by M. D. Cooper
“Thank you, ma’am.”
He hurried off, continuing aft, while Cary walked forward.
She double-checked that her extradimensional limbs were once again coiled within the bounds of her corporeal body, and then took a look at her shipsuit. It was her standard work configuration, but given the likelihood that Captain Beatrice would be hosting a formal affair, she shifted its appearance to that of a dress uniform, her commander’s bars appearing on her lapels.
Given the choice, Cary usually preferred to greet the newbies in civilian garb, but Captain Beatrice wouldn’t tolerate that at a formal dinner. The downside to that was that many of the scientists who made the pilgrimage to the forward edge of the starflight initiative were less likely to give credence to the words of a military woman.
That being said, once it fully clicked who she was, most of the newbies tended to pay her the respect she deserved.
Five minutes later, she reached the officer’s dining hall and stepped inside to see the newbies and senior ship’s crew milling about with drinks in hand. Captain Beatrice had not yet arrived, which meant Cary wouldn’t have to endure a look of disappointment for being late.
“Ah! There you are, Cary!”
Earnest’s voice rang out from nearby, and she turned to see him gesturing for her to join him where he stood talking to three of the new scientists.
Having already memorized each person’s information, she didn’t have to consult her HUD to know that he was standing with a man from Earth named Amish Green, a Scipian woman whose name was simply Uma, and Gera, an uplifted sloth from New Eden.
“Cary Richards,” Gera extended a paw, long claws turned so that they weren’t a risk to her. “It is truly an honor to meet you.”
“Why thank you,” she replied, shaking their hand before clasping Uma’s and Amish’s in turn. “I’ve reviewed your work, and I can’t tell you how excited we are to have you aboard.”
Earnest asked privately.
He sent a mental shrug before speaking aloud. “Gera was just telling me about their new theory regarding the core AIs’ plan.”
“The Matri∞me,” Gera corrected. “I think it makes more sense if we think in terms of their faction. Given that Hades and his…people…aided us at Earth, I don’t think they would have been involved in the starshifting.”
Cary inclined her head. “That makes sense. I think the same is true for the Caretakers. From what I’ve been able to gather, most of them never even ventured to the core.”
“Yes, yes,” the sloth nodded, their words spilling out quickly while their other motions were measured and slow. “That is neither here nor there. The Matri∞me is interested in slowing the expansion of the universe, yes? But how will condensing mass accomplish that?”
“Something I’ve wondered, myself,” Uma said. “In the grand scheme of things, the galactic clusters are going to continue to move apart despite the changes you make to the structure of their mass.”
“There’s the ‘Wobble’ theory,” Amish suggested, his tone hinting that he didn’t buy into the idea.
Gera rolled their eyes. “You cannot ‘wobble’ the galaxies back into place, there isn’t enough time for them to come back around. No, I think that the Matri∞me’s plan was to form new supermassive black holes, and swing them through the cosmos, gathering up intergalactic dust. That would form new galaxies, which—if you were to arrange them in the correct matrix—would effectively slow the universe’s expansion.”
“Enough to reverse it?” Cary asked.
“No.” Gera’s slow head shake took far longer than the single syllable word. “Not in the time the stars have. But it will arrest it.”
Uma grunted, shaking her head. “What is the point of that? It doesn’t lengthen the life span of the star-forming age of the universe. And without momentum, the universe will crash back into itself in a big crunch. Is that really what the ascended AIs want? It seems…unimportant.”
Amish chuckled. “Maybe they just like order that much.”
“This speculation doesn’t get us anywhere,” Uma said, her brows knitted. “We still have to fix it all, and the pattern is clear: they’re trying to collapse clusters across the galaxy, so we have to venture into each and every one to determine if they’re being manipulated.”
Earnest coughed. “I’d rather send probes than venture in, but you’re right. Even if they were to appear right here and tell us what they intended, we couldn’t take their word for it. Investigating every cluster in the galaxy is a must.” He paused and winked. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”
“Dirty, or boring?” Uma asked.
Earnest’s easygoing manner shifted in an instant, and he speared the woman with a narrow-eyed look. “If there is something about shifting the galactic trajectory of stars that is dull to you, then why are you here?”
Uma nearly took a step back, shock registering on her face at the vehemence of the engineer’s words. “I didn’t mean it like that…I was just speaking off the cuff.”
Earnest continued to stare into her eyes, clearly not buying her excuse. After ten seconds of silence, he blinked and turned to Gera. “Your theory is very interesting, and definitely something for us to keep in mind. If they are indeed looking for clusters that can have their resultant black holes spun out of the galaxy, we could select those as prime targets for surveys.”
