The final crescendo ended and silence descended on the mind cavern once more until it stretched out awkwardly.
“Hurg, is the link active?” Thuk whispered.
“Yes, Derstu.”
“That was [implausible/incredible] Thuk,” Susan said at last. “Please. Thank your harmony for us.” She paused again. “I [aspire/regret] we have no song reply. But, please accept.”
Kivits sat up in his alcove. “Derstu, the Ansari’s defensive systems have just gone active.”
“What?”
“They’re energizing short-range claws!”
The human ship’s mass-driver claws were small, meant to swat down incoming javelins, but still powerful enough to pierce several layers of armor and breach the outer caverns.
“Are we inside their reach?” Thuk asked.
“Easily.”
“Evacuate the outer caverns and seal—”
“Too late! They’re firing!”
All eyes stuck themselves to the display ringing the mind cavern, tuned to the visible light spectrum. The Ansari had indeed begun firing. Seven small mass-driver nodes along the side of the human vessel facing the Chusexx fired in unison. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then, the nodes fell silent.
“Do we have tracking on those impactors?” Thuk shouted.
“We do, and they’re … flying wide.”
“Say again?”
“They’re going to miss us, by a wide berth. Intentionally, I think. They couldn’t have missed at this range. It was a display.”
Thuk leaned back in his chair and let the unexpected tension drain from his limbs. “No. It was a salute. Their answer to our ‘Forked Path Lament.’ Seven shots. Three times. How interesting.”
“Interesting?” Kivits raged. “No wonder we ended up at war with these people. Leave it to humans to use live-fire weapons in a friendly parting salute!”
* * *
Susan reclined in her command chair and absently rubbed the armrests.
“I think that went rather well. Wouldn’t you agree, XO?”
“Swimmingly, mum. Just one quibble.”
“Which is?”
“The twenty-one-gun salute is traditionally reserved for visiting heads of state or CEOs.”
“True, but the Xre don’t know that. Besides, I thought it added a certain gravity to the proceedings.”
“The Chusexx is coming about,” Mattu said from the Drone Integration Station. “Bearing shortest course for the treaty line. Fusion rockets warming up.”
“Should I plot an escort course for once our shuttle is back aboard, mum?” Broadchurch asked.
“No, we’ve said our goodbyes. Let them head off into the sunset on their own. But Scopes, assign a platform to keep pace with them until they hit the line. Discreetly.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Everyone else, we have reports to write. I want everything ready to download to the skip drone by 1700 so we can get it underway.”
“The analysts are going to have kittens when they see the raw data and vid captures from inside that thing,” Miguel said proudly.
“Kittens? They’re going to have heart attacks. Speaking of heart attacks, has anyone checked in on our CL since I sent him to bed without supper two days ago?”
“Still sulking in his quarters under guard, mum.”
Susan got to her feet and straightened her tunic. “I’d better go let him out of time-out, then.” She nodded to the marine by the hatch and made the short trip down the hall and one ladderwell to the executive quarters on J deck, not four cabins down from her own. A marine guard stood watch outside Nesbit’s door, sidearm strapped to her side.
“You’re dismissed, Private. Take the rest of your watch off.”
“Thank you, mum.” The guard saluted and made her way to the lift. Susan keyed the com next to the hatch.
“Javier, are you busy?”
There was a delay before the light blinked an open circuit. “I’m sorry, Captain, but between brunch and this afternoon’s squash tournament, I just can’t fit you in until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Just open the door, Nesbit.” Susan leaned on one foot as muffled footsteps approached and the hatch spun open with a creak, then swung inward.
“Captain,” Nesbit said icily.
“CL. May I come in?”
“It’s your ship, isn’t it? I think that’s been made clear. Why bother with the little courtesies?”
“Because the little courtesies keep the crew from throttling each other in their sleep.”
Nesbit scowled, but stepped aside and waved her in. His quarters were only slightly smaller than her own in terms of cubic meters, but the sheer volume of … stuff, made them seem far more claustrophobic. In place of the military-issue furniture, there was a leather chaise longue, a highbacked chair covered in crushed red velvet, and an oak table that nearly took up the entire kitchenette. A bookshelf covered the entire far wall, stacked two-deep with hardcovers, all of which could have fit onto a single tablet with ten thousand more titles to spare. A set of golf clubs sat in an expensive leather bag propped up against a corner, despite the nearest golf course being ten light-years away.
It was enough crap to fill a decent-sized apartment crammed into a space no larger than the average living room. It was like Nesbit had tried to pack his entire life and bring it along with him into his exile out here in the black.
Maybe it was exactly that simple. Needless to say, the total weight of all that clutter far exceeded the mass allotment crewmembers were permitted for personal items, to say nothing of the paper books and wood table, which were a flagrant violation of the prohibitions on flammable materials aboard a warship. Susan thought about calling the marine guard back to help her box it all up and shove it out an airlock, but she decided that wasn’t a fight worth picking just now.
“You do know if a stray laser beam cuts through here, those books will probably be the kindling for your funeral pyre, right?”
“What a magnificent way to go,” Nesbit answered defiantly.
