by M. D. Cooper
She widened the view on the holo, taking in the inner five AU of the Germine System. It was a well-populated star system, sporting two terraformed worlds, several megastructures, and, most importantly, jump gates. Nine, to be exact.
The wild jump from Airtha, executed during their escape with Kara, had landed them far from any system with gates. It had taken almost a year to reach Germine, and during that time, much had changed.
The Transcend had fractured, many systems declaring for Airtha, many others for Khardine. Most, however, seemed prepared to wait it out—or at least see which of the two Seras was stronger before choosing a side.
Germine was one such system, though they had gone further. They had declared independence from the Transcend, a move possible because of the immense wealth and strategic placement of the system.
Also, they’re probably holding out for the best deal, Katrina mused.
She wondered if the Transcend would survive this civil war. It was too large to begin with. Many of the worlds in the alliance served in name only.
While President Tomlinson had maintained a strong core, the freedoms he allowed meant that the Alliance’s fringes were far more autonomous than in the Orion Freedom Alliance. There, Praetor Kirkland ruled with an iron fist and ensured compliance with his strictures through swift and decisive use of his Orion Guard.
As far as Katrina was concerned, it was all a shit-show. Tanis and New Canaan offered the only real safe haven, a haven Katrina craved.
For a long time, she had worried that the Intrepid would not survive its arrival in the future. So much had changed from what they were used to. But after watching the feeds from the Battle of Bollam’s World, Katrina had been reassured that Tanis would not let the colony ship fall to anyone.
It had been a bittersweet experience. Just the knowledge that the Intrepid had survived Kapteyn’s Streamer, finally arriving in the future, had lifted Katrina’s spirits greatly.
The moment she learned that she’d arrived in Bollam’s World a mere three days after the Intrepid jumped out ranked as one of the worst of her life.
And Katrina had experienced many terrible moments.
However, her study of the battle had revealed one important clue. Tanis had allied herself with a freighter captain who operated in and around the Silstrand Alliance.
Katrina’s travels over the past five hundred years had taken her far and wide. Even so far as the Transcend. Few would have known that captain’s true identity, but Katrina did.
The Tomlinson resemblance was unmistakable.
And so, Katrina had spent the last twenty years travelling to Airtha, the one place she knew she could find a lead, only to be too late once more.
Kara was her silver lining. Someone who not only had been to New Canaan, but who had seen Tanis and Sera with her own eyes.
Katrina didn’t believe in a god—if some entity had directed the events in her life, it would have a lot to answer for—but finding Kara was something of a miracle, enough to make her wonder.
“Katrina?” Kara said loudly.
“What? No need to yell, girl.”
Katrina wondered what was going on behind the featureless oval that was Kara’s head. Did the girl have a mouth to speak with? Her ethereal voice emitted from a sound-strip on her neck, and she never ate; instead taking in nutrition through a port in her abdomen.
Katrina suspected that Kara had no face at all, that the helmet was her head, cushioning her brain in a ballistic gel, making her a more effective killer.
Kara had said as much—about being a killer, at least. Her most important goal in life was to protect her father and destroy anyone who threatened him.
“I had asked why it was strange that they named it the I2.”
“Oh, that.” Katrina nodded slowly as she wound her thoughts back to that point. “Well, it just seems odd to me. They really liked the Intrepid…it was their home. Now they’ve changed it into something else.”
“Does that upset you?” Kara asked.
“No…we all change. I guess it means that the future wasn’t what they hoped it would be, either.”
“Is it ever?” Kara asked.
Katrina shrugged. “No, not really.”
She turned her attention back to the holo display and the nine jump gates. The gates were all in orbit around Farska, a moon in orbit of the system’s largest gas giant. Most of the commerce in the Germine system centered around the gas giant, so it made sense for the gates to be nearby, as well.
That was useful for Katrina. It meant her ships could make a close approach without any trouble. It would only be over the final hundred thousand kilometers that they’d be in violation of the local STC’s flight paths.
Katrina’s other ship was further ahead, almost at the edge of the no-fly zone surrounding the gates. That vessel, the Kjeeran, was empty, though automatons simulated human activity within the ship, should someone scan it closely.
Her entire company, all that remained of her once-sizable military that had escaped the Midditerra System all those centuries ago were now the crew on her last ship. The Voyager.
“Well, it’s not like we need the ship to do a good job. The whole point is for it to make a mess.”
