by M. D. Cooper
Tanis leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “If you go to Airtha, I really will be the power behind the Transcend because you’ll be in her thrall and you know it. There are a thousand ways that a being like Airtha can corrupt or subsume you.”
“She’s my mother, Tanis…”
“Don’t give me that,” Tanis shook her head vehemently. “Lots of people have shit parents. Sure, you seem to have won the lottery when it comes to that, but it doesn’t mean you can play the ‘I need answers’ card and run off on some boneheaded quest—”
Tanis stopped speaking abruptly as Sera gave a choked cough.
“Shit, sorry Sera.” Tanis reached down and to her hands, grasping them firmly. “We’ll get to Airtha when the time is right. You’ll get your answers, I promise. Let’s just do it on our terms, not hers.”
Sera didn’t speak, a thousand responses sifting through her mind. Tanis was right, she was a blunt, results-driven, butthead of a friend, but she was right. Sera knew she would have to put Airtha out of her mind for now. But she wouldn’t forget.
“OK, Tanis, you’re right. We’ll go there eventually, and it’ll be on our terms.”
“You know it. We’ll get to the bottom of all this. I promise.”
SENTIENCE
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Near Roma, New Canaan System
Tanis had worried about Amavia’s ability to function as Bob’s avatar. One of the original requirements for the position was a human who had never had an AI in their head.
Bob sent a feeling of agreement over the Link.
A few minutes to examine dozens of futures. Tanis was glad the stupid Luck she and Angela were cursed with precluded Bob from analyzing her future. She preferred the mystery.
FLEETING RETIREMENT
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: 67km from Landfall, Knossos Island
REGION: Carthage, New Canaan System
Jason Andrews leaned back on his deck chair and gazed out across the long Grainger Valley and the slopes of the Marinus mountains that surrounded it. He folded his hands behind his head and breathed a deep sigh.
“This is the life,” he said to himself.
Other than the sound his voice, the wind finding its way through the trees, and the gurgling of the small stream flowing a hundred meters from his back deck, the valley was quiet and picture-perfect.
It was paradise, better than anything he had ever dreamed.
After so long captaining starships, first in the Sol system and then later on the long haul between Sol and Alpha Centuari—not to mention spending the last century and a half as captain of the Intrepid—he had begun to wonder if he would ever get to finally relax, to spend a sunny afternoon alone, knowing that someone else had things well in hand.
At his feet, Buster, a shaggy collie, stirred at the sound of some small animal in the underbrush, and Jason leaned down to scratch behind his ears.
“Easy boy, just a squirrel.”
Buster lowered his head, but kept an ear cocked toward the origin of the sound. One solitary rustling in the underbrush wouldn’t be enough to get him to move in
the warm light of Canaan Prime, but Jason knew that if the sound came again, Buster would be off in a flash.
He didn’t often catch the squirrels, but he certainly liked the chase.
A ping hit Jason’s mind, reminding him that he was not alone on Carthage—though sometimes it felt like it—and he responded that he would accept the communication.
Though he had not been involved in the running of the New Canaan government in over a decade, Jason still kept up on his briefings. He had considered travelling to Normandy to observe the negotiations, perhaps to see Sera again, but Tanis had mentioned that Sera was in a relationship with Elena now, and he decided it would be best to pass on the opportunity.
That Tanis was reaching out to him now, after only completing the first day of talks was not a good sign.
Tanis replied, and Jason pulled himself up straight. When it came to working with foreign governments, ‘the usual’ was already bad enough. He could only imagine what worse would amount to.
Tanis smiled in his mind.
Tanis chuckled, her resonant tones filling his mind.
The words knocked Jason back. His mind skipped through a thousand scenarios that would cause Tanis to step down—but none made sense. The people of New Canaan loved her, they would follow her to the core itself if she asked it.
Jason’s mind reeled as he processed what Tanis was telling him.
Tanis replied.
Jason cut the communication, stood from his chair, and stretched as a sub-orbital shuttle crested the mountains at the end of the valley.
“Well, Buster, you’re finally going to get to see the big city, and Tanis has finally roped me into that job I’ve been avoiding all these years.”
A FAMILY MEETING
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Command Deck, ISS I2
REGION: Near Roma, New Canaan System
“You coming?” Joe asked as he poked his head into Tanis’s office.
“Yeah…I’ll finish this up in my head as we walk,” Tanis replied as she rose from her desk. “Stars, it’s been a long day. Can’t wait to catch some shuteye.”
“You and me both.”
