by M. D. Cooper
“It’s sent. We’re good to begin our final approach. Everything set on your end?”
“As much as it’s going to be. There’s going to be a tight spot in about two hours when we get close to one of the AST ships, but we should be able to slip by if we kill all but our forward shields—which will be facing away from them.” She entered in several commands on her console. “I’m having Sabrina switch main systems to battery, as well. No point in having a nice, hot reactor giving us away.”
Tanis nodded. The new batteries could power the ship and even send a few pulses from the lasers before running dry. If things got hairy, the reactor would still be warm enough to spin it back up in a few minutes.
Sera reappeared on the bridge looking like she had eaten something unpleasant. She sat in her chair without saying a word and leaned her head back, eyes closed. There was no need to update her on the transmission and commencement of their final approach. Tanis could tell she had maintained a connection to the bridge net.
She felt tempted to ask the captain what was wrong, but decided the other woman just needed to calm down and put whatever was bothering her to rest rather than having to make up an evasive response.
Tanis took advantage of Sera’s stillness to further observe her. The captain was usually in constant motion—her actions quick and decisive, her face never showing more or less than she intended it to.
At this moment, she looked much younger than usual. Tanis realized she couldn’t place Sera’s age…at all. She looked to be in her early twenties, but with the experiences she had mentioned in passing, not to mention her performance on the pirate station and the ship, she had to be much older. Sera had the knowledge and instincts of a person much closer to their first century, possibly even older than that.
The crew had been of little help; most had only known her for a few years—though, in that time, they had become quite loyal. None of them had any knowledge of their captain’s history before her purchase of Sabrina, with the exception of the ever-mysterious Flaherty—and he wasn’t sharing anything.
Sera sat forward and opened her eyes, looking as alert and full of energy as ever. Tanis’s moment of examination was over.
“Are you going to stay when we reach the Intrepid?” Tanis took the opportunity to ask.
Sera flashed an enigmatic smile. “Well, I do have to help you guys get that ship into FTL—unless they want to stay here forever.”
Cheeky nearly choked. “Captain! That ship can never go into FTL. Every credit I have says they’re negotiating for that moon they’re orbiting—it’s the only play they have.”
Sera shook her head. “Not the only play. The Intrepid can drop into FTL. They just need the right plans to transition their ship safely, and make it appear unappetizing to the lurkers in the dark layer.”
“Yeah, what she said,” Cheeky turned in her seat and directed a quizzical look at Sera. “You don’t have that tech; no one has it.”
Sera shook her head slowly. “Not no one. I have it—so do some others.”
“How—what—captain!” Cheeky exclaimed. “Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t swindle Tanis’s people…”
“It’s OK,” Tanis said. “I’m taking it on faith that Sera has what she says she does. Besides, our deal was to get me here and be compensated—a payment that I will render promptly, once we dock.”
“You won’t throw the rest of us in your brig if she tries to sell you bogus tech, right?” Cheeky looked worried. “Do you have a brig?”
“It’s a big ship,” Cargo said with a laugh. “They’re going to have a brig.”
“Our original deal aside, FTL tech is pretty impressive. What would you want in exchange?” Tanis asked. The picotech was not up for trade, without it as an option, she wondered what Sera, with her already advanced nanotech could want that could match the value of FTL for the Intrepid.
“The opportunity to get in on the action.”
“You just want to shoot at a few people in trade for amazing, unheard of technology?”
“Not just a few people. I want to turn Rebecca and her fleet of miscreants into a fine molecular cloud. I’m tired of dealing with them. I’m tired of playing their games. In fact, I want to do the same to Padre’s fleet and then I want to show the good people of Bollam’s World that just because a valuable ship shows up in their system it’s not up for grabs.”
“You seem…bitter,” Cheeky observed.
Sera’s expression hardened. “I want to show people that if they behave like animals, someone is going to come along and put them down like the rabid pack they are.”
Tanis was taken aback by Sera’s vehemence. She saw that Cheeky and Cargo were also surprised by the rage in their captain’s voice. Something deep drove Sera’s anger. Something personal and unpleasant.
The conversation was interrupted by the comm board lighting up, and the proximity alarms going off in concert.
Tanis picked up the comm message and flipped it to the bridge’s audible systems once the first syllable came to her ears.
“Good morning, Sabrina, this is Captain Joseph Evans of the ISS Andromeda. It’s a little hot out here, so we thought we’d give you a ride into the Intrepid.”
“What the hell?” Cheeky exclaimed, furiously adjusting her holo interfaces. “There’s a fucking cruiser on our ass that wasn’t there a second ago!”
Tanis felt a smile nearly split her face in half.
“You have the honors,” Sera said, returning her smile.
“Andromeda, this is Tanis…sweet stars it’s good to hear your voice, Joe.” Tanis all but gasped the last words, her voice choking up.
