by M. D. Cooper
Jessica spun the pilot’s seat around and fixed Finaeus with a level stare. “A bit later? Your little jump-gate shortcut added nearly ten years to our return. For fuck’s sakes, Fin…”
“Easy now,” Cargo said softly. “We made it back, that’s what matters.”
Jessica blushed. “Sorry, today just really hasn’t gone according to plan. First Costa Station and now this. I figured that we’d ride in like heroes, there’d be a parade, pretty men and women lining the streets, you know, the works. Not…whatever it is that’s going on here.”
“Sabrina, do you see those readings from out at the edge of the system?” Misha asked. “Something is going on out there, too.”
“What the hell has Tanis gotten into?” Jessica swore. “I leave them alone for just a few years…”
“I don’t think its Orion out there, either,” Misha said. “The shield signatures are wrong. From what I have in the databases…I think those are AST ships out there.”
“The Hegemony is in the Transcend?” Cargo whistled. “Things really have gone to pot.”
“It’s what I feared,” Finaeus said. “Orion has set things in motion—the Transcend is no longer a secret.”
“Gonna take a bit for word to get around,” Cargo said. “And even so, a lot of people won’t believe it.”
No one spoke for a few minutes as Sabrina boosted toward Roma and the two fleets clustered around its L1 point.
Jessica found herself wishing for a cup of coffee, and within seconds Trevor appeared with a tray of beverages and sandwiches for the bridge team.
“We didn’t get much time to eat before we jumped here,” he said. “And I bet we’re gonna get real busy real soon, so chow down while you can—last of the bread, too.”
“Thanks, man,” Misha said as he leaned across his console and snatched a PB&J off the tray while Trevor passed by.
“Misha, seriously, get your ass up and get one like everyone else,” Trevor admonished.
Jessica noticed how everyone seemed focused, resolute. She wondered if they were all as torn up as she was about Cheeky and Piya. Maybe they weren’t allowing themselves to think about it. Not yet, not until they had delivered Finaeus and were safe.
She rose and planted a kiss on Trevor’s cheek before grabbing a ham sandwich and pouring a black cup of coffee. Though Trevor’s sandwiches technically passed as food—despite Nance’s insistence to the contrary—Jessica was looking forward to a real meal on the Intrepid soon. “Thanks, hon. What would we do without you?”
“Dunno…prolly fly into battle on empty stomachs and not be able to hear comm traffic over your grumbling tummies,” he said with a smile and a shrug.
“My stomach’s going to grumble anyway,” Finaeus said after taking a bite. “This bread is stale, and I’m pretty sure jam isn’t supposed to taste anything like this.”
“Everything all set below?” Cargo asked, ignoring Finaeus’s complaints.
“Just about. I have a bot hauling more kinetic rounds forward. Once it’s done, I’ll make sure they’re racked properly. I have to bring Nance something to eat, too—she’s slaving away down there all alone,” Trevor replied.
Nance replied.
“Oh…open channel to the shipnet, eh?” Trevor asked with a laugh. “Well, Nance, I’ll be there in a jiff. I have some food and unwanted human companionship for you.”
A snort came over the shipnet, and Jessica hid a smile behind her hand. Trevor was always good for diffusing tension. Who would have thought that the ship’s muscle would end up being the peacemaker? It was such a change from their previous heavy-hitter, Thompson.
Jessica briefly wondered where he was, but decided she really didn’t care. He saved her life, sure, but he was still an ass, and they were better off without him.
“Something’s happened,” Misha said. “The fleets at Roma are moving toward us.”
“That’s my cue to get below,” Trevor said. “Keep us in one piece.”
Jessica whistled. “And not just a few ships, all of them.”
“Got a message,” Misha said. “It’s from the Intrepid—er, it looks like it goes by I2 now.”
“What is it?” Cargo asked.
Misha shrugged. “Just a vector. I guess they want us to come about and follow it.”
“Set the course,” Cargo ordered. “If we can avoid whatever comes of TSF ships attacking us in New Canaan, all the better. They’re probably still pissed at us about the last time.”
“Aye, boss,” Jessica said as she killed the engines, spun the ship, and began to apply thrust on the new vector, carefully shifting the angle until they were lined up and accelerating on a linear trajectory.
No one spoke for several minutes, eyes darting to the system scan and the fleets headed their way.
“Hey, I got a message from a Fleet Admiral Evans, you know him?” Misha asked.
“Just a bit,” Jessica said with a laugh.
“Put it on the tank,” Cargo added.
Joe’s visage shimmered into view, and the message played. “Hey folks, about time you showed up! Tanis and I were starting to worry. You’ve probably noticed that things are a bit nuts. Some crazy AI—a shard of Airtha, whatever that really means—has taken over all the TSF ships and plans to blow you out of the black. We’re going to try to stop them without wrecking them, because we’re gonna need them to back us up against the AST fleet that you’ve probably spotted by now.”
