by M. D. Cooper
She turned to the right and led the colonel down the corridor toward a nearby maglev station.
Most of the Transcend Admiral’s soldiers followed the FGT personnel to the buffet, but a fireteam came with them, cautiously eyeing the four ISF Marines accompanying Tanis.
They walked to the train station in silence, passersby giving them a wide berth. When they boarded the train, Isyra sat across from Tanis while their escorts stood in the aisles.
The Admiral was silent for a moment before cracking a small smile. “Sorry for coming off as such a hard-ass. I’m walking a fine line here. A lot of people don’t want you to have this system, and I’m doing my best not to look like I’m playing sides.”
Tanis gave a slow nod, curious to see where Isyra was going. “I can only imagine,” was all that she offered in response.
“I heard what happened in Ascella,” Admiral Isyra continued. “I know why you aren’t terribly happy with us right now. You’re a bit of a legend, and you have a propensity to upset the order of things.”
“A legend, am I?” Tanis asked.
“Absolutely,” Isyra nodded. “In the TSF—our TSF, of course, not the ancient Terran Space Force—we all study your battle at Kapteyn’s Star. Both your initial fight with that single Sirian cruiser where you tucked your ship into that icy asteroid and then afterward when you defeated a superior enemy. They were some of my favorite battles from our ancient historical warfare class.”
“Thanks,” Tanis said. “That last fight over Victoria was less than two decades ago for me—hearing it described as ancient history is a bit surreal.”
“What’s surreal is being here,” Isyra replied. “I saw the Andromeda when we came in. That ship is what we modeled our stealth ships after. A legend in its own right—even more so after what it did at Bollam’s World. That’s another battle of yours that will go down in history—I guess the debates about how you won over Victoria will finally be laid to rest.”
“Will they?” Tanis asked. She knew what the debate was over, but she wanted to hear this woman spell it out. The conversation was giving her interesting insight.
“I’m sure you can imagine why,” Isyra said with a raised eyebrow. “Few believed you had picotech, and they didn’t believe in your final decisive victory as the Victorians described it. A lot of scholars claim that the Victorians understated the size of your fleet in that battle, while others suggest that you had a second array of rail platforms.”
“I would have, if the Victorians hadn’t dragged their heels on building them. But why doesn’t anyone trust the records?” Tanis asked.
“A lot was lost during the FTL wars. We have unsullied records, but most of the Inner Stars do not,” Isyra replied. “Though, I suppose that the AST government believed the old stories about picotech, too, or you would have had a much easier time in the Bollam’s World system.”
“That’s for certain,” Tanis nodded in response. “And now the cat’s out of the bag. Everyone knows we have picotech, and a lot of folks will be looking for us.”
“And so you understand why this system is interdicted,” Isyra said.
“The Transcend may be the best-kept secret in the Inner Stars, but not so well kept that knowledge of our whereabouts won’t eventually leak to a few interested parties,” Tanis replied.
The train came to a smooth stop at their destination, and Tanis rose with Isyra. She followed two of her Marines out of the car while the other two waited to take up the rear.
She noticed another squad of ISF Marines in strategic locations on the crowded platform and saw that Isyra did, too. Neither said anything, but both knew that their casual banter hadn’t imparted any real trust.
“There is some trade with certain Inner Stars governments,” Isyra acknowledged. “Traders talk, and if Transcend traders come here, this secret will be out in no time.”
“The arrangement suits us just fine,” Tanis replied. “We had no expectation of interstellar trade when we set out on this mission. We’re not going to suffer for a lack of it now.”
“Good,” Isyra nodded.
“So, how far in will your ships escort us?” Tanis asked.
“All the way,” Isyra replied. “My orders are to ensure the smooth departure of the FGT personnel and not leave until the last of them are outsystem.”
“And you expect that to take just a month?” Tanis asked.
“Honestly? No, it will probably take half a year at best. Most of the terraformers have already left, though. We got word of your impending arrival years ago. There was some grumbling that things weren’t quite ready to turn over yet, and most didn’t know that it was you who was coming. Huron’s transition team can be trusted not to share secrets, but…”
“But this is a big secret to keep, yes,” Tanis nodded. She decided to see if Isyra had an opinion on the eventual revelation of just who had received the colony. “And when it gets out?”
Isyra caught Tanis’s eye as they walked down a vacant corridor. “I see you are of the same mind as me. Yes, when it gets out…I honestly don’t know. I don’t know why we didn’t require your picotech, or at least your stasis shields, in trade for this system.”
“How do you know that we didn’t provide that?” Tanis asked.
“Because my AI, Greta, is going to validate the crystal and be certain that it adheres to the letter of our agreement. We don’t keep much from one another, so I know what you offered. It’s good, really good, but not worth this system. Not with four terraformed worlds of this quality.” Isyra’s expression had grown darker. Not upset, but she looked as though she disapproved of her own government’s ability to barter.