“If only we could use more gates to manage the surveys,” Amish lamented. “So many of these clusters have too much dark matter for FTL travel. Gates get around that, but—”
“We are using gates more often than not,” Cary interrupted. “The real problem is that we have no baseline for stellar motion in most of these locations. It’s going to take decades to spot anomalies—unless we happen to stumble across the Matri∞me’s facilities, like we have in most of the clusters we’ve corrected thus far.”
Amish nodded. “Good thing most of these collisions will take hundreds or thousands of years to play out. We have some time.”
Gera folded their long arms across their chest. “In some cases. But too many of these situations will take that long to correct.”
“Like the one we’re dealing with here,” Cary said.
“Oh?” Uma cocked a brow. “How so?”
Before Cary or Earnest could reply, Captain Beatrice called out to the room from the table’s head at the far end of the room.
“Good evening, one and all. I’m sorry for the delay, a captain’s work is never done. I trust that you all took the time to get to know one another, and now we can settle in and enjoy a meal together? Come. Let’s eat.”
Cary said to Earnest as they walked to their customary spots at the table’s head, on the captain’s left.
It only took a minute for everyone to settle into their seats, and once silence had fallen, Beatrice stood and swept a warm smile across the group.
“I’d like to officially welcome our newest crewmembers aboard. Each and every one of you have been selected for your ability to dive into tricky problems and come up with creative solutions. And trust me,” she paused to glance at Earnest and Cary. “We have our fill of those out here.”
“Stars, yes,” Earnest muttered.
“And, of course, you’re here to learn from people who started starshifting before we encountered the first Matri∞me installation in Praesepe. They’ve trained a dozen of the crews that are now operating in other systems—some managing corrections already set in motion, while others are moving into distant clusters to steer new stars. This is a high calling, and one of the most important there is.
“I know that we all have our pet theories about the why and the wherefore of these collisions, but one thing we do know is that, left unchecked, the resulting shockwaves and radiation will sterilize much of the
galaxy. And that is something we can’t have.”
She again looked around the table, smiling at the group before continuing. “And for that I thank you for both your service and your dedication. We’re saving the galaxy, people. Not through war or strength of arms, but with our minds, with cunning moves executed against events set in motion by a mind far greater than any of ours. It is a high calling, and for that, I salute you.”
Captain Beatrice raised her wine glass, as did every other person around the table, and held it aloft. “To the Star Shepherds.”
Cary smiled at the name. It wasn’t their official title, but it had been catching on of late.
“That was very inspiring,” she said to the captain as Beatrice sat down. “Glad we have you here to rally the troops.”
Automatons began placing the first courses on the table, setting soups and salads in front of each diner to their preference. Beatrice glanced at Cary before lifting a spoonful of soup to her lips.
A wave of uncertainty washed over Cary…. Statements like that always prefaced change. Chances were that if it wasn’t the captain herself, it would be someone high on the Cora’s Triumph’s command—perhaps even Cary herself.
Despite her concern, she decided to be coy.
The engineer shrugged.
Earnest stabbed his fork through a tomato slice and lifted it to his lips, an amused expression taking shape on his face.
Conversation ebbed and flowed around the table, Cary listening more than participating.
At the outset, the newbies spent much of their time trying to impress Earnest and—to a lesser extent—Cary. However, as the ship’s senior officers weighed in more and more, the newcomers came to realize that when it came to moving stars, the engineering heads running the projects knew as much, or more, than the newbies did.
When the main course was served, the ship’s officers were doing most of the talking—especially Master Chief Scargin, who had been with the Cora’s Triumph ever since the first mission in the Inner Praesepe Empire.
“Sure, you could use orbital mirrors in that fashion,” he responded to Uma in measured tones. “But if you do, you have to account for the flares you’re going to stir up. Mirrors just reflect too much heat back onto the star, and that can make the corona storm. And trust me, you don’t want to be engineering a star burn when there’s a storm raging across its surface.”
“You can mitigate that,” Uma insisted. “Make micro-divots in the mirror’s surface that focus the energy and keep excess from reflecting back.”
“Yes, that can work,” Scargin said, nodding in agreement. “I would love to try it, if we could make mirrors capable of withstanding the stellar winds in such large quantities.”
His comment sounded pleasant enough, but everyone felt the common reminder that engineers often gave people dreaming up new ideas: materials science couldn’t magically produce new substances in mass quantities.
And when it came to starshifting, ‘mass’ took on a whole new meaning.
“We should try,” Uma muttered. “We could reuse them, save us from building billions of expendable drones in every system we work in.”
“It would also allow us to tap polar sprays,” Earnest added. “Which are all too common on a lot of these fast spinners we work with. I don’t know if it’s something we could manufacture in the field, Uma, but we might be able to elsewhere.”
Scargin smiled at the head engineer. “I won’t argue if you can pull it off. We could increase our operational efficiency by an order of magnitude if we didn’t have to rebuild our tools in each system.”