Katrina groaned. “How’s she going to do that? She’s a gate control AI. She can’t just leap across space to our ship.”
More AI nonsense, Katrina thought to herself.
“Well, did she propose any means to do this? Or shall we just invent teleportation over the next hour?”
“I’ll do it,” Kara volunteered.
“You?” Katrina asked, looking the jet black, four-armed, winged woman up and down. “You blend in about as well as a missile.”
“They’re unaligned, I can claim to be a special envoy on a secret mission from my father. Then I kill whoever is escorting me, get to this Vicky’s core, and free her.”
“Getting shot at the whole way back to the Voyager,” Katrina added.
“OK, mister smarty-AI,” Katrina countered. “What’s her reason for going aboard the gate control platform? We need something better than ‘Dad sent me’.”
Katrina scrubbed her face with her palms. “They’re not declared for Airtha or Khardine. How do we convince them to do something for Kara here?”
“Easy,” Kara replied. “Greed. We offer a payoff to whoever runs the platform. The very fact that Germine hasn’t aligned with either side tells us that they’re in it for the money.”
Katrina considered that. It was likely true, but it didn’t mean that whoever ran the gate control platform felt the same way.
“It’s a lot of variables to deal with in one hour,” Katrina said. “We need more time.”
“OK, yeah. Put it in a stable orbit and see if you can get Vicky to validate our way in with Kara, or suggest a better one.”
Katrina looked at Kara, wishing once again that she could see the girl’s facial expressions. “You sure you’re up for it? You’ve never had to do something like this while not under your father’s aegis.”
Kara nodded resolutely. “I know. But I can do it. He told me to get to Sera, that only she can save him.”
&nbs
p; “Kara, that man controlled your mind your entire life. He made you serve him as a slave.”
What irony for me to be saying those words.
Kara made a warbling sound that Katrina had learned was her variation on a laugh. “He’s my mother, too. Did you know that? Father’s a natural chimera hermaphrodite able to spontaneously gestate. I know it sounds insane, but as much as I hate my father, I love my mother. How messed up does that make me?”
Katrina shrugged. “I once used a dressing machine to tear all my skin off and replace it with armor. I was in agony for weeks and got addicted to the pain. We’re all messed up in one way or another.
Kara nodded, then cocked her head to the side. “You’re right, that is nuts.”
Katrina patted the strange young woman on the shoulder. “It does explain why your Father-Mother spells his name like that.”
* * * * *
Kara drew in a deep breath, calming her nerves as she drifted through the umbilical connecting the Voyager to the gate control platform—which bore the uninspired name, ‘GCP1’.
Katrina had coached her on what to say and how to react to any challenges. The old woman was listening on the Link, ready to offer help as needed.
The AI, Troy, was there as well, likely ready to dole out sarcasm-laden advice. Kara wasn’t sure if she liked him or not. Not that it mattered; she didn’t like most people.
At the umbilical’s end, Kara cycled the airlock open and floated in. As it matched pressure, the lock also brought the gravity up to GCP1’s standard 0.7g.
While she waited, Kara wondered at her luck of meeting Katrina during her desperate escape from Airtha. The one person in the entire star system who was able to help had been there at the right time. Not only that, but Katrina had also possessed the means to make a speedy escape.
Luck was not something Kara believed in, but there was an undeniable serendipity to the events.
And what a strange old woman she was. To think that for five hundred years, Katrina had waited for the Intrepid to return. Hiding in dark corners and skulking about the Inner Stars, eventually passing into Orion space, and later the Transcend.
What a tale that must be. Aaron would have loved to hear it….
Kara pushed the thoughts of her dead brother from her mind as her clawed feet settled firmly on the deck. The airlock’s door cycled open, and she looked out on the corridor beyond.
It was a narrow space, with grey bulkheads and a grey deck. An equally grey man stood waiting for her, his colorless uniform bearing no markings of any sort. On either side of him were two soldiers in matte black armor.
Kara smiled—or would have, if she still possessed the ability to do so.
It had been Aaron’s idea to remove their faces and replace them with featureless ovals. He had done it so that they could be more effective in their defense of Father. But now Aaron was dead, and Kara was no longer under her father’s aegis. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to have a face again.
What visage would she choose?
The man cleared his throat as Kara stepped into the corridor, her folded wings scraping the overhead. “Kara, daughter of Adrienne. Welcome to Germine and the GCP1. I understand you wish to use our jump gate for ‘Special Transcend Business’.”