“Tanis! Oh stars, thank god. I was afraid it was a hoax, are you OK? Are you in danger?”
“I’m well. Captain Sera and Sabrina have treated me very well.”
“Corsia is sending a plot for your pilot. We need to cut the chatter and get you off radar. Dock as quickly as you can. I love you, Tanis.”
“I love you, too, Joe. See you in a few minutes…”
Tanis couldn’t stop the flood of emotion that washed over her. She let out a sob and tears started to flow. She saw Cheeky and Sera exchange incredulous looks before her eyes misted up too much to see clearly.
A moment later there was a hand on her back and a soft voice at her side.
“I take it he’s someone special to you,” Sera’s voice was thick with emotion.
Tanis gulped down a deep breath and forced herself to calm. “He’s my husband,” she managed to say.
“Husband?” Cheeky asked with a grin. “I bet he’s a real looker—no wonder you never came by my cabin.”
Tanis smiled and wiped her face. “Yes, that was it. Did you get the information to dock?”
Cheeky nodded. “Their bay is right behind us, it’ll be snug, but we’ll fit. Just one jot to the left and we’ll drop right in.”
“I’m going to the hatch,” Tanis said as she rose.
“Right behind you,” Sera said. “You have the bridge, Cargo.”
Tanis was sliding down the ladder in the corridor before Sera finished speaking. She knew it was irrational, but the thought of being with Joe made all the obstacles before her seem so much simpler. Sure, they faced insurmountable odds, and there was little chance of ever building the colony they had dreamed, but none of that mattered if she was with Joe. They could figure it out, they could figure anything out.
She arrived at the fo
rward hatch and all but bounced on her feet as she waited for the sound of the ship settling in its cradle.
As soon as the telltale clang echoed through the deck plates, she cycled the airlock, barely aware that Sera stepped in with her.
It seemed to take forever for the pressure match indicator to turn green, and when it did, she pushed out of Sabrina and smashed herself into Joe’s open arms. The smell of him washed over her and she couldn’t stop overwhelming sobs of joy and pent up anxiety from escaping her.
“I’m here Tanis, you’re safe, you’re back with us,” Joe whispered in her ear while stroking her hair.
Tanis wasn’t able to form words and spoke into his mind instead.
Joe chuckled.
Tanis finally became aware of Sera’s presence, floating awkwardly behind her in the 0g on Andromeda. She looked around to see all eyes in the shuttle bay on her. She flushed and stepped back.
“Joe, this is Captain Sera, my rescuer. Sera, this is Joseph Evans.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Joe said with a smile as he extended his hand to Sera. “Any rescuer of Tanis’s is a dear friend of mine—not to mention a rare person. Usually she is the one doing the rescuing.”
Sera took his hand and returned the smile. “Then you won’t be surprised to learn that she rescued me once on our way here.”
Joe barked a laugh. “Now that’s more like it.”
Behind Sera, the rest of the crew, bar Cargo, stood at the ship’s airlock. Tanis introduced them to Joe and Sera called up for Cargo to secure the ship and come down as well.
Joe led Tanis and Sabrina’s crew through the docking bay toward the ship’s forward crew lounge.
“It doesn’t look that much more advanced. I thought you guys were supposed to have amazing tech,” Cheeky said while peering around. “It seems pretty normal—except the lack of AG.”
Tanis had to hide a smile as the crew of Sabrina clumsily navigated the corridor with the hand and footholds that she barely even thought of. It was possible that most of them had never even spent any appreciable time in zero-g.
“It’s not what’s visible,” Joe said. “We don’t have artificial gravity on ships this size, true, but we’ve flown Andromeda within a thousand klicks of those big newcomers out there and they didn’t even catch a glimpse of us.”
“You buzzed an AST dreadnaught?” Cheeky’s eyes grew wide with appreciation.
“That’s why we were out here,” Joe said with a nod. “We wanted to know what those new ships were all about.”
“What did you learn?” Tanis asked. “How do they stack up?”
“They have omnidirectional antimatter engines on either end; heavily shielded, and deadly to boot. Their beams are as strong as our best and their grav shields can probably block almost anything we can throw at them. I think we’d wear them down in a slug-fest, provided we could keep them at bay, but with all the other players on the field it gets pretty complicated.”
“It usually is,” Tanis said with a smile.
A minute later, they arrived in the forward crew lounge. The room was clean and spare, yet well appointed. Tanis remembered spending many an evening relaxing here on the long deceleration into Kapteyn’s, and again during her many tours on the ship during the Victoria years.
“You’ll all receive a protocol upgrade by nano packet to update your Link for our systems,” Corisa announced over the lounge’s audible systems. “Please accept it and you’ll get onto our public nets.”
“Thanks,” Cargo said. “I was wondering why I couldn’t make any sort of connection to a shipnet.”
