by Eric Flint
Not that there’s anything wrong with it! he thought, hoping the universe didn’t take that thought as meaning put us all back on Lincoln.
But he did, suddenly, want to see his family right now.
Tavana sat up and went to the door; it opened promptly at his approach, and closed smoothly behind him once he was out into the corridor.
It was ship-night, so the lighting was more subdued. All the castaways had been assigned cabins in one section, so he moved up the hall, listening. In the background, the constant hum of air circulating, and nearly subliminal thumps or murmurs or tap-tap-taps of people working, talking, moving about the other parts of the ship.
He had the door next to his open slightly; the darkness inside was just lightened enough for him to see Maddox and Francisco, both dead asleep. The two youngest in each group were roomed together at the moment; all the older people had their own rooms—well, Laura and Akira had one room together, and so did the sergeant and Pearce Haley.
There were low voices audible from ahead, a double cabin they’d been given as a sort of living room. Peeking in, he saw the Kimei family—minus Hitomi and Melody, who were probably sleeping like Maddox and Francisco—sitting around a table, eating what looked like a mountain of chips and a few types of dip.
Laura saw him. “Come in, Tavana.”
“Tavana!” Sakura jumped up and gave him a huge hug, then kissed him hard.
He was startled—but not so startled he couldn’t kiss back. “Okay, I guess I will come in then, invited so nicely!”
The others laughed as he sat down with Sakura. “Couldn’t rest yet?” Akira asked.
“No. I…it is strange, but being here, it still seems like a dream to me, so I needed to see…well, that we were really here.”
“We are indeed here. And grateful for it,” Akira said. “Maybe we would have found a way to survive even after the impact, but…I am extremely glad we did not have to find out.”
“Oh, I am not unhappy with this at all,” Tavana said as earnestly as he could. “It’s just…”
“I know exactly what you mean, Tav,” Caroline said. To one side, Whips gave an assenting wave. “We all knew at best it was going to be years before anyone came here. Instead they show up just at the right time to rescue us? That’s exactly the kind of dreams we’ve all had once or twice before, right?” She looked around the table.
Laura nodded. “More than once. A couple of times so real that I woke up thinking I was on a rescue boat.” She grimaced. “Those were not good mornings.”
“Of course,” Tavana said reluctantly, “I suppose it could still be a really realistic dream.”
“Yours, yes,” Akira said with a smile. “As in that case we would just be figments of your imagination. From my point of view, however, no, it could not, because I mastered lucid dreaming years ago. This is no dream, thank goodness.”
Tavana reached out and took a chip, dipping it into an orange-colored salsa. For a few moments he simply savored the taste of a food Lincoln would never have given them.
Finally, he looked at the others again—especially Saki, who smiled and leaned against him for a moment. “So…what is next?”
“That is indeed the question,” Laura said. “Obviously first we’ll be debriefed. Sherlock may be heading back, but our year-plus time on Lincoln will certainly give some of their scientists material to work with. Our group also had enough native materials to be interesting for the geologists, biologists, and others to at least start the process of studying. Not to mention Akira’s rather meticulous notes on everything we’ve seen.”
Akira grinned. “My career is secure, at any rate. I have enough material to make dozens of papers over the next few years.”
“But…” Tavana hesitated, then made himself go on, “after that? I mean, after we are on Orado…what then?”
“I don’t suppose we’d thought about it much yet. Why?”
He squeezed Sakura’s hand. She looked at him and he saw sudden understanding there. “Oh.”
“Because I want to know…where all of my family is going,” Tavana said simply.
Tavana didn’t have to tell them what it meant for him to say that. They knew what had happened to most of his original family.
He went on, “Our crew—Emerald Maui’s crew—I do not know yet either. Maddox and Xander—they will go on to Tantalus, I think. Their mother and father are there. Francisco too, that’s where his family is. I don’t know what the sergeant or Lieutenant Haley plan to do.”
“What do you want to do?” Laura asked him gently.
“I…I am not sure,” he admitted. “It is not so long ago that I thought I would never have to ask the question! We would live on Lincoln and make our own colony there. That was the future.”