Joe paused and looked out of their visual range. He spoke a few words they couldn’t hear, and then turned back to them. “Sorry about that, we’re trying to figure out how to disable the Transcend ships if Bob can’t get that AI to break loose. Anyway, I have one of our stealth ships on an intercept vector to nab you. You won’t be able to spot it till it’s right on top of you, but once you’re in its bay, you’ll be out of play and that may help in dealing with the TSF. Ship is the Daedalus under Captain Rock. I’ve passed an updated vector for you on this burst. Get on it right smart so they can grab you.”
The message ended, and Joe disappeared from view.
Jessica shook her head and smiled, Captain Rock. She was glad to see he was still out in the black.
“You’d think he could give an ETA,” Misha groused. “Would be nice to know when we can expect your friends in their invisible ship to nab us.”
“He may not know when,” Jessica said. “Either way, I’m almost locked into the course they gave. Won’t be long before we’re in the pocket.”
“Sure is a nice system they have here,” Misha commented after no one spoke for a minute. “Four TPs and hundreds of moons and dwarf planets. It’s like a paradise. Was hell getting here, but I’m glad you guys let me tag along.”
“Let’s hope Tanis has a plan to keep it that way,” Cargo said. “I still intend to take her up on that offer of a nice little plot of land down on one of those worlds.”
“Think they’ll give me something?” Misha asked. “I know I wasn’t around back when you all made your deal with the colonists…”
Jessica laughed. “I can guarantee it. I’m good friends with the boss.”
“How do you know she’s the boss?” Cargo asked. “Last we saw, she was just the ship’s XO.”
“She ran the Victoria colony for seventy years. I know how Tanis operates. She’s can’t help but be the boss, trust me,” Jessica replied.
She noticed that Finaeus hadn’t joined in the banter, and looked back at the ancient terraformer. His brow was creased and his hands were clenching and unclenching as he stared at the holotank.
“What is it, Fin?” she asked.
“Eh?” Finaeus looked up, appearing startled. “Oh…nothing…well, not nothing. Airtha
’s far from nothing. It would seem that she’s finally made her move.”
Cargo turned in his seat and peered at Finaeus. “Who is this Airtha, anyway?”
Finaeus gave a rueful laugh. “Stars, who isn’t she? I won’t have the fortitude to explain more than once, but rest assured that she’s bad news. I hope your Bob will be enough of a match for her shard.”
“Bob’s a match for pretty much anything,” Jessica replied. “No way some other AI, especially a shard of one, can take him on.”
“I hope you’re right,” Finaeus mumbled as he propped his chin up on his hand.
Jessica considered pushing Finaeus for more details, but he was wearing his ‘leave me the fuck alone’ expression, and she let it drop. Whatever special knowledge he had was the whole reason for grabbing him in the first place, so she was certain it would all come out once they got him to Tanis.
They achieved the vector Joe had prescribed, and nothing much happened for nearly an hour. Sabrina continued to arc through space, topping out at 0.15c with the ISF and TSF fleets slowly gaining on them.
Jessica spent the time looking over the worlds of the New Canaan system. Four terraformed planets were certainly more than she had expected to see. One, which was mostly ocean, sported two space elevators topped with stations. She suspected that was the capital world—Carthage, based on the local beacon’s feed.
It was surrounded by a gaseous ring that appeared to be pouring out from a series of volcanoes on the surface. She had never considered venting waste volcanic gas into space before—it would make a gorgeous view at night.
The fourth planet was surrounded by a bulky ring, nothing so large as the ring mining the Grey Wolf Star they had encountered back when they first tried to jump to New Canaan, but still a significant structure.
Given the amount of vulcanism on the planet’s surface, she imagined that the ring must be present to help cool the planet. That meant the FGT hadn’t been finished with the system when the Intrepid arrived.
“It’s called a Peter,” Finaeus said from behind her.
“What?” Jessica asked, looking up at Finaeus as he approached the holotank.
“I saw you looking at that ring. It’s called a Peter. We use them to draw excess energy out of newly created worlds to cool them down, while spinning up their cores to create magnetic fields. Chances are that a thousand years ago, that world didn’t exist.” Finaeus said without taking his eyes from the construct.
“Stuff like that, making more breathing room for humanity…that’s what the FGT should be doing, not building an empire. Look at where it’s gotten us.”
“The Orion Guard used to think that, too,” Misha said. “Started a civil war over it—but look where it got them. Just another empire forcing their will on everyone.”
“I always told Kirkland it would come to this,” Finaeus said with a shake of his head. “I sat him and Jeff down and tried to get them to see sense. I tried to tell them that they would bring about a new dark age if they let their egos rule them—not that it helped. Here we are.”
