The holographic full length mirror stood in the middle of the room looking back at Alice. It was really a projection of what the six sensors in the cabin picked up so she could see herself in full scale moving exactly as she moved. She turned it so she could see the side profile, then from behind and shook her head. “This vacsuit's too thin.”
“You said the last two were too thick and 'made you look puffy' yet there is only one point five millimetres difference. In the very few instances I've seen the two of you together he didn't focus on your physical appearance as though he were looking to pursue any kind of romantic entanglement. His cursory inspections of you indicate curiosity, and he seems far more interested in what you have to say.”
“That doesn't mean I shouldn't pay attention to my appearance. I want to make the right impression.”
“If you insist. He has been awake for over an hour.”
Alice adjusted the colour of her vacsuit to a powder blue instead of the near white and nodded to herself. “That's better. What has he been doing?”
“Looking through the Hart News archives, reviewing information on The First Light of which there isn't much, and clips on Jake Valance.”
Alice froze. She had been so elated at finding him that she had nearly forgotten that there was someone else with his face. The one she had gone to great lengths to rescue out there. “How is he?”
“It's difficult to tell. He has been watching most of the footage without comment in the common room.”
Alice picked up the arm control unit she had set out and left her quarters. He was watching a playback of one of Jake Valance's successful bounty hunts. The scratchy holographic footage was from some security sensor system and depicted Jake disabling and drugging a much larger man into unconsciousness. It took mere seconds even though the act was performed in zero gravity from in front of the target. He couldn't help but admire how Jake used the larger fellow's momentum against him.
Alice took a seat across the wood textured round table from him. She always liked the common room, it had a pair of materializers intended for food and drink, a transparent ceiling, a long sofa along one wall, a holoprojector hidden in the centre and eight comfortable chairs. Like everything else on the Clever Dream it wasn't large, but it was made to be very comfortable with subdued colouring, round corners, padded walls and dim lighting.
Jonas looked around the hologram, leaning to one side, and smiled at her for a moment. She moved to sit beside him, giving him an uneasy look. “This didn't come up last night, but I'm sorry I didn't find you. I thought I did when I released him, if I had known you were-”
“It's all right, there's no way you could have known,” he reassured.
Alice persisted. “If I had known you were still in storage somewhere I would have kept looking.”
“It's all right. I'm fine. I feel like Rip Van Winkle, missing about eight years but I'm okay. Besides, it looks like I've been busy in a way,” he said as he brought up Jake Valance's most recent public appearance. He was shaking hands with a public official, who the functionary was representing was uncertain since the hologram was muted. “It's like watching your own shadow do some of the things you wish you could and other things you never would. I can't believe what he's accomplished.”
“He's also done a lot I wouldn't,” Alice said quietly. “Still, before I knew he was a fake I saw him as my father.”
“I wouldn't call him a fake. He knows everything I do, only he wiped himself out or suppressed the memories, I'm not sure which.”
Alice looked to the hologram then back to Jonas. “He did it to himself?”
Jonas nodded, his expression was sullen. “They introduced us and we realized that we had the same memories, the same need to make all the work they were doing meaningless. I think he's a framework, made of a new kind of skeleton with nanobot and materializer technology built in. There are also several digital storage devices built in and after we had a short conversation he decided that the only way they would stop trying to duplicate or control me was if he made himself non-viable. As far as he was concerned, he was me. He remembered everything I did, but at the same time he was aware that he couldn't be, he knew he was the copy. The last thing he wanted to do was erase his memory but he did.”
“The information we found with him did say that his memories had been wiped,” Alice agreed. “When I saw him identified as Jacob Valance, I thought they had just renamed you. All your things were with him as well.”
“My point is, in the first few days of his life he made a sacrifice I don't know I would if it were possible. After that incident they put me back under, not that they ever let me wake up completely. I was so drugged up when they took me out of the tube that it's all a sort of haze even during the few hours I spent with him. Looking into your own eyes and hearing your own voice come out of another body is hard to forget. I'm glad you got him out. He should be as free as I am.”
“We're going to meet him. I didn't know where else to set course for. I was on my way there when Gabriel came after me.”
Jonas laughed and nodded. “Gabriel woke me up a couple months ago. I didn't see the outside of that suite you found me in after that. I didn't even know I was in a ship until I saw the effects of a wormhole through the window. I was supposed to be a surprise gift for you. He never explained that you had downloaded yourself into human body so I thought you were still running amok in some computer system somewhere.”
Alice couldn't help but laugh uproariously. “He's a little strange, way too obsessed with me. Bernice used to call him my interstellar stalker.”
“That fits. I got access to a lot of the entertainment networks, he gave me reference information on neural technology, a couple of computing tools so I could keep myself busy.”
“Speaking of computing tools,” Alice said as she put the three quarter length arm control and command unit on the table in front of him. “I materialized one just in case I ever found you again. It has the improvements I made to my own.”