“True enough. It is enough to throw anyone off,” Akira admitted.
“That’s for damn sure,” came the sergeant’s voice. “Mind if we join you?”
Tavana saw it was the sergeant with Lieutenant Haley and Xander. All of them, like Tavana, had the fresh-showered look; the luxury of a real, controllable hot-water shower had probably been the first thing on everyone’s mind once they were safe onboard Sherlock.
“Not at all, Samuel—Pearce, Xander, please, take a seat.”
“Don’t mind if we do,” Campbell said. “Hey, Whips, how’s it feel to be the most valuable player today?”
Embarrassed, happy patterns chased across Whips’ surface. “…good. Very good, Sergeant. I hope other people will be so accepting as Sherlock’s crew.”
“Oh, there’ll still be fools who aren’t, but don’t pay them no mind,” Campbell said. He looked back at Tavana. “Tav, I can clarify one thing. Me and the Lieutenant here, we’re figuring to be married officially, and I think we’ll finish the trip we started on. So all of our crew, anyway, will be going on to Tantalus. Not like they still don’t need colonists, and let’s face it: after Lincoln, ain’t no regular colony going to be much of a problem.”
“Can’t argue there,” Laura said. “And honestly…if the slots are still open, if we can get passage? We gave up everything on Earth to go to Tantalus. There’s nothing back on Earth for us, aside from a few friends and relatives we already said good-bye to. I think we should finish our journey too. What do you think, Akira?”
Akira smiled. “I would agree. If we’re not going to live out our lives on Lincoln—and I am afraid that will be rather uncomfortable for some few years—let’s go where we planned to go anyway.”
“I’m certainly less concerned about the colony lifestyle after this,” Caroline admitted.
“Lieutenant Fisher—Sue—said my family thought I was dead,” Whips said quietly. “But they went on anyway. They weren’t going to drop the chance we’d been given, to prove ourselves in a real-world challenging setting. So I have to go there.”
“About that,” Akira said slowly. “You have passed, Whips.”
Whips eyes blinked, protective membranes sliding back and forth. “What…do you mean?”
“I mean that as one of the scientists most involved with the ongoing study of Bemmius Novus Sapiens, it was my particular job to observe your family and be one of the…primary evaluators of how well you functioned in the field, in view of the prior issues of stability in your species,” Akira answered.
“Oh.”
Tavana could see, by the patterns that were flickering over Whips, that this was not something the Bemmie had ever considered. “I thought you were Whips’ friends, not…observers, testers, whatever,” he said.
“My family are all Whips’ friends,” Akira said emphatically. “And I am, as well, to him and to his own family. But I am also a scientist, and one of those directly charged with the responsibility of observing and justifying the inclusion of his species in our ongoing exploration and colonization of the Galaxy.”
He stood and bowed deeply to Whips. “And instead of being sent to a known colony…I got to observe one of you in the most extreme conditions I could h
ave imagined. You passed every test, Whips, some that many humans have failed to pass. I had finished writing my evaluation before a full year had passed. You are as stable a person as I have ever been privileged to know—and as fine a young person as any, including my own very fine children.”
Whips’ patterns resolved themselves. “I…guess I can’t get mad at you for doing a job that should have been obvious. I mean, with all the rumors—some very true—about our instability, having a human family living so closely with Bemmius novus sapiens would have to have had people observing. I should have guessed your family and mine were also an experiment.”
Akira nodded. “For what it’s worth, I had every confidence in your people from the start. I knew what had caused the old problems, they’d been dealt with, and I was certain that your people now were no more dangerous than ours.” He smiled suddenly, a smile with an edge of its own. “Which of course means extremely dangerous indeed…but not to your friends.”
Whips flickered a laugh, and Tavana chuckled a bit.
“But you’re only one person, Akira,” Pearce Haley said seriously. “There has to be some kind of committee or board involved. Won’t they have some say?”
“The Colonization Board,” Laura said, “is going to take Akira’s opinion on Project Triton as policy, or we will both ram it down their throats.”