“Right. Look, the crisis is over. The Chusexx is burning for the Red Line as we speak.”
“Why aren’t they bubbling out?”
“Can’t yet. They traced the accident back to an antimatter containment breach in one of their transfer lines.”
“Isn’t an antimatter explosion usually a little more … energetic?”
“Usually, but this only involved a few stray milligrams caught up in a magnetic eddy current before the safeties slammed shut and stopped the flow. Xre attendants were still running integrity checks on the replacement coils when our last techs pulled out. They still have some work to do, so they’re limited to fusion rockets until they can go to full power. No bubble,” Susan replied. “So now that it’s done, I came down to ask whether you’re ready to resume your CL duties.”
“I never stopped doing my duty as CL. I was barred from doing it.”
“Yes, yes. I’m the big meanie who didn’t let you incite a mutiny in her own CIC in front of her senior staff at a critical moment. Get over it.”
“You went against standing orders.”
“Which I interpreted as conflicting with another set of standing orders. I made a call to resolve that conflict. Captain’s prerogative. I’m not going to litigate this with you, Javier. It’s done. Are you ready to move on or not? If you are, you can get back to work. If you can’t, you can sit out the rest of this tour staring at these four walls. Your call.”
“I used my time in here to prepare a report for my superiors. I assume I won’t be permitted to submit it?”
“Not at all. We’re getting all our ducks in a row to send a burst with all our findings, recordings, and sensor data to the skip drone in Grendel orbit by 1700. Your report will be included in that dispatch, unaltered. I won’t even read it.”
“You seem awfully damned confident you’re coming out of this smelling like fresh jasmine.”
“You haven’t seen the
intel haul we pulled out of that ship. It’s the biggest SigInt and HumInt coup since we grabbed that Xre frigate intact during the first war. The spooks will be pouring over it for months, maybe years.”
“As will theirs, Susan. Or did you really think the data collection only went one way?” Nesbit ran a hand through his thinning hair. Susan hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but now that she’d noticed, she was surprised he hadn’t gone through gene therapy to correct his male pattern baldness. Looking at the extravagant trappings around his room, it obviously wasn’t a question of money.
“They got a look at our peashooters and a stealth shuttle. We walked around inside the guts of a cruiser class we didn’t even know existed until a few weeks ago. I’d call that a better than fair exchange rate. Not to mention we avoided triggering a shooting war. That has to count for something.”
“Thought you military types were always spoiling for a good fight.”
“Yes. A good fight. A necessary fight. This … didn’t feel like that. I spent a lot of time with their captain, or derstu, I don’t really understand what his role is exactly, but he seemed just as relieved not to be throwing missiles as I was.”
“Because he knew we had him dead to rights. He was defenseless. Do you really think he would have shown us mercy if we’d found ourselves drifting past the treaty line in one of their systems? Be honest.”
Susan found herself leaning against the oak table, running her hands along the grain of the wood. Real wood, probably harvested from Earth herself who knew how long ago. The varnish was gently worn along the lip, but otherwise unblemished. It wasn’t a table for eating off of, not without a tablecloth, which she was sure must be hiding in one of Nesbit’s closets. Susan had been twenty-two years old when she’d seen her first oak tree, and that was inside an atrium on Bezos Station as she reported for CCDF Indoc. But here one was, light-years away from where it had any business being and posing a subtle but real danger to everyone who came near it.
Susan found herself feeling an unexpected kinship with the table.
“I honestly don’t know what Thuk would’ve done if our roles had been reversed. But, just as honestly, I’m sure he’ll be more inclined to return the favor in the future. They’re a collective, a ‘harmony,’ they call it. Their trust bonds are the connective tissue of their society, and we just grew some with the Xre on that ship. If that was wrong of me, I’ll accept that judgment when the time comes.”
Nesbit lingered next to the bookshelf, inspecting the volumes, and ran a finger down the spine of one out-of-place paperback in particular: Red November. Susan didn’t recognize it, but made a note in her AR interface to have a look just the same.
“We’re dancing on the edge of a knife out here, you know,” he said at last. “And the immediate tactical situation, or even strategic environment, isn’t my purview. I know that’s what you need to see for the safety of your ship and crew, but my job has a broader mandate. I’m this ship’s liaison for thirteen transtellars and all their millions of employees, shareholders, and dependents. I take that responsibility seriously, despite what you may think.”
“I believe you. We serve the same people.”
“I volunteered for this billet. Did you know that?” Nesbit asked, almost pleadingly, as if he clamored for something. Legitimacy, maybe. Recognition that he belonged here as much as anyone. It wasn’t something any square-dog-sucking bubble-popper was in a hurry to give a suit, but …
“I didn’t know that,” Susan said softly. “I guess I assumed CLs were assigned.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? No, this isn’t a disciplinary assignment. It’s a very prestigious posting. Hard to qualify for, even harder to actually get selected. But I did, because I wanted to serve somewhere other than a cubicle farm, just as you did. I worked for this.”
Susan absorbed it all in stride. “And when your tour is up? Will you go to another ship?”
“It’s a two-year commitment. That’s the minimum time it takes to justify the costs of training us for the job, which is six intensive months by itself.”