“It’s certainly been a hassle,” Earnest nodded. “Like, what was that…four stars ago, when there wasn’t a single body in the system…barely a solid rock to tear apart for raw materials. We had to set up manufacturing in a nearby system and run convoys.”
The ramifications of that process ran through Cary’s mind, and she began to wonder if there was a reason Earnest had never attempted this method before.
“You’d have to work out how to gravitationally anchor the mirrors to the star,” Cary pointed out. “Grav beams might not be enough. But that’s not the real problem.”
“No?” Uma gave her a penetrating look, as though a child had just spoken at the adults’ table. “What else is wrong with my idea?”
Cary sighed, glancing at Earnest before replying. “The idea itself. The fact that it’s hard to move stars is good. Like, really good. Imagine if we worked out a way to quickly move all the stars we need to back onto their courses. Something that was repeatable with ease.”
She stopped, letting her words sink in.
Realization dawned on a few other faces before it appeared on Uma’s. The woman frowned, but Gera spoke up first.
“Why is it that every really useful tool is also a terrifying superweapon?”
“This is a really important lesson,” Captain Beatrice said. “Right now, the AoS is working hard to roll back many of the tools and weapons of mass destruction that were introduced in the war, to normalize what we can and restrict that which is simply too dangerous. This sounds like it would fall into that category.”
A grimace formed on Earnest’s lips. As the person directly responsible for some of the most dangerous technology ever created, a lot of the blame for some of the worst things to have happened in the war rested on his shoulders.
Cary knew that he was rarely behind the weaponizing of the technology, but she also knew that knowledge didn’t assuage his guilt to any measurable degree.
“She’s right,” Earnest said after a moment of silence. “That may be too risky a technology to develop.”
“That’s an interesting stance for you to take,” Uma countered. “You, of all people.”
Earnest’s lips drew into a thin line. “Perhaps I’ve learned some valuable lessons.”
“That none of us will have the opportunity to learn,” Uma said in a low voice. “Because we’re not the great Earnest Redding.”
Captain Beatrice placed her hands on the table and rose. “That’ll be enough. There’s a reason we’re working on this initiative with teams from dozens of nations and across species. It’s a core tenant of the AoS that anything we do must be for the betterment of all. The ends do not justify the means. Yes, reaching consensus is far harder than unilateral activity, but the war is over, and we must all work for peace, not superiority.”
Uma opened her mouth to protest, but at a look from the captain, subsided into silence, which Beatrice let hang in the air for a few seconds before smiling. “But there is something I want to announce that is not of such a dire nature.” She glanced at Cary. “Two somethings, actually.”
Earnest’s lips split into a wide smile, as did Scargin’s—enough to cause Cary to wonder if a prank was about to be played…probably on her.
“I’ve been speaking with the newly formed AoS Science Command about the structure of the organization and how we fit under it. Somehow, those conversations shifted into me being put forward to be in command of all starshifting teams.”
“Well deserved!” Earnest said in a loud voice, rising and clapping.
Scargin was right behind him, and a moment later, everyone was on their feet, though the newcomers seemed a l
ittle uncertain, sharing concerned looks with one another.
“I’m glad it’s you,” Cary said as the applause died down. “It’s always nice when someone who knows what they’re doing is in charge.”
Beatrice nodded, gesturing for everyone to take their seats. “I couldn’t agree more. I can’t bear idiots telling me what to do—though now that I’m that idiot, I won’t have any excuses.”
A few chuckles came from those assembled as the captain turned to Cary.
“You’ll need to stand back up.”
“Me?” she mouthed, placing a hand on her chest, to which the captain nodded.
As Cary rose, Beatrice turned back to face the others. “Of course, it goes without saying that if I’m running all the starshifting operations, I can’t be an effective leader for the Cora’s Triumph. To that end, a promotion is in order.”
A round of murmurs circulated the table, and Cary glanced at Commander Lance, the ship’s XO. He gave her a smile and a nod, indicating that he knew what was about to happen and was OK with it.
Beatrice turned back to Cary. “You’re one of the smartest people alive, so I have little doubt that you’ve figured out what’s coming.”
Cary’s eyes widened. “I mean…I’m shocked, but I can read between the lines…or the lines themselves, in this case.”
The captain laughed. “True, I’ve never been one for subtlety. So to that end, congratulations on the promotion, Lieutenant Colonel Richards. The AoS thanks you for your service and dedication to our cause. I’m sure that everyone here can agree that you will be an excellent captain for the Cora’s Triumph, and do our mission proud.”
A lump formed in Cary’s throat, and she swallowed while nodding. “I…I absolutely will.”
She stood still as Beatrice produced a pair of silver oak leaves, replacing Cary’s gold pair with those of the next rank. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Colonel, and welcome to your first official command in the AoS.”
“First official command anywhere,” she replied with a nervous laugh.
“Well, don’t worry, I’ll be around for a bit to ensure a smooth transfer, as will Commander Lance.”