“What happened to you?” Joe asked as Sabrina’s crew accepted the upgrade and Linked to the Andromeda’s net.
“My pod got picked up by pirates after I ejected,” Tanis said. “It’s a very different galaxy than we last saw.”
“You can say that again,” Joe replied.
“Thanks, Cor,” Joe said as he held Tanis and kissed her.
INTREPID
STELLAR DATE: 10.26.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Andromeda, Near Fierra (6Mj Jovian)
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
Sera watched Tanis and her husband—husband!—with a smile slowly creeping across her face. Who would have thought that the hard-bitten general had a man into whose arms she melted? Of all the things she expected to encounter, this was perhaps the last.
She glanced at her crew as they watched Tanis, and caught Cheeky’s eye. They exchanged a knowing look, before Sera returned her gaze to the forward-facing window.
She felt a pang of homesickness as she looked through the holo-enhanced portal. It reminded her too much of home. So clean, so meticulously maintained by nano, that it looked brand new, even though it had likely seen centuries of service.
Through the plas she saw several Bollam’s World Space Force ships come into view, their mass and vector highlighted on the display for any Linked viewer to see. The vessels were new and well made by ninetieth century standards, but there was something about the understated elegance of the Andromeda that put them to shame. The Bollam’s ships were boxy and utilitarian, where the Andromeda hailed from a time when both form and function were honored without compromise.
She was impressed with how neither Joe, nor any of the crew they had passed, gave her unusual black skin, or Nance’s hazsuit a second glance. Then again, given what she had read about the early fourth millennia, her crew fit well within the bounds of what was considered normal.
They slipped past the Bollam’s picket lines without drawing attention, and before long the Intrepid came into view.
“All those ships dock inside the Intrepid?” Nance asked in awe.
“They do indeed,” Tanis replied with a nod. “Most of the cruisers fit in the main bay.”
Cheeky whistled. “Well, I’m not surprised. Most of the stations we dock Sabrina at are smaller than that ship.”
Sera counted ten capital ships protecting the Intrepid, the largest being a pair of thousand-meter cruisers that the window’s holo enhancement labeled as the Orkney and Dresden.
The display didn’t provide many details beyond mass and size, but given what she knew of Sol in the fourth millennia, and what she had read about Victoria, Sera suspected that the Intrepid’s fleet was more than a match for all but the AST vessels surrounding them.
Even if they didn’t resort to their picotech.
Sera sent an affirmative response.
“Those poor pirate fleets,” Cheeky chuckled. “They must really be wondering if they bit off more than they can chew.”
“They’re probably considering joining forces,” Tanis said.
“Or getting the hell out of here,” Sera added.
“It’s like looking back in time,” Thompson whispered, his voice filled with awe. “So much of what we see—the worlds, the stations, what few rings remain—they’re the ruins, leftovers from before the wars. What we’ve built since…well, at best it’s utilitarian and functional…but this ship, the Intrepid…it’s so graceful, it’s amazing…”
Cheeky put a hand on Thompson’s shoulder. “I never knew you were such a romantic.”
Thompson, looked around, his
face flushing. “I’m, uh, I’m not…don’t expect future sentiment.”
Nance let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t blame you though…that’s one hell of a ship. How do they build something so big…?”
“Have you ever been to Sol?” Sera asked Nance.
“I’ve never felt like having the probe it takes to get in that far,” the bio replied.
“They have more than a few artificial structures that dwarf planets. Building things like the Intrepid is practically child’s play—at least it used to be.”
“Are the Mars Outer Shipyards still there?” Joe asked.
“No,” Sera shook her head. “Sol suffered the worst, in the FTL wars. The only megastructure still there is High Terra.”
Joe’s face fell. “Mars 1, the Cho?”
Sera shook her head. “All gone—well, the Cho has been rebuilt…sort of.”
“I don’t think I even want to know,” Joe replied.
“We got out in the nick of time,” Tanis said with a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “They tore themselves apart even before FTL came along.”
Joe sighed. “We knew it was coming…it’s why we left, after all. Place was getting nuts.”
“The whole core is nuts now,” Sera said. “It’s a hundred messed up worlds in there.”
“I resent that,” Nance said. “I’m from a core world.”
“You’re from Virginis; they’ve only been in the AST for a century. It’s not enough time for the madness to settle in…maybe,” Sera’s expression grew deadly serious.
It took Nance a moment to realize the Captain was poking fun at her. “I’m going to ignore your biased remarks,” she said, with obviously faked haughtiness.
“I don’t know.” Cheeky grinned. “Maybe her hazsuit fetish is a symptom.”
Nance chose to ignore the barb. “If you’re the famous General of Victoria,” she said to Tanis, changing the subject and gesturing at the Intrepid through the display. “Are you in charge over there?”
Joe let out a laugh and wrapped his arm around Tanis. “She thinks she is—usually is, too, if the captain is in stasis.”