by M. D. Cooper
Sera took a moment to reply to Cheeky’s question.
“The knowledge is too dangerous. If people knew, they could plant a transmitter on a ship and it would transition to FTL and…well, let’s just say that it would be the end of FTL travel. Plus, no one wants to run the risk of accidentally pulling one of these things into relative space.”
“Can that happen?”
“No one knows…no one wants to find out.”
“Makes sense,” Nance said with a nod.
Sera answered a few more questions about her escape and from the station, then conversation drifted to Sabrina’s upgrades and the course to Bollam’s World. The crew was far more relaxed with Sera around. Even though she never acted superior, they all looked to her for advice and confirmation of their beliefs and opinions. Sometimes she disagreed or criticized, but usually managed to be supportive while doing so.
Tanis knew the hallmarks of a leader—moreover, someone raised around great leaders. She knew the traits because she had honed them over decades. Sera appeared to possess them naturally; Tanis was certain the captain had not actively focused on the skills, but had learned them through observation—before she ran from whatever position awaited her.
Ship-time slipped into the third watch and the crew began to disperse to their quarters. Tanis was one of the first out; she begged exhaustion and retreated to her cabin where she fell into a deep sleep, dreaming of Joe waiting for her on the Intrepid and their happy reunion.
THE RETURN
STELLAR DATE: 07.25.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Interstellar Dark Layer
REGION: 73 Light Years Core-Ward of Ayrea
Sera reclined in the captain’s chair and stroked the leather upholstery.
It was good to be back on Sabrina. The ship was glad to have her captain back, too; the crew was happy, and Tanis was going to live to see another day.
It certainly would have been embarrassing, not to mention potentially dangerous, to approach the Intrepid with Tanis dead. She really liked the woman; though from another age, Tanis felt like a kindred spirit. The effort she had put into Sera’s rescue had also earned her points—though the weapons upgrades painted a target on Sabrina. They would have to go before long—at least the more obvious ones.
She didn’t fault Tanis. Time was short, and, as a military woman, going in with the big guns was likely her style.
Given Tanis’s nano spending spree on the PeterSil EK platform, she may even need to change the registry of her ship. Too many people would wonder what job Sabrina had pulled to get that sort of credit. Some old friends were certainly going to take notice.
It should have upset her more, but Sera’s plans for the Intrepid would force her to confront those individuals sooner rather than later, anyway—regardless of the mess Tanis had made in Silstrand.
Helen’s silvery laugh echoed through Sera’s mind, a sound she had heard often, ever since she was a small child—probably even before she could remember.
Sera smiled. She was glad Helen felt that way—this life, this adventure as her oldest friend put it, was grand, far better than what her father had planned for her.
“They’ll try,” Sera whispered to herself.
War. The sort of war like none ever seen before—and people had worked up some good ones in the past. Humanity was still recovering from the last one. But her father had always stayed out of prior conflicts. This would be different.
It would spread across the Orion arm of the galaxy, all of humanity would be engulfed.
“Cheeky, could—” she began, only to see that her pilot was no longer on the bridge. Her musings had been more distracting than she thought.
Sera brought up the nav data herself and reviewed it one final time.
From Angela’s scan data, plus stories of other ships that had been lost in the Streamer, she knew the Intrepid to be in interstellar space, rim-ward of Bollam’s World—perhaps even within the star’s heliopause.
Bollam’s World lay on the far side of several interstellar federations and demarchies. Not to mention the core worlds.
Known as the AST, the core was a strong federation with far too much red tape for Sera’s taste—their security was rather invasive, even for ships just passing through their systems. Sabrina would give those worlds a wide berth.
Their first stop would be Ayrea, 73 light-years distant, where the ship would skip along the rim of the system before reaching the jump point on its far side. From there, it was a 15 light-year hop to Pavonis, and then, ironically, they would pass through New Eden, the very system the Intrepid had been destined to colonize all those millennia ago. There, they would likely stop for fuel and supplies.
Tanis would get an up-close view the world she should have lived and died on long ago.
Sera replied.
Sera nodded absently as she reviewed the data for the final leg of their journey, the 28 light-years to Bollam’s World, and then to the Intrepid. The entire trip would cross nearly 140 light-years, or roughly 1.3 quadrillion kilometers. With an average FTL factor of 579, and their entry speed of 0.70c, the trip would take roughly ninety days, a hundred if they stopped in New Eden for fuel and post cards.
