by M. D. Cooper
The Intrepid’s leadership listened intently to her recitation of the pirate ships’ abilities as well as those of the Bollam’s World fleet. She also imparted what she knew of the weapons capabilities and arsenals of the AST dreadnaughts.
Sera was stunned by Bob’s mental presence.
She looked at Tanis to see the general smiling.
Tanis didn’t reply—either she agreed, or didn’t know what to say.
The conversation continued around them, and Sera found herself increasingly curious about Captain Andrews. She tapped into the ship’s archives and pulled up his public dossier.
Captain Jason Andrews had been commanding starships for almost a thousand years of relative time when he landed the job as the Intrepid’s captain. From what she could see, it was in no small part due to a longstanding relationship with Terrance.
His temporal age was just shy of four hundred years—perhaps that explained the grey hair, though she knew many men far older than he who didn’t look a day over thirty. Yet, somehow the aging suited Andrews.
She wondered what sort of personal relationships he would have had given all that interstellar travel. There was no record of a wife, or even rumor of a dalliance on the ship. Was he the sort of man who took what love he could get, or did he hold out for long-term, quality relationships? There was just something about him and his bearing that she found intriguing.
Sera knew she was being baited, but replied before she could stop herself.
“I know you don’t want to say before you’ve contacted them, but how certain are you that the FGT has a world we can colonize?” Terrance asked for what had to be the third time.
“I’m positive,” Sera replied. “Almost every time someone goes out beyond the current sphere of human colonization to a G spectrum star, they find that it already has terraformed worlds. I’m betting the FGT will want to trade some technology for the location of an out-of-the-way system, but that will most likely be the only caveat.”
“I wonder what tech that might be,” Joe said and coughed into his hand.
“So, somehow you’ll send a message to the FGT and they’ll meet with us for this trade?” Captain Andrews asked.
“Yes, I’ll tell them to meet us spin-ward of the Ascella system. It’s uninhabited, so we shouldn’t have any visitors.”
“And they’ll be there?” Terrance asked. “This is a mighty big gamble we’re taking.”
Sera smiled. “You and your ship are the largest human curiosity in the known universe. No one will be able to resist its lure.”
“And what if they decide to simply take it by force as our friends out there have?” Admiral Sanderson asked, apparently less than convinced that they’d find a warm welcome anywhere.
“They won’t. There has never been a recorded instance of an FGT-instigated battle.”
“At least the FGT is a known quantity,” Tanis sighed. “Better than pirates and power-hungry star systems.”
“Agreed. I’ve always found them to be quite noble,” Brandt added.
“A lot can change in five thousand years,” Terrance warned. “The FGT we left was in open communication with the rest of humanity.”
“Speaking of five-thousand years,” Joe asked Sera, “why do you think it was so hard for us to pinpoint the year when we got here? It shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out.”
“So, I’m guessing that that region of space is pretty much off limits,” Captain Andrews said.
“Yeah, the dark matter is everywhere, so no one can pass through in FTL. Not to mention that it’s still rife with radiation from the explosion.”
Earnest broke into their conversation.
“The estimate?” Captain Andrews asked aloud.
“Damn, that’s fast,” Sera said.
Earnest signed off and Sera gave a soft laugh. “I can’t believe it was you guys that named that star. Do you realize it stuck?”
“I suppose I had better send that message to the FGT,” Sera said and rose from the table. “Plus, it’s been a really long day.”
Everyone agreed that they had dallied long enough and that there was work demanding their attention and the meeting broke up. In the corridor, Tanis stopped Sera.
“Any chance I can sit in on your call to the FGT?” Tanis asked.
Sera grimaced. “Look…I know your curiosity burns eternal, but I have to do this alone.”
Tanis’s expression soured. “A lot is riding on your prediction.”
“Earnest says my FTL specs are good. Even if I can’t hold up my end of the deal, you can get out of here and fly to the edge of space and make a colony where no one will find you,” Sera replied coldly. “It’s what you want, right? To get away from everything? To hide and hoard your technology and not share it with humanity?”
She could see Tanis was taken aback by the vehemence of her statement. Joe and Flaherty both watched with raised eyebrows, sharing a look between them.
“Send your message, then,” Tanis said coldly. “But you should know that it would be a lot easier to relate to you if you weren’t hiding so much.”
“C’mon,” Joe said, taking Tanis’s arm. “There’s a lot you need to do.” He looked over his shoulder to Sera and Flaherty. “It was ni
ce meeting you, I imagine you’ll want to get back to your ship. The nav NSAI can guide you.”
With that, he whisked Tanis away, leaving Sera and Flaherty standing alone.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Sera said with a sigh.
“It really wasn’t,” Flaherty replied. “I’m surprised she didn’t give that to you with both barrels in the meeting with the captain.”
Sera looked at him in surprise. “Really? I didn’t think it was bothering her that much.”
“On the way here, she had no way of knowing what she was up against, so she compartmentalized her worry about her people and focused only on the task at hand—you remember compartmentalization, right?” Flaherty said with a frown. “Now that she’s back here, the two and a half million lives on this ship are her biggest concern, and you are her biggest unknown. To Tanis, you’ve become the definition of risk in human form. The fact that you saved her life is likely all that’s keeping her from kicking you off the Intrepid.”
Helen added.