She managed not to scoff at the idea of a CL’s “intensive” training regimen. Lessons included: how to use up all the ship’s hot water in too-long showers, how to passive-aggressively undermine the legitimate CO, how to get enlisted ranks to hate you in thirty seconds or less. Honestly, even after a career of more than two decades, she’d never given much thought to CLs until she had one. They were always just … there. The good ones were mostly unobtrusive and invisible to the rest of the crew, while the bad ones were celebrated only for leaving.
“And you jump around from command to command during that term, I assume?”
“We do. Long-term assignments are discouraged. It’s best if we’re not around any one crew long enough to develop the sort of relationships that can impact our objectivity. Honestly, this is my third assignment, and other than passing each other in a corridor, it’s the first time I’ve been alone with any of the three COs I’ve advised.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think the rest of this tour will prove pretty boring. With their oiler destroyed, Chusexx is down to whatever AM they’ve got in their tanks. Couple that with all the damage they took and their spares lockers have to be looking a bit thin as well. Thuk seems like a reasonable sort. Whatever his orders were before the accident, I doubt he’s real excited about the prospect of another prolonged cat-and-mouse game without returning to base for resupply and refit. I sure as hell wouldn’t be.”
“Let’s hope you’re right. We’ve had enough nasty surprises on this tour already. If I ever see a Xre warship again, it’ll be too soon.”
Susan smiled. “We finally agree on something.”
NINETEEN
The suddenness of the VR alarm that roused Tyson from his dream state startled him so badly he nearly fell out of bed. Only an outstretched arm finding the tile mosaic of his bedroom floor prevented him from spilling onto it in a tangle of blankets and limbs.
“Jesus, what the fuck was that?”
“It was an alarm, genius,” Paris said inside his head, still sounding salty.
“Yes, I understand that, but why did it go off?”
“Because it’s nine in the morning and you slept through the more polite ones.”
“Nine a.m.?” Tyson jumped to his feet and looked to the analog clock mounted on the far wall of his sleeping quarter, scarcely willing to believe what she was saying. He’d woken up at five o’clock in the morning like a metronome for the last thirty years. It took him a couple tries to resolve the image of the antique clock, and another couple to remember what the damned hashmarks meant, likely owing at least in part to the empty bottle of single-malt scotch that had rolled into the corner of his bedchambers. But sure enough, the clock on the wall confirmed Paris’s absurd claim.
“I’ve already rescheduled or canceled your morning meetings. You have ‘food poisoning.’ You have three new interview requests, an emergency budget meeting, and the quarterly shareholder address this evening. I assume you won’t make me cancel that?”
“No! No, just, let me get myself together.”
“Would you like breakfast delivered to your office?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’ll be in the shower.”
“Whatever.” The connection went dead, leaving Tyson to ponder the sequence of events and decisions that had brought him to the moment where he was copping attitude from his artificially intelligent, virtual assistant for refusing to have sex with her five minutes after getting her new body.
Rockefeller never dealt with this shit.
Tyson grabbed a prebrewed pot of black tea off the wall mount in his kitchen and poured a generous cup, then sucked down the nearly scalding bitter liquid in three big gulps. He was not hungover per se, as the immune-boosting nanites in his bloodstream were also ruthlessly efficient at scrubbing the body of the methyl alcohol and other volatile compounds that caused that unenviable set of symptoms. But, despite centu
ries of medical advancement, no one had yet cracked the cure for sleep deficiency.
Not that it hadn’t been tried. A few decades ago, in an attempt to boost fleet efficiency, someone had tried a gene-hack that would let naval personnel “sleep” the way dolphins did, shutting down one hemisphere of their brains at a time, allowing them to remain conscious for many days at a stretch. The end results worked, but they spent sixteen hours a day only half awake with reduced IQs and complex problem-solving. Apparently, operating warships was more mentally taxing than chasing fish, and crew efficiency plummeted in the test vessel. Funding for the experiment was thankfully pulled not long after.
Tyson set down the cup and staggered over to the shower like the living dead. There was nothing to strip out of, as he slept naked. He set the shower to forty-five degrees and picked an appropriately high-energy classical music selection to help boost his own morale. “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin always managed to jolt him awake, and it was brief enough to get him in and out of the shower in an appropriately short amount of time.
The water hit him from a dozen different angles as the shower’s lighting system pulsed in time to the music, rising with the vocals, or what passed for them. It was a simply scandalous amount of water just for a personal shower, but the graywater reclamation system ran at nearly ninety-nine percent efficiency, so Tyson felt no shame as the burning liquid cascaded down his body, loosening knotted muscles and soothing aching joints before it spiraled down the drain.
The song over, he toweled off and brushed his teeth, his hair, and made a quick pass at his stubble with an arc-razor. His hair wasn’t overly thick, but it did seem to grow back with speed and enthusiasm, especially when he was dehydrated. He made a suit selection from the screen next to the auto-closet. A moment later, a slim vertical panel slid open with a cleaned, freshly pressed suit hanging from a cross spar, steam still wafting off the fabric of its sleeves.
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