Tavana, seeing how the Kimeis looked at Whips and each other, had no doubt they’d do exactly that.
Neither, it seemed, did Campbell. “I rather thought you would. And just for the record, we’ll all back you to the hilt. So that’s settled.”
He turned to Sakura. “Oh, and one more little thing. I had a talk with Captain Ayrton and Pilot Pavla Amberdon, let ’em look at some omni recordings your mom and dad let me copy, and we all agreed, so’s we could make this official.”
He produced an engraved certificate and handed it to Sakura, who read:
“Having passed a comprehensive and extensive examination of all of her abilities, this certifies that Sakura Kimei is a pilot qualified in air, sublight, and Trapdoor drive for all vessels of less than one thousand tonnes mass.”
Tavana grinned at Sakura’s stunned expression, and saw tears shimmering almost-shed in her eyes.
“But…I haven’t passed all my classes! And I crashed the only ship I ever flew!”
“Well, true, we’ve marked in the record that making that cert final depends on you completing your training en route to Tantalus—we were pretty sure you’d be going there—but Saki, that whole flight of LS-5 was a thing of beauty, given your handicaps. There are experienced pilots I know that’d have bobbled the transitions you had to make. You all walked away from that one, and if you’d asked anyone beforehand if a half-trained kid could bring that shuttle down like you did? No one would’ve taken that bet. You showed you have the stuff, Saki. You finish up the work and you’re one of us.” He offered his hand. “Congratulations, Pilot.”
Instead of shaking his hand, Sakura gave the sergeant a huge hug; everyone burst out laughing and clapping, including Tavana. Then, looking embarrassed, Sakura let go and did shake his hand, which got another laugh.
Finally Tavana just looked around and gave another laugh of his own. “So, we stay together?”
“I’ll drink to that,” Laura said immediately, and raised her cup.
Everyone followed suit. “To staying together!”
Tavana drank, feeling the warmth of friends—of family—surrounding him.
* * *
“Tantalus Tower, this is LS-11 from Colony Initiative, on final orbit to landing. Do we have clearance to proceed?”
“Clearance granted, LS-11. Have a smooth flight down. Initiate contact once re-entry blackout ends for final landing instructions.”
“Roger that, Tower. LS-11 out.”
Sakura settled back into the acceleration couch and gripped the control stick. Her hand was a little sweaty.
“Relax, Saki,” Tavana said from behind her. “This landing, it will be easy!”
“Dammit, Tav, don’t jinx her!” the sergeant growled. Then he grinned. “But seriously, Saki, just relax and fly. You got all your instruments, all your controls, this ship’s in fine condition, and you even got friends downstairs to help. Keep your head, follow the stuff you’ve learned, and you’ll do just fine.”
“I’ll try, Sergeant. Honestly, I’m more nervous about whether—”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Campbell said.
“It turns out that Captain Toriyama accepted a post as the representative of the Colonial Initiative Corporation on Tantalus,” her father said. “This makes him the Chair of the Colonization Board here on Tantalus. Thus I was able to contact him—as one of the senior members of Project Triton—and you can imagine how overjoyed he was to hear of our survival. He agreed to arrange everything.”
“See? Nothing to worry about. It’d be no big deal anyways, just a little loss of dramatics. Now just focus on your job, pilot!” Campbell’s grin removed a bit of the edge from his last sentence.
She looked back, seeing everyone in their seats—Hitomi, Francisco, Maddox, Melody, Tavana, Xander, Pearce Haley, her mother and father, and of course the sergeant—and felt a burst of happiness go through her. We made it. All together, we’ve made it to Tantalus. We started out afraid and uncertain. And now we have a bigger family than we had. “All right, everyone—confirm you are strapped in! Like any re-entry, this will be a little bumpy!”
With everyone confirmed ready, she made the adjustments, and slowly LS-11 began its own journey from space to atmosphere. The omni-linked displays showed the manual piloting paths and she guided LS-11 down the optimum path. She’d switch off all autoguidance once they were through the atmosphere transition, but she didn’t want to take even a tiny chance of turning into a tumbling meteor. And standard pilot practice was to rely on the automated guidance, even when doing a manual landing…unless, of course, there were no automatics to guide you with. Having done that once, Sakura had no interest in ever doing it again if she could avoid it.