“We’re not in a dark age, yet,” Jessica said. “Maybe with the intel we have, we can short-circuit this whole thing.”
“I don’t think we’ll be so lucky,” Finaeus said with a shake of his head. “At best, we can reduce the damage.”
“It’s so weird to hear you talk about the praetor and president like that,” Misha said. “When I was growing up, Jeffrey Tomlinson was the big bad boogeyman in the closet, and Praetor Kirkland was our savior. Yet you talk about them like they’re just two men you used to have drinks with.”
Finaeus barked a laugh. “Well, that’s because they are just two men, and I did used to have drinks with them. Back when we started all this…we had such good intentions, we envisioned a wave of utopian human worlds spreading across the galaxy. We didn’t exactly deliver on that.”
“It’s not all on you,” Jessica said. “You guys just made the worlds; it was the colonists who messed it all up.”
“Maybe it’s just what humanity does,” Finaeus sighed. “We’re an aggressive species. Perhaps, shaping the galaxy through our own brutal wars is what we’ll be known for.”
“If any other sentient species ever emerges,” Misha said. “The Guard never found any out there.”
“Neither have we,” Finaeus said with a slow nod. “Other than humans and AIs, the galaxy is devoid of thinking beings.”
“Maybe they’re hiding from us,” Jessica added. “On our world, the aggressive species dominated. Maybe on another world, a cautious species rose to primacy.”
“I don’t think humanity needs to apologize for anything,” Cargo said with a wave of his hand. “No one else is out here, so the stars are ours to do with as we choose.”
“Meanwhile, in our present reality, those TSF ships are getting a lot closer than I’d like,” Misha said nervously. “When is our ride supposed to get here?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Jessica said as she looked at the twenty interceptors closing on Sabrina. “They can’t fire beams through our fusion wash, and I’m jinking too much for kinetics to hit. The rest of the ship is wrapped in a stasis shield that they don’t have a dream of penetrating.”
“I know, I know,” Misha shook his head. “Just because we have our nice impenetrable shell doesn’t mean I am eager to put it to the test yet again.”
“Worst comes to worst, the ISF will take those ships out,” Jessica replied. “The real issue is how to not take them out.”
Misha looked over the scan with a frown. “You say they’ll take them out, but how? The closest Intrepid Space Force cruiser is a full light minute behind those TSF interceptors.”
“Do you see any fighters out there?” Jessica asked.
“Uhh…a few TSF ones.” Misha replied. “What does that have to do with it?”
“Tanis has thousands of fighters in the fleet. She has a special love for them. They’re out there—have no fear,” Jessica replied.
“OK,” Misha grumbled. “I’ll check my fear for the next three minutes. Then we’ll be in beam range.”
“Hold steady,” Cargo said. “If Joe thought we were in trouble he’d—”
Cargo’s words were cut short as a shudder ran through the ship, followed by the overhead lights flickering.
“What the hell?” Jessica exclaimed as her board lit up with the starboard fusion engine reading a containment failure.
“Shields down!” Misha yelled.
“Nance, Sabrina! What happened?” Cargo called out.
Nance replied, her mental tone sounding panicked.
An explosion rocked the ship and a decompression klaxon sounded. Jessica executed a new jinking pattern as best she could with only one engine and no AP drive.
“Get that shield back up, or we’re dead!” Cargo ordered.
“Do it,” Cargo said, and slumped back in his seat. “That ship better show up soon.”
The readout on the port engine showed it powering down, as the ship’s shields came back up.
“Where’d
we get hit?” Jessica asked Misha as she ran diagnostics on the engines. “That second blast was somewhere else.”
“It’s somewhere in the lower holds,” Misha replied. “Stuff’s fucked up. I can’t pinpoint it for sure, half the ship is dark right now.”
the reply came after a few agonizing seconds.
Her attention was brought back to the bridge by Misha announcing that he had scan back online.
“It was down?” Cargo asked.
“Yeah, sorry,” Misha replied. “Oh damn! There those fighters you mentioned.”
Jessica reset the holotank to show the space around them, and gave a smile as the ARC-6 fighters of the Black Death Squadron resolved. They were flitting around the TSF interceptors, making surgical strikes against weapons and engines. Seven of the Transcend ships were already adrift, engines off and running lights dark.
“Hey, Jess, you need a lift?” the man with a captain’s bars asked.
“Captain Rock! Of all the sorry… Hell yes, we want a lift!” Jessica said while grinning ear to ear.
“OK, it’s going to be a tight fit. You’re going have to disable your stasis shield, too. It won’t play nice with ours.”
“You got it,” Rock replied. “Three, two, one, mark!”
“Damn, that was fast,” Cargo muttered as a metallic boom reverberated through the ship.
“Hot damn! We’re inside another ship,” Misha said as scan suite registered only the interior of a docking bay.