BREAK A FEW EGGS
STELLAR DATE: 07.27.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Andromeda’s Pinnace, Tsarina Refinery, EK Belt
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
“Do you think it will work?” Jessica asked, concern filling her eyes.
“Back in Sol? Hell no. Out here, who knows, maybe?” Joe replied. “Either way, we can’t just sit out here watching forever.”
“OK, sending the docking request now.”
Jessica sent the sequence, and Joe prayed it would work. It had taken them two weeks to get this far into the Bollam’s World system; during that time they had watched thou
sands of ships drop out of space—appearing to come from nowhere—and then drift into the system.
Most were small, some not significantly larger than the pinnace in which they flew. It hadn’t taken long for them to have no other conclusion than FTL.
Over the past months, as data streams had been stripped from insystem beacons, the crew of the Intrepid had strongly suspected that faster than light travel was in use—Earnest had been practically giddy at the prospect.
Now they were certain.
It opened up a world of possibilities—and made their whole struggle pointless. Joe knew it also meant that there was little reason to expect Tanis to be in Bollams’s World anymore. She could be anywhere in the entire galaxy, and if she hadn’t made it back to the Intrepid by now, things were likely not going well for her.
Still, they had to start somewhere.
He was glad for Jessica. She was able to put her worry aside and follow her investigative training. There was a lead, they would follow it and it would bring them to a new lead. To her, it was that simple.
“Station’s responded,” Jessica said a few minutes later. “We have a berth on the refinery’s north docking ring.”
“External docking for a ship this small?” Joe shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of this time…are they more or less advanced?”
“Beats me,” Jessica shrugged.
Joe looked over the flight path the station provided and lined the pinnace up for the approach.
The refinery was not a large installation—less than fifteen kilometers across—but the amount of traffic it supported impressed Joe. Hundreds of ships were in varying stages of approach and departure.
“These grav drives they seem to have sure do help them manage a higher volume of traffic,” Jessica said, apparently on the same train of thought.
“I think it’s the lack of engine wash. There’s no worry about ion streams and plasma melting other ships or the station. It keeps the space lanes open.”
Jessica nodded absently. “Let’s hope they don’t mind us coming in the old fashioned way.”
Joe bit his lip as he worked to stay on course. “No kidding, this is threading one hell of a needle. Good thing we matched v further out. There’s no room for corrective burns when we get closer.”
The next several hours passed slowly as Joe worked to keep the ship in the pocket, while Jessica established a connection with the station and began querying its concierge AI for information on any recently recovered escape pods, or other salvage.
“Oh shit, here it is,” Joe said as the station’s traffic control opened a comm link.
“Vessel Andromeda 3, what are you doing approaching this facility with your torch on? Kill your fusion drive immediately and switch to grav drives!”
Joe took a deep breath and responded in his best space jock voice. “Ah, that’s a negative station; we had a blow-out on our graviton emitters and can’t make our approach with them. I’m right down the middle and about to switch to thrusters; ion dispersion systems show no wash will hit the station or other ships.”
He glanced at Jessica and crossed his fingers while they waited for the approach.
“I don’t care if you have God himself piloting that piece of crap. You don’t approach a station on your torch, and I certainly can’t have you chewing up that lane for the next hour. Kill your engine. I’m sending a tug out to pull you in the rest of the way. You better have an account open when you dock, because there are going to be some fines waiting for you.”
“Well that sucks balls,” Jessica said as the station cut the connection. “I don’t suppose they’ll take Sol credits.”
“Any chance you can see if we can get an account opened with a local bank with some credit?” Joe asked as he killed the fusion engine, switching attitude control to chemical thrusters.
“Whew,” Jessica said after a few minutes. “I guess they’re used to getting ships from all over. They have procedures for ships with no local accounts or registration to get credit. Granted, we have to put the pinnace up as collateral.”
Joe grinned. “We better not lose it; Corsia wouldn’t like it if we sold her best pinnace.”
The tug arrived, made grapple and half an hour later they were walking through their hatch onto the station’s docking ring.
Right into an irate station worker.
“Are you the morons that came in on their torch? What were you thinking?” she demanded.