Joe took a minute to admire his wife. She looked almost the same as the day he had met her—excepting the red streak in her hair that the girls had convinced her to get. Tall, lithe, her movements just a touch too fluid, hinting at the significant cybernetic alterations beneath her skin.
Her brow was furrowed—as per usual—and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they walked out into the corridor. “What’s up?”
“Oh, just reviewing the girls that Bob wants to offer the position of avatar to.”
“Another avatar? Then Amavia cannot rejoin him?” Joe asked. “Or is he starting a harem?”
A short laugh escaped Tanis’s lips before her frown returned. “If only. No, Amavia cannot become an avatar again. But that’s not the real driver. He’s certain that the AIs of the Inner Stars are going to start their own uprising, and he wants to send Amavia in to set them all on the right path.”
Joe felt his eyebrows rise. “Wow…that’s not what I expected to hear.”
“Yeah, me either. His top pick was Saanvi.”
“Hell no!” Joe roared.
Tanis laughed and placed a hand on his shoulder “Don’t worry, I had the same reaction, but it’s gotta be someone. I mean…there’s nothing wrong with it, and technically not permanent either. But she’s too young, she barely knows who she is yet.”
Joe took a deep breath, trying to stuff his fatherly impulses down enough to look at the situation logically. “Yeah…I suppose it’s technically an honor…but I agree. She’s just too young. Saanvi has huge potential, nothing wrong with being with Bob forever, but she wouldn’t know enough to know if that’s what she really wants.”
“It’s moot. Bob won’t bring it up to her, or anyone else. Right, Bob?”
“Yeah, I remember that from back at the Mars Outer Shipyards,” Tanis replied. “OK, I took off two for the same reason you can’t have Saanvi. No one under fifty. You may approach the rest. Let them know that they can talk to me if they wish.”
The whole exchange struck Joe as terribly incongruous, and he began to laugh, drawing a stern eye from Tanis. “What?”
“It’s just that everyone else treats Bob like he’s this near-deity, but you still talk to him like he’s just another AI, a subordinate, even,” Joe replied, still chuckling.
“Well, he is my subordinate,” Tanis replied. “Makes sense to me. Besides, he’s the one that was all nervous and made us stay up with him through the long night.”
“I remember that,” Joe grinned. “You called him a city-sized puppy.”
“Really, Ang? You sure about that?” Joe had always been certain it was Tanis who had said that to Bob.
“You get up on the wrong side of the synapses today, Ang?” Joe asked as he settled onto the maglev with Tanis.
“Ang, nothing to worry about, we’re going to take care of this mess,” Joe said, unsure of how to soothe an AI.
“The bunker under Landfall is just as safe,” Tanis replied. “And it will be a good sign to folks that we sent the girls there. They’ll know that I won’t have sent them somewhere I didn’t think could protect them.”
“Well, some will think that it means you think we’re gonna lose,” Joe added. “Not that those will be any sort of majority.”
“We’ve already been over it,” Tanis shook her head. “Besides, this is a warship now. No one else gets to have their kids tag along. Soon enough they’ll be in through the academy. Then we can really start worrying about them.”
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Joe nodded solemnly. Knowing that both their daughters would join the ISF in a time of war was disconcerting enough. Knowing that he would run the academy which trained them was something worse. No, not worse…troubling.
Not everyone was going to survive the coming years, but he would do his damnedest to ensure his girls were ready.
Tanis spoke softly into his mind.
Joe shared a laugh with his wife as they thought through all the hijinks their girls had gotten up to over the years. They were a perfect balance of caution and impetuousness, both smart, both clever, bordering on crafty.
He was going to have his hands full keeping them in line at the academy.
Ten minutes later, they walked into the mess hall where Cary and Saanvi were still talking with Jessica and Trevor, the latter regaling them with tales of their journey through Orion space.
“So then, I said to him, I’ve got three holes here and I paid you to fill them all, now get to it!” Jessica said in a too-loud voice, and the group burst into raucous laughter.
“Poor damn guy,” Trevor said, still laughing with tears rolling down his face. “With Jessica standing there staring at him, he couldn’t even get it in right, took at least fifteen minutes for the job to be done.”
The group’s laughter erupted again as Joe and Tanis approached.
“You know, Jessica…they’re just eighteen,” Joe said, his protective father voice cutting through the laughter. “Can we keep the sex jokes to a minimum?”
“Dad!” Cary exclaimed. “Seriously, we’ve heard our fair share of sex jokes.”
“Which this wasn’t,” Jessica said between laughs. “What you’ve stumbled into is the tale of the most unfortunate forklift operator ever.”