“Be that as it may,” Tanis replied. “It is what the deal is for. We’re not prepared to offer anything further, and like I told your envoys, we’ve terraformed before. We could fly clear through the Transcend and do it again if we had to.”
Isyra grunted. “I’d expect no less from you, Governor. It’s always your way or the airlock, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much,” Tanis said tonelessly before stopping and gesturing to an open doorway on their left. “It’s in here.”
Two of Isyra’s guards entered first before signaling that it the room was clear—or, as clear as could be with four ISF Marines stationed inside.
Tanis realized that she would have to rename the ISF now that they had arrived at New Canaan. The Intrepid Space Force was a name she had become very accustomed to—a crest she had worn for nearly a hundred years, a longer term of service than she had served in the Terran Space Force back in Sol.
“If you’ll wait a moment,” Tanis said before walking across the antechamber.
The portal on the far side led to one of the Intrepid’s data vaults. The one before her was an ancillary backup facility, a node that she was willing to reveal to Isyra, as the crystal was the only item within it worth having.
Isyra would likely suspect that and know that data pertaining to picotech or stasis shields would be elsewhere.
Tanis passed a series of tokens to the vault’s security system, as did Angela, before feeling the tingling sensation of nanoprobes passing through her skin in a dozen locations to collect additional security tokens.
A minute later, a hard ES shield snapped into place behind her, and the entrance to the vault opened. Inside lay another security checkpoint and a final portal. The entrance slid open, and Tanis stepped inside, retrieving the data crystal she had placed within three years ago.
She held the crystal in her hand, checking the data read-out from its casing. With three notable exceptions, the crystal contained the culmination of human ingenuity at its peak in the fifth millennia. The knowledge within would str
engthen the Transcend, perhaps help them to overcome their enemies without seeking that which Tanis was determined to withhold.
Tanis replied.
Tanis sighed. That did throw a wrench into the works.
Tanis walked back into the antechamber and handed the data crystal to Isyra, who thanked her before setting it on a table and placing her hand over the data access port on its casing.
Isyra closed her eyes, and Tanis was certain she was examining what information she could. Not that it would help Isyra overmuch. Even as a L2 human, Tanis knew that her ability to capture much meaning from the information in a short period would be limited.
It wasn’t as though Isyra would have much time with the crystal, either. Tanis expected to see a pinnace make a wormhole jump to Airtha shortly after Isyra returned to her ship.
“This appears to be in order—at least as well as we can tell here,” Isyra spoke after a minute. “I’ll admit. That is a lot of data. Perhaps it was worth this system.”
“I think it is,” Tanis agreed. “I assume you need to return to your ship now?”
“I do,” Isyra replied. “I’ll need to send this on its way.”
Tanis nodded. “I’ll have the Marines escort you to your shuttle; I have a few things to attend to.”
“Very well, Governor,” Admiral Isyra said and extended her hand. “It has been a pleasure meeting you.”
“Likewise,” Tanis replied.
A moment later Isyra was gone, and Tanis was alone in the room.
Tanis snorted.
MACHINATIONS
STELLAR DATE: 04.22.8933 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Near Sparta, 9th Planet in the New Canaan System
“Are we on schedule?” Tanis asked as she looked around the table. She knew the answer from the team’s reports, but there were always nuances that the reports didn’t contain.
“Absolutely,” Erin replied with a smile. “I have to say, I was a bit dismayed when I learned that Carthage already had a strand and a station—not that there aren’t a lot more to build, but this is way more fun. Especially since we get to stick it to the Transcend.”
“We’re not really ‘sticking it to the Transcend’,” Joe replied with a frown. “It’s our system. If we plan to build a secret base, then we can do it, and there’s nothing they can do to stop us.”
Tanis sighed. “Well, not nothing.”
True to his prediction some weeks earlier, Bob had worked out how to see the Transcend’s stealth ships—or at least some of them. Tanis now knew that Isyra’s three ships were but the tip of the spear. Over seventy of the cloaked vessels surrounded the New Canaan system, though, as far as they could tell, only the three ships accompanying the Intrepid were within the heliopause.
Everyone around the table nodded solemnly. Tanis hadn’t hidden the Transcend’s siege of the New Canaan system from anyone. She wanted the entire colony to back her plan, and being under watch by a foreign military helped her cause.
she said privately to Angela.
“I just wish I got to be there for landing,” Erin said. “You guys are going to have an epic party.”
“We’ll do up a holo for you, Erin,” Tanis replied. “Chef Earl is already planning the spread he’s going to lay out.”
“I expect he needs to,” Admiral Sanderson said. “There are going to be ten thousand people going down for the landing celebration; feeding that many people at once is no small feat.”