Joe began to speak, but Jessica put her hand on the woman’s arm. “We’re terribly sorry about that. Things aren’t this busy or…as grand, where we’re from. Coming in on a torch is OK if you need to. We didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
The dockworker’s expression softened as she looked into Jessica’s batting eyes.
“Yeah, well, you’re core-side now. None of your fringe nonsense will fly here. You’ve got to sign this.”
The dockworker handed a sheet of plas to Jessica and she looked it over. “This is half our credit!” she gasped. “How are we going to refuel?”
“You better have some good cargo to trade on that little tub,” the dockworker shrugged. “You’re getting off with a wrist-slap. Usually you’d be impounded for what you did.”
Joe and Jessica exchanged glances, and Jessica passed her auth token to the plas before handing it back.
“I sure hope we do,” Jessica said with a nod. “Thank you.”
The woman cast them a curious look before tucking the plas under her arm and rushing down the dock, already yelling at a cargo hauler at the next berth.
“Damn, we better have something of value here,” Jessica said. “Or we’re going to be calling Corisa for pickup real soon.”
* * * * *
A day later, and after more drinks than either Joe or Jessica cared to recall, they had no leads on Tanis whatsoever. Returning to the pinnace, they strode out of a lift onto the docking ring to see two soldiers in powered armor standing outside their berth.
“Well, that doesn’t loo—” Jessica was interrupted by a rough voice to their left.
“Come with us.”
Joe turned to see several more soldiers. Their faces were invisible behind mirrored visors, but the tone of their leader’s voice brooked no argument. He looked back at Jessica who shrugged.
“Sure, where’re we going?” Joe asked as the leader—a corporal by her stripes—gestured for them to step back into the lift.
“Questioning.” Was the only response.
When the lift stopped, the corporal and his unit led them through a series of corridors to another lift. Another squad of soldiers, also in powered armor, guarded this one. They directed Joe and Jessica to step through an auth scanner.
The scanner must have seen something it didn’t like and called the corporal over to confer with another soldier. Their faces were obscured by their helmets, but Joe had no doubt who was the subject of conversation.
After a few minutes, the corporal walked back to them.
“Your cellular structure is…abnormal,” he said to Joe. “It doesn’t appear to be dangerous, but don’t even think of trying anything.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Joe replied.
The corporal nodded and directed them into the open lift door.
Joe and Jessica stepped in, and the rest of the squad filed in after them. When the doors opened again, they revealed a bustling corridor filled with personnel dressed in what Joe assumed were the Bollam’s World military uniforms.
“Wait here,” the corporal directed before moving down the corridor and knocking on a door. The remainder of his squad directed Joe
and Jessica away from the lift entrance, their stances alert and wary.
“You can relax a little bit, guys,” Jessica said. “We may look tough, but we’re really quite nice.”
None of the soldiers replied and Jessica sighed. “Real bunch of hard cases here.”
“You’d behave the same way in their shoes,” Joe replied.
“No, I’d probably behave worse; these guys haven’t made fun of us once.”
Down the corridor, the corporal stepped back into view, this time with her helmet tucked under her arm. A uniformed woman wearing a major’s insignia accompanied her.
The woman approached, her expression steely as she eyed them over. Joe noticed that the squad guarding them stiffened as the major drew closer.
“So, you’re who all this is about, then?” she asked.
“Glad to meet you,” Joe extended his hand. “I’m Joe and this is Jessica.”
The woman gazed at his extended hand and then replied brusquely, “I’m Major Akido.” Without another word, she turned and strode down the hall, gesturing for them to follow.
Joe looked down at his outstretched hand and shrugged. “Maybe it’s not a greeting here.”
“Oh, it is,” one of the soldiers gave a low chuckle. “She just doesn’t extend pleasantries to much of anyone, least of all folks like you.”
“Who are ‘folks like us’?” Joe asked.
The corporal shot a look at the soldier and the man clammed up.
A minute later, they reached their destination, a nondescript conference room. The major took a seat on one side and gestured for Joe and Jessica to sit across from her.
Major Akido leaned back in her chair and stared each of them in the eyes for several minutes. Eventually, she let out a long sigh.
“So, where is it?” she finally asked.
“Where is what?” Joe replied.
“Your ship, where is it?” the major’s tone was terse and brooked no evasion.