It looked a bit like his old one, but as he picked it up he realized it was lighter, only two millimetres thick, and perfectly flexible. The display was tuned to activate when his hand touched it and the operating system interface looked the same as his old one. “There's a materializer in here?”
“Yup, four times as powerful as the one you used to use and its power cell is based on the newer ones Freegrounders use. The entire vacsuit is an eight fold energy collector.”
“Eight fold, they used to be four.”
“Now Freeground vacsuits and the control systems collect energy from motion, heat, light, any magnetism, waste electricity, pressure exerted from either side of the suit, friction and body waste if you just have no where else to go. The vacsuits also have cleaning and skin maintenance systems built in now.” She raised her hand up to show that it looked like she wasn't wearing gloves. “You can also make any part of it transparent.”
“That must have been fun in testing,” Jonas said with a chuckle. “Thank you, I missed this.” He put the unit around his left forearm and it self sealed. The control interface came to life, presenting status information and pointing out where different devices were located, such as the emergency injector for treating injury and an up link wire for interfacing with other computers without using wireless communications. He looked at Alice then with a smile she had never seen before. “This is pretty unbelievable.” It came almost as a whisper. “I can't believe I'm sitting beside a woman who was once my artificial intelligence. Not only that, but you saved me from some crazed maniac who crossed the galaxy to get to you.”
Alice was at a loss. She just didn't know what to say, it was like she was on display. She never felt so naked but coming from him it wasn't offensive. “You're welcome.”
“I never said it, but after having you around for so long you were like the sister I never had. You knew me better than anyone.”
“I always thought of you as my father,” she said quietly.
�
��I think I'm still a little young to be your father, but I'd be proud to take the role,” Jonas said, taking her hand.
A tear rolled down her cheek and she leaned towards him. He put his arms around her and let her cry. “I came into this body and there was nothing but fragments of her life left. They were all painful, disjointed, lonely memories and I was starting to think I was just continuing where she left off. I thought I was ready to be on my own when Bernice got married and stayed behind, and Lewis helps, but I've missed you s-so much.” She tried to take a deep breath but it was broken by involuntary shudders.
Jonas comforted her, stroking her back and holding her close. “You're a gift. I am amazed at you, and not because you're some new technological feat, but because you're a being I thought I would never, could never meet like this and there were days I wished I could meet people and introduce you like the person you were to me. After you left I never took on another AI with a personality.”
She held fast to him, quieting a little.
“I had lost my best friend, and now here she is.” He pulled away from her just enough to look at her face and wipe away her tears. “I can't wait to introduce you to Ayan and Oz.”
“I'm only what you made me,” she said quietly with a small smile.
His reaction was a surprised one. “Maybe at first, but oh my God you've done so much since! I don't know who Bernice is, but I doubt she bought you this ship and let you run off, and you rescued me instead of being captured yourself. I saw that ship, spent two months locked in a room, a nice room, but still locked away. I tried to escape and couldn't. You're so much more than I can take credit for.” He paused for a moment then smiled, raising his eyebrows. “But can I take some credit? This would look pretty good on a resume.”
She laughed and nodded, her chin still quivering. “Just keep me strapped to your arm whenever you can.”
“Ayan might have a problem with that,” Jonas said quietly. It took a moment, but the reality of being away for so long sunk in and he buried the dark thoughts that threatened to overtake him. “You're important to me. More important than anyone, you're family.” He kissed her on the forehead and held her.
She wept in relief and joy. It wasn't the hardened, dark Jake Valance who was accepting her, it was the one she had always known, the one she remembered and loved. “Thank you,” came her whisper. “Thank you.”
Jonas patiently comforted her for several minutes before she sniffled and pulled away slowly. She pulled a napkin from a table drawer and blew her nose. “Feel better?” he asked gently.
She nodded. “Uh-huh. Thanks.”
“You have to stop thanking me. You saved my butt remember?”
“Yup, and I'll get you home too. Too bad the ship will get there faster than any transmission, they won't have any warning.”
“You always did like surprises.”
“I guess I did,” she said with a far away look. “I remember a lot of things from before, but it's more like a dream.” Alice looked at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It must feel like you're in a different universe. You must have a million questions and I'm falling apart on you.”
“While I was sleeping you were having a life out here, pretty much alone from what I'm hearing, so I understand. Do you know anything about how Ayan is though? I couldn't find much.”
“She's still at Freeground, all I could find out was that she is with their Special Projects division. They made her a founding member of the department restart.”
“Did you ever try to contact them?”
“No, I never did. I didn't know how they would react. I was afraid to. The few times I tried to look information up on them there was always a huge wall of security. Whatever everyone's doing has got to be important.”
“So they all got back.”
“They did. Oz was listed as a Captain a couple months after you disappeared, that's the last I saw of him. But everyone was listed somewhere associated with Freeground, so they all got back.”