“Too bad we can’t get everyone down there for the first footstep,” Earnest said wistfully. “I know that’s not feasible, but it’s still a shame.”
Tanis nodded. “Yeah, but a lottery for the selection was always the plan. I want to try and keep as much in line with our original charter as we can. Most of the colonists opted to go back into stasis in Victoria. For them, it will be only weeks since we left Sol. They need to feel like things are normal…if that’s even possible.”
“Never mind the whole secret military installation we’re building, then,” Erin said with a wink.
“I’m taking a page out of the New Eden system’s playbook. Even with the AST right on their doorstep, they maintained their independence by making an attack on them too costly to be worth the effort. I plan to do the same thing here. Right now, we couldn’t repel an attack by the ships they have monitoring us—at least not without running in the end. We need to be able to withstand a force of at least ten thousand ships.”
Terrance was taking a drink of his coffee and nearly spat it out. “Ten thousand ships? Are you serious? Do you really think that they’ll bring that kind of force to bear?”
“Back in Sol, the TSF had a million ships in its navy. Sure, a lot were smaller patrol boats, but there were over twenty thousand cruisers and hundreds of thousands of destroyers. If the Transcend controls as many systems as we think they do—even if their populations are much smaller than Sol’s—they will have a lot more ships than that,” Tanis replied.
“But even if we build the best shipyards we can, there’s no way we can construct that many ships in a century—not while hiding it to any extent,” Erin said with a frown.
“Oh, trust me,” Tanis’s mouth twitched into a mischievous grin. “We can, and we’re not just going to build ships….”
* * * * *
Two days later, Tanis watched the Gilese, Pike, and Condor pull away from the Intrepid. The three cruisers escorted a pair of hundred-meter pushers, which, in turn, were hauling one of the Intrepid’s cargo containers toward the fifth moon of Sparta, New Canaan’s ninth planet.
It was here that Erin would begin to build the first of Tanis’s shipyards under the guise of the construction of a mining facility.
There was no reason Admiral Isyra would even suspect anything was amiss. The location was one that Director Huron himself had pointed out as an ideal source of raw materials for building more orbital structures.
The moon Erin’s mission was en route to, named Thebes, was three thousand kilometers in circumference, and the station architect’s mission was to hollow it out as quickly as possible while giving the appearance of strip-mining the moon from the outside.
It would take many years, but when the process was complete, the remnants of the moon would appear to be nothing more than loose rock and debris, but that gravel would shroud a shipyard over three hundred kilometers across.
It was there that Tanis would begin to build the new ISF fleet. Unlike her current assortment of ships—which she had grown very fond of over the years—this new fleet would be built only for war. After seeing the AST dreadnaughts, she had worked with Earnest and a crew of engineers to design a new class of ship that combined the best aspects of the ships they had faced in the Bollam’s World system and those of the ancient TSF back in Sol.
She wished Erin and her team well; they would labor long, hiding their true work until the time was right.
“It’s like the gamma site all over again,” Joe said from across their kitchen table, also watching the holoprojection of the ships accelerating away from the Intrepid.
“Except we’re going to have a dozen of them,” Tanis replied. “Good thing we practiced.”
“What’s a gamassite?” Cary asked around a mouthful of oatmeal.
“It’s a secret place that we never speak of
with anyone other than Mommy and Daddy,” Joe replied.
“Now finish your oatmeal,” Tanis said. “You have your morning class soon, and we don’t want to be late.”
“We can be late, Mommy, you’re the guvner. E’eryone does what you say.”
Joe laughed, nearly spitting his orange juice across the table. Tanis shot him a scowl before smiling as well.
“Mostly they do, but not always. And, it’s disrespectful to be late and keep others waiting for you. The first rule of leadership is to always show respect to those you lead.”
“What’s ‘respex’ mean?” Cary asked.
“Respect means always being polite and thinking about what other’s want before yourself,” Joe replied.
Tanis replied.
LANDFALL
STELLAR DATE: 05.15.8933 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Tanis stepped out of the shuttle onto a wide, green expanse—the location of the landfall celebration, and future site of their capital city on the planet Carthage. The colonists had selected a location close to the existing space elevator, which terminated on a large island in the equatorial archipelago.
She had pushed to be on the first shuttle down, but Brandt wouldn’t hear of it. The Commandant had deployed an entire company of Marines around the clearing, and into the hills beyond. Only when she was satisfied with her security did she give the all clear for the governor to land.
Tanis looked at Joe, then down to Cary.
“We’re finally here,” she said to her small family. “Only four and a half quadrillion kilometers in the wrong direction, and several thousand years late, but we made it.”
Joe gave a low chuckle. “Worth the trip, if you ask me. This place is gorgeous. Quite the view, too.”