, they wore their foil hats! He let them misbehave! Say inappropriate things! Jump on the bed!
For a few hours. But then they needed to go back to school with their friends, right? His conscience twinged harder – no, it twanged – to think of his eldest, Bron, now 17. Before the nanites took over, his son was smart as a whip, charismatic as hell. Bron wasn’t geek smart like his dad. He was a born ring-leader, a verbal gerbil, and quite liked team sports. With a foil hat, Bron was still all that and spitting mad, raring to overthrow the world order and beat that Shiva into submission.
And Hugo egged him on for a few hours, then sent him back to school. He’d have kept him home, but what kind of life was that for Bron, without his friends? With a dad who could teach only the stuff he hated in school?
Hugo stood still against the hallway wall. Apparently it was adult passing time, another insipid meal shift. His fellow Gannies walked by without noticing his existence. Hell, there were only 1100 of them, including the kids. He knew them all. No one said hi. And he’d been foolish enough to take it personally, instead of solving it.
Sass left her whole world behind. She learned the Colony Corps stuck themselves with an sub-viable population. She found a warp drive, and dared to cross deep space in a crappy old asteroid hopper.
He fingered a silvery fabric helm. Corky made him extra for his kids. Such a sweet lady. A shame about the booming voice. A modest home-maker, Corky too braved deep space, left everyone she knew, over 20 years elapsed, to find and help another world.
A world that couldn’t be bothered to free itself.
In sudden resolve, Hugo’s steps quickened to his office. He grabbed screwdrivers and hammers into a bag, along with his treasured trove of aluminum foil, and the hats he’d already made for his kids.
And he marched forth to liberate the children.
At the high school creche, he found Bron, mouth hanging open, staring fixedly with his classmates at a screen at the front of the room. An elaborate diagram mapped the plot and characters, fictional and non-fictional elements of Slaughterhouse Five, an apparently grisly 20th Century novel. Good. No need to feel guilty interrupting that.
Hugo began by finding the emitters in the room, embedded in the walls. He used a screwdriver and a mallet to chip each out of the wall, and tucked them into a little Faraday cage snuff box.
When Bron finally blinked awake and looked his way, Hugo tossed him a helm in triumph. “Pick your team, son. Get these hoods on them.”
His recently slack-jawed zombie son broke into a fey grin. “It’s time? We’re gonna do it, Dad?”
“Absolutely, son! And we’re going to start with the kids!”
Bron whistled an ear-splitting hoot and started rousing his chosen band, probably his soccer team plus his girlfriend. These few got the classy chain-mail-like hoods. But once they were free of mind control, Bron put them to work fashioning helms for the rest of their friends from the aluminum foil.
Soon Bron had a crew of fairly clear-thinking hooligans. He taught them to chip out the wall emitters and block them inside a scrap of foil. Bron sent off a war party to acquire more foil.
Hugo wiped a tear of pride from his eye. Even all zombified, his son made note of where to grab stockpiles of foil come the revolution. What a good rotten kid he had!
Stiffening his resolve, Hugo moved on to salvage his twins. Raised longer in Shiva’s clutches, the younger two were commensurately stupider. Or perhaps they would have been dullards anyway, but they were his and he loved them. Bron’s hooligans reached their classroom before he did, clearing the emitters. The fifteen-year-olds were interrupted in a lesson on fractions.
Hugo shook his head in dismay. Fractions? Seriously? At 15? How low the descendants of proud Ganymede had fallen. Grandma would’ve raised hell and taken names. She probably finished calculus by this age. Hugo certainly had. He made a mental note to check what pathetic level of math accomplishment Bron reached so far. Math wasn’t his forte.
Sighing, Hugo got his Minka and Jens hooded, and teaching others the art of foil hat-making.
Oddly, no polebots yet intervened. Hugo headed to the main hallway to check.