Sera stared at Flaherty and Helen’s virtual presence in surprise.
“You know why it’s so hard for me. I don’t want to go down that road.”
“You’re already going down that road,” Flaherty said. “You’re taking me and Helen with you, I might add, but I swore on my life that I would keep you safe. You need to grow up and take charge of your destiny. The first part of that is coming clean with Tanis…and your crew, for that matter.”
They walked in silence past Priscilla who didn’t speak, but sent a greeting into their minds. At the end of the corridor, they boarded a maglev car and gave it their destination.
Flaherty chuckled.
The rest of the trip back passed in silence. The maglev eventually stopped at a large station labeled “A1 Docking Bay”.
The corridor to the bay itself was short, and when they arrived, there was a corporal waiting for them with a groundcar.
“Ma’am, sir, I’m to take you to your ship,” she said.
“Glad to hear it,” Sera replied. “It looks like it’s a kilometer away.”
“A bit more,” the corporal—Nair, by her uniform’s tag—said.
The groundcar took off and Sera closed her eyes for the trip, working up what she would say in her message. Before they arrived, she was interrupted by a call from Cargo.
Cargo thanked her and Sera accessed Priscilla via the return path from her last greeting.
Sera smiled to herself. Every now and then an advanced intelligence would detect that Helen was no regular AI. It was interesting to be privy to the meeting of those minds.
Sera opted out of the conversation. No other intelligence had ever made that observation of Helen, and, as much as she wanted to see how Helen handled it, the conversation was bound to begin flowing so fast that she wouldn’t be able to follow it.
Suddenly, she was Linked with Captain Andrews and she focused her attention on him.
the captain said.
Sera sent him a mental chuckle.
Captain Andrews laughed in response and closed the connection.
Ahead, Sabrina came into view, tucked in a corner behind a massive pile of equipment; she checked in on Helen and found that her AI was still in a deep conversation with Priscilla. She’d never considered it before, but she wondered if her and Helen’s secret would finally get out. The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying. She put that thought from her mind as the groundcar pulled up to her ship.
She thanked the corporal for the ride and approached the throng of bios.
“Hello, I’m Captain Sera. I’ve been informed you’d like to do an inspection of my crew and any possible health issues?”
An officious-looking man, there was always one in every group, pushed through the other bios—seven in total.
“Yes. I’m Dr. Philips. We demand that we be allowed to inspect your ship and its cargo to ascertain any possible health concerns. The fact that you have been allowed access to the Intrepid without being screened first is unconscionable. You could be spreading some sickness against which we have no defense!”
“As I understand it, we were screened when we first boarded the Andromeda,” Sera said with a smile. “Some very impressive systems you have on this ship of yours.”
“Well, not physically examined, though, and your ship could be harboring contaminants.”
Sera sighed. “Don’t you think that if there were some highly communicable and deadly sickness rampant amongst us that Tanis would have caught it?”
“Not necessarily…” the man said as he looked around her, seeing only Flaherty. “Where is Mrs. Richards, anyway?” he asked.
“Don’t you mean General Richards?” Sera asked.
“Yes, yes, Priscilla won’t tell me where she is. We should check her, too.”
“I believe she is taking a few hours of personal time with Joseph,” Sera said.
The man blanched and Sera had to suppress a smile. He nodded to one of the bios with him. The man grabbed a case from the pile near the airlock and dashed toward their groundcar.
He looked at his other associates. “I suppose there is no point in us suiting up. We’ve probably already been contaminated and
that may just concentrate it.” He then turned back to Sera. “You will grant us access to your ship now.”
The man was really starting to get on her nerves. She swished her head, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and placed her hands on her waist. The desired effect was achieved; the man took a moment before his eyes returned to hers, at which point her glower was severe, causing him to flinch.
“What’s the magic word?” Sera asked.
“What?”
“The magic word, what is it?”
“Magic?” He grew flustered and Sera’s glower twitched, threatening to turn into a smile.
Everyone else in the group looked exasperated with Dr. Philips. One of the women leaned over and smacked him in the shoulder. “It’s please, you dolt.”
“Oh, er, please.”
Sera’s glower disappeared and she beamed. “Cargo,” she said over the Link and audibly for the bios benefit. “Assemble the crew in the galley so these medical folks can check us over to make sure we’re not carrying the plague.”
With that, she slipped past the bios, Flaherty following, and stepped through Sabrina’s airlock. The bios quickly picked up their equipment and followed her down the freight deck’s main corridor. Perversely, she took the ladders and enjoyed hearing them struggle to pull their equipment up after her to the crew deck.
Cargo, Cheeky, and Thompson were already in the galley and Nance indicated over the ship’s audible comm that she would arrive in a minute. Three of the bios set up their equipment while two began taking air and surface samples from around the wardroom. Dr. Philips was overseeing everything while casting dark looks at the bowl of fruit on the table.
Flaherty walked to the coffee machine and poured himself cup full of their strongest black brew before sitting down beside Thompson. He looked like he was considering putting his feet up on the table, but Sera shot him a look that contained an entire paragraph about how she felt about feet on her maple and walnut table.
“So, how’d things go in your big meeting, Captain?” Cargo asked, ignoring everything going on around them.
“Very well, they’ve begun implementing the grav systems they’ll need to make FTL transition.”