“Was there any mention of Minh-Chu?”
Alice's expression darkened a little. “I couldn't find him anywhere.”
Jonas sighed and nodded. “I didn't think so.”
“You must be anxious to see Ayan again, I know she'll want to see you.”
“I hope.”
“I kept checking wedding announcements. Jason and Laura were married about five years ago, but Ayan never did.”
“Still, I'm not going to get my hopes up. It's been a long time.”
“We could shave a couple days off the trip there if we dropped out of transit space and changed to a more direct course.”
Jonas gave it a moment's thought then looked at the holographic display in the centre of the table. The clips of Jake Valance had been playing silently in the background and it had reached the recruitment video. “I have to see that man again. If it weren't for him I wouldn't be intact now. I think he has to know what he did to save me. Somehow going on with my life without acknowledging him just doesn't sit right.”
Alice shook her head and smiled. “This is going to be interesting.”
Two Captains
Jake Valance stared at Lucius Wheeler through the transparent barrier sealing him into the secure confinement cell. The guard watching the brig had been sent outside to wait for the crewman set to relieve her.
Wheeler was sleeping soundly on the padded metal bunk. They had taken everything but the fixtures out of the cell and stripped him just in case.
He woke and sat up, smiling up at Jake. “Good morning. Been there long?”
“Tell me about Freeground,” Captain Valance ordered quietly.
“Why would I do that? It's not where you're from. You were born on some lab table somewhere I'm guessing.”
Jake crossed his arms and just looked on. The man's scraggly hair was unkempt as always, and his dark eyes had dark circles under them that blended into the bruising under his right eye and around his crooked broken nose.
“Did you tell them yet? That you're just a copy of a greater man? The real Jonas Valent is probably out there and he's the one that has a home. You're just another machine, someone turned you on thinking you were the real deal and didn't come back to turn your lights out.”
That struck a nerve. He was lead to wonder if his daughter was truly his flesh and blood, or if she had found Jonas Valent and gone on with her life. What he had done, recovered from lethal injuries in the space of a minute through sudden regeneration, wasn't human. He had gone over the radiation readings from his cloaksuit as well, and those doses of radiation really should have killed him even with the medication. That didn't explain the white scarf, the long coat or everything he knew. There were no memories, but so much knowledge that felt all his own. It was easy to get angry at the small man in the containment cell, but the rewards of patience were far more important for the time being.
“You know, before I found out what you were I thought you had become just like me. Could you imagine?”
“Count the days Lucius.” Captain Valance said as he muted the speaker of the containment cell and locked it with a four digit code. No one would be able to hear him or set him free without that passkey.
Enreega
The Triton came out of hyperspace in the Enreega system. Captain Valance worked the pilot's controls from the helm personally while Ashley watched two and three dimensional displays beside him in the navigators seat. That section wasn't so different from what she was used to on the Samson after some cosmetic modifications, there was just more information and a greater amount of computing power.
She was still unsure of herself, however, so she turned around to look at Price, who met her worried look with one of his own. He brought up what they were seeing on the main holographic display. “Captain, the defence station has been torn apart. I've got a few hundred distress signals, mostly small escape craft.”
Captain Valance turned the ship several degrees and set it on a course that would take them around the wreckag
e and was out of his seat as though it were on fire. “Find the cloaking system controls!” He called out as he joined Agameg Price at the tactical station, helping him search. They weren't there.
It struck him then that he was looking at the wrong station entirely. There was a field control station right beside and he found it right away. The lighting on the bridge dimmed as the cloaking device engaged and the Triton should have disappeared from all manner of sight. “It's not working. The Big Surprise must have taken out a couple of sections.”
Captain Valance walked back to the helm and sat down, carefully guiding the ship around debris. “Can you see any Regent Galactic ships in the area?”
“There are a few wrecks here I don't recognize, but no Regent Galactic. Whoever was here just wiped all the defences and large ships out and moved on. Can you see any city vessels on Seneschal?”
“A couple, but they're in a bad state. There's one parallel to us sending a distress call.”
Captain Valance settled the ship into a slow moving course that would take them near some of the larger orbital structures and sat back in his seat. “Good thing we have a lot of room. Get teams together, start retrieving escape craft.” He looked to the tactical display and was startled by what he saw there. “Eden system ships did this. We have to hurry.”
Epilogue
Her quarters were dark, they always were. Light sensitivity was something she had to deal with whenever she went outside, along with other persistent maladies. All a result of failed genetic meddling before she was born. It had caught up to her, and what was worse, her mother, Admiral Rice was dozens of light years away coordinating the initial settlement of Freeground's first colony. Not her choice, the Admiralty pressed her into the post.
Terry Ozark McPatrick, Oz was what his friends called him, was in his full dress uniform. He felt as though he was delivering news of the death of a loved one. He couldn't help it, he was about to crush hope.
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