Aha! Bron and his goons had erected barricades of overturned classroom tables to block the halls. Their numbers were swelled by older classmates. The creche included junior college, up to age 19. From behind these ramparts, they disabled the polebot army with baseball bats. As he watched, Bron fetched a felled polebot over the table by its base, then smashed its bowling-ball head in. Next he disassembled the robot for weapon parts.
“Atta boy, Bron! Sic ’em!” Hugo pumped a fist in triumph.
“Lame, Dad!” Bron assured him. “Don’t embarrass yourself.”
Right. “Let’s leave the youngest kids alone for now, son. When we’ve got the middle grades freed –”
“We liberate the cafeterias next, Dad.” Under his breath, he added, “And we free all the kids, down to babies.”
“Good idea! Carry on!” Hugo refrained from repeating the fist pump. “Let me know if I can help. I’m…good with computers!”
“Yeah, Dad!”
At this rate, all Hugo needed to do was get out of the kids’ way. Today the Ganny quadrant, tomorrow the world! The world only offered three quadrants, after all. Sanctuary wasn’t that big a town.
Sass will be proud of me. And I’m proud of Bron!
Minka and Jens… Bron returned to see if the twins needed him.
The rampage of the Ganny sector liberation continued well into the night. At one point, Hugo caught a glimpse of Commander Lumpkin, their mayor, a block away. She was bleeding from the forehead and directing traffic. Whether she sought to counteract the rioting children or help them, he wasn’t sure. A wave of irate older Gannies swept her out of view.
Freeing Sanctuary wasn’t an overwhelming task after all. He just never had a good answer for the question, Then what?
But it didn’t matter. Once everyone could think again, he didn’t need to supply the answers. And if Sass crossed deep space from Aloha, a system they presumed dead, maybe they could pack up and go there. Three whole worlds, after all.
37
Back on Sanctuary, Sass led the morning run, a quick five laps of the ship to start their day. The gang was a half dozen this morning.
As she made the gravity turn from the ceiling down the starboard bulkhead, Zelda exploded out of the med-bay, grinning ear to ear. “I’m nanite-free! Woot!” She leapt onto the wall and ran to throw her arms around Sass in glee
, then laughed and hugged Porter and Joey next.
“Your mood sure improved!” Sass grinned at Darren, who looked jealous.
“Oh, I feel so good!” Zelda squealed, and traded bear-hugs with Corky, just coming off the ceiling. Better her than me, Sass thought. Corky’s bear-hugs made her ribs ache. Zelda went on to give Clay and Remi pecks on the cheek, still glowing beatifically.
Dot, standing on the hold floor 90 degrees off from everyone else, called up, “Zelda, tell them about the Farmer’s Joy!”
“Oh, yeah! You probably didn’t know, but I’ve always suffered a little social anxiety. Anxious to please, don’t want be a burden, afraid to speak up.”
“A people-pleaser,” Sass acknowledged wryly, the young scientist’s most obvious trait.
“Exactly! And Husna really intimidated me. And you, Sass!”
Sass decided the run was over, and flipped a somersault down to the deck beside Dot. “Me? Intimidating?”
“You sort of are,” Zelda insisted. She got a running start, attempting to match Sass’s somersault, but at zero-g. This left her slowly rolling in mid-air towards Sass and Dot, unable to stop rotating. Loath to make a mistake in public, and having spent most of the trip in stasis, Zelda’s zero-g acrobatics remained sub-par for Thrive.
Sass helpfully snagged her out of mid-air and positioned her feet to release her to gravity. Then she needed to stabilize Porter, too, as he also launched an inexpert flip. The remaining runners easily made it to the floor without hiccup.
Dot prompted, “The point was, Zelda feels better than ever.”
“Absolutely! I mean, I woke up this morning thinking, why is Husna studying this phosphorescent chemical? I should take that over! And normally I’d like cringe. No, I couldn’t do that! But of course I can. Chemistry and hydrology are much closer to my specialty. And she can do whatever she’s doing, and we can compare notes. Before I would have stopped myself, afraid to talk to her. How crazy is that?”