Kara nodded, gazing down at the man. “I do. I have the coordinates, but I need to enter them myself with a record lockout in place.”
“You wish to obscure your destination from the Germine government?” the man asked, his eyebrows raised halfway to his hairline. “That is highly irregular.”
“Not for a cabinet member’s envoy,” Kara replied.
The man worked his mouth for a moment while nodding slowly. Kara imagined that even with two soldiers at one’s side, a two-hundred-centimeter tall black demon looming over you was more than a little intimidating.
After all, what was the point of turning oneself into such a creature if you couldn’t scare the crap out of officious little weasels?
The man finally replied, his voice tinged with disdain. “You surely know that Germine is no longer officially affiliated with the Airtha government, nor are we aligned with Khardine. Germine is a free system; your father’s position means little here.”
Kara kept both sets of hands folded in front of her, but made a point of slowly scratching her claws along her armored skin.
“I understand that…”
“Stationmaster Nuermin.”
At least I’ve started at the top.
“Well, I’m sure that you’d still like for Germine to have favorable relations with Airtha. President Sera is an accommodating woman, but she is also resolute in her desire to destroy the usurper at Khardine.”
To his credit, Nuermin did not back down. Instead he countered, “You are referring to the usurper who also claims to be President Sera? Hopefully you can understand why we’re not interested in joining in what is clearly some sort of strange family squabble.”
Honestly, Kara didn’t blame the man or the populace of the Germine System. Staying out of the early stages of a civil war seemed like a smart play. Let the two sides show more of their hands before declaring allegiances.
Nevertheless, pacificity would not benefit her here, and she bore no particular love nor obligation to the people of Germine.
“Yet you agreed to let us dock and meet with me,” Kara replied.
“I would not be so rude as to dismiss you out of hand—though the ship you’re on did make me think twice….”
“A necessary subterfuge.”
“I suppose. I don’t need to know specifics of your mission.”
Kara agreed. She didn’t want to spend forever trading pleasantries with this man.
“Stationmaster Nuermin. What will it take to use the gate? I assume that if there is a maintenance and upkeep cost associated with a jump, we could compensate the people of Germine for that?”
Kara had made her fair share of shady deals on her father’s behalf. She was under no illusions that the ‘people of Germine’ would ever see a single credit.
“Well.” Nuermin tilted his head, as though her words had only just now opened up a new avenue of thought. “I suppose we could determine the cost to the people, were I to allow you the use of a gate. However, we cannot remove destination information from our systems. There is no maintenance cost associated with that. It’s simply against policy.”
“I understand,” Kara said. It didn’t really matter. The AI, Vicky, would be configuring the jump gate and destroying all targeting data in GCP1’s systems. “Do you have a number?”
Nuermin hemmed and hawed for almost a minute, behaving as though he’d never done this before. Kara glanced at the guards and could make out one of them rolling her eyes behind her faceshield.
“I suppose we could arrange a jump for seventeen million credits.”
Kara nearly choked and was amazed that the stationmaster had managed to state the number with a straight face.
Kara gave the stationmaster a shake of her head. “I understand the economics of gate travel well enough to know that there is no scenario under which a jump costs more than ten million credits.”
Nuermin nodded, a commiserating expression on his face. “Yes, that is normally the case, but with the troubles that abound, antimatter prices have gone up. Supply and demand, you know. A lot of demand right now. Not to mention demand for gate travel. Our queues are stacked for days, and I assume you want a speedy transit…”
He left the word hanging, and K
ara nodded.
“I suspected as much. Well, in that case, I hope you understand that I cannot saddle so many people with this disruption for less than sixteen million.”
Kara and the increasingly detestable stationmaster haggled for a few more minutes before settling on fifteen million, with a full refueling for the Voyager thrown in.
Once they agreed on price, Kara insisted that they do the transfer over a secure terminal, recording the transaction with system banking NSAI to ensure everything was above board.
This threw Nuermin for a loop, but eventually agreed to it.
Kara decided that was true.
Kara replied.
Stationmaster Nuermin stopped in his tracks a moment later and groaned. “Damn, we’re going to have to use another terminal. Follow me.”
He turned down a side passage and began leading Kara in the desired direction. She followed silently, paying more attention to the guards behind her than the man in front—a useful advantage of always wearing a helmet.