With precise guidance, transition through the atmosphere was much smoother than last time—still a bumpy ride, but no signs of faults in the re-entry shield or any other systems. Finally the fiery stage of the re-entry was complete and her comm systems showed clear. “Tantalus Tower, this is LS-11. We have completed re-entry and are now on atmosphere piloting.” She slapped the transition trigger and the shuttle configured to the high-mach flight profile. Sakura let the automatic guidance shut down as well. “Please give bearing and beacon for manual landing.”
“Are you experiencing problems with the automatics, LS-11?”
“Negative, Tantalus Tower. Practice flight for a newly certified pilot and observation by Chief Master Sergeant Samuel Morgan Campbell, certified piloting instructor.”
“Understood, LS-11. Beacon and bearing for your landing approach are as follows:” The tower read off a string of numbers and Sakura saw the glow of Beacon 101 appear on her screens. “Please land on Strip Five.”
“Confirmed, Tantalus Tower. LS-11 to land on Strip Five following Beacon One-Zero-One.”
“That’s correct, LS-11. Tantalus Tower out.”
She brought the ship around in a huge curve, slowly dropping her speed as well as altitude until she could reconfigure for subsonic flight. In the vast, clear distance under a deep, deep blue sky, she could make out a glint from Tantalus Port, the one city on the planet at the moment. “Tantalus Tower, be advised that LS-11 will be making a slow final approach to a full-vertical landing.”
“Understood, LS-11. Good luck on your end-conversion!”
Sakura laughed. That was someone who’d done this themselves. “Thank you, Tantalus Tower. Good thoughts are appreciated. We have you in visual and are on our final approach.”
“Roger that, LS-11.”
As she saw the clean, sharp lines of Strip Five pass beneath LS-11, Sakura flared the ship to near-stall speed and then initiated the conversion,
jets swiveling, wings retracting, adjusting her angles and attitude just so…
…and LS-11, for a moment, hovered in the air, motionless with respect to the ground. With exquisite care, Sakura slowly reduced thrust until the big shuttle settled gradually towards the ground, drifting only the slightest bit in the wind; Sakura compensated, tilting the jets a fraction of a degree, and the shuttle stabilized, lowering itself, ten meters, five, four, now less than a meter…and then a gentle vibration as the wheels touched down.
A cheer went through the cabin and Sakura felt her cheeks flaming happily as she activated the radio once more. “Tantalus Tower, this is LS-11. We are down and stable, powering all jets down. You can announce our arrival and location; cargo unloading can commence in a few minutes.”
“Affirmative, LS-11. Nicely done.” Automated chock-wedges sped over the tarmac and inserted themselves beneath the wheels. “Welcome to Tantalus.”
Sakura hit the Full Shutdown and then unstrapped. “YES!”
“A very pretty landing, Saki,” Sergeant Campbell said with a grin. “And if you’ll open your Omni, I’ll send the final code for your permanent cert.” A quick flash of transmission. “And there we go. Congratulations, Pilot Sakura Kimei!”
There were a few minutes for celebration, then everyone started grabbing their cases. Her father glanced out the port as they went to lower the ramp. “It seems the captain came through beautifully.”
Gathered around LS-11, at the minimum distance circle, was a moderate crowd of people, a somewhat strange assortment, with Toriyama himself at the front, plus at least one or two representatives of the local news outlet. News only travels as fast as ships, after all.
They all trooped down the ramp.
Suddenly a tall woman near the edge of the crowd gave a shriek and ran forward. She caught up Francisco in a hug and spun about with him in her arms. “¡Francisco! Francisco, cariño, hijo mío, gracias a Dios, ¡gracias a Dios, estás vivo!”
Another woman, with a broad Polynesian face that had more than a few familiar features, came forward more slowly, but with the same disbelieving joy. “Tavana? Tavana!” she shouted, accompanied by another woman, taller and lighter of skin but, yet, somehow, familiar.