by Meridian
“Posh!” exclaimed the young man when the hatch opened. “So, they got you your own personal doorman now?”
“He’s supposed to keep people out,” Keeler replied. “Apparently, he’s unclear on the concept. Ah, good, you brought my traveling companion,” Keeler exclaimed when he saw the large white crate.
“Don’t give him any tip,” came a snarling, high-pitched but throaty and guttural voice from inside the transport module. “He almost dropped me… twice!”
“Well, if you’d stay still,” Eddie Roebuck told the box.
Keeler tapped his fingers in the top of his desk and said slowly, “Son, why are you arguing with my luggage?”
Roebuck looked up at the commander. “He was hangin’ and bangin’ all the way here. Screamin’ that he was a political prisoner and a victim of speciesism and animal exploitation.”
“Better not open it, yet,” Keeler said flatly. “Interesting accent you have, Carpentarian?”
“Za,” Roebuck answered. “I’m from New Halifax.”
“The southwest side of the harbor, unless I’m mistaken,” Keeler went on. “Good people, Halifaxers.
Peerless drinkers. Thanks again, you’re dismissed. If I need anything else, I’ll know who not to call.” When he had gone, Keeler touched a button on the carrier. The front slid open, and a large gray tiger cat wearing a thick black voicebox/collar emerged. He looked angrily at his human. “Good of you to remember me.”
“Hoy, Queequeg. How was Quarantine?” Keeler asked his cat.
“It boned,” answered the feline.
“Sorry to hear it. How did you occupy the time?”
“Apart from getting blood and urine extracted by your running dog imperialist lackeys? I schmoozed.
You know, if you could organize cats, you could rule the universe. If you could organize cats.”
“What else?”
“I accessed the engineering data core.”
“Bad kitty! Did you learn anything?”
The cat flicked his tail. “Za, I looked into your little problem.”
“The glitches?”
“Raaaorww.”
“Did you fix them?”
“Neg, but I think I’ve spotted a pattern. Most of them happen in systems just as they have been brought on-line.”
“That’s really un-useful. Do you think it’s safe to launch?”
“You’re asking your cat? Don’t you have an engineering crew?”
“Good point.”
Queequeg padded across the floor, jumped into the chair behind the Commander’s desk and swatted at the interface worked into its eternalwood surface. “One of your engineers, a bright boy named Flash, has been the point man for fixing the system glitches. He looked into the possibility of a systemic source.
But he doesn’t think the glitches exhibit a viral pattern, and neither do I.”
“What do you think?
“We both think the problems might be related to the bio-organic components from the Caliph probe in Pegasus’s BrainCore.”
“Related how?”
“The Caliph probe contained an artificial organic intelligence. We use organic technology, too, but what Caliph had for brains compared to our technology was like what a talking cat has compared with tree fungus. Pegasus’s BrainCore was built from components cloned from Caliph’s braincore. The original components had alien programming running through them. Flash has a theory that the sterilization process left behind fragmentary bits of the alien code. These little fragments of code occasionally and randomly interfere with ship’s functions.” Queequeg ran to a viewport and looked out into space, tail back, ears pointing forward.
“Why hasn’t he told anyone?”
“He doesn’t trust his theory. It explains the pattern of glitches, but has one major hole in it. If he’s right, most of the glitches would be at the primary core, and there haven’t been any there, only at peripheral systems. Still, he’s a bright guy, and I think he is onto something.”
“Should I talk to this Flash guy?”
“I better do the talking. You’d only embarrass yourself.” Queequeg jumped from the desk ran toward the door. “See ya, I’m outta here.”
“Where are you going?”
“Underneath all of the enhancements to my forebrain and cerebral cortex, I’m still an animal driven primarily by instinct. You’ve dropped me into a new environment that I have to explore before I can be comfortable in it.”
“All right, just don’t pee on anything.”
“No promises.”
“I mean it, kitty-cat. This is a starship. Not a litter box.” Queequeg looked back angrily. “Please, how else am I supposed to mark my territory?”
“Don’t you have scent glands under your nose or something.”
“There are some places I refuse to put my mouth.”
“Then just do what humans have done for countless centuries, tape cartoons to your door.” The cat made one last suggestion before disappearing into the ventilation system. “You know, you can always ask, you-know-who.”
Keeler was about to tell the cat to mind his own business, but caught only a flick of retreating tail. He poured himself a glass of Arcadian brandywine, and saw that his hand was shaking. He commanded it to stop, and carried his glass toward his sleep chamber.
Off his sleep chamber was another room, intended as a second sleeping chamber for the commander’s family. Keeler had no family to bring with him, no one living anyway. The chamber was dark, unfurnished, but not completely unoccupied. He stood outside the door, for a few moments, then opened it. It was dark inside. “So, what do I do, Old Ghost?” he asked the room, not thinking any one would respond.
An ancient voice answered him. “You launch.”
chapter four
Pegasus – The UnderDecks
Warfighter Specialist Conda Taurus trailed two Watchmen through a kind of channel that automated transport pods used to move gear from the cargo bays to the artifactories. This part of the UnderDecks was cold, and dark, and the atmosphere so thin they were forced to wear mini-rebreathers. Their job was to scan for human life signs, and her job was to cover them if any of those life signs were hostile.
“I hate this,” said a Watchmen, a red-headed woman on reserve duty from the Environmental Systems Sector.
“I never realized how big this ship was,” the other one muttered, a man from the Technical Core. “Or how ugly some parts of it were.”
“There’s no one down here,” the woman said. “This is a complete waste of time.”
“The Prime Commander ordered every deck searched,” Taurus, a small tough woman, insisted. “This deck, and these sections, are our duty, and we’re going to search them thoroughly.” Amenities Nexus
Matthew and Eliza Jane Change ate in silence, the morning of the launch. She’s probably too nervous about the launch for conversation, he thought. It’s not because she doesn’t have anything to say to me. It would be nice if she looked up. I wonder if she noticed I’m eating blue orbs, even though they taste like…
Matthew’s internal monologue was interrupted by the arrival of Flight Lieutenant Kyoto of the Aves Susan, and Flight Lieutenant Ironhorse, of the Aves Kate. “Driver, who’s your new friend?” Kyoto was a little older than Matthew, shared Eliza Jane Change’s dark-hair and almond eyes, but with a stockier build. She had pursued Matthew from the day they had arrived on Pegasus, and, for a while, he had given her a fair chance. She was attractive and smart, but she treated him with a sense of entitlement that he found off-putting.
He introduced them. “Flight Lieutenant Eurydice Kyoto and Paul Ironhorse, this is Lt. Navigator Eliza Jane Change.”
Eliza looked up from her breakfast, studied these new arrivals for a moment. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, as though she were anything but, and returned to her food.
“Lt. Change is the ship’s chief Navigator,” Driver explained. “She’ll be the duty navigator at launch.”
“I’ve always
wondered, how does navigation in hyperspace work?” Kyoto asked. “I mean, Navigation depends on reference points in time and space. Once Pegasus is in e-space, she has neither.”
“It would take a week to explain,” Change said sharply. “And I don’t have that kind of time.”
“Then let me ask you this,” Kyoto persisted. “Can you use hyperspace to travel forward and backward in time?”
Change told them. “You can only move up and down in time, not forward and backward. I have to go.” She picked herself up from the table, and left. Kyoto claimed her seat.
“Why did you do that?” Driver asked.
“Do what?” Kyoto tossed her hair.
“We were having a nice breakfast until you two came along.”
“Leave me out of this,” Ironhorse said, favoring only the hearty Sapphirean repast on his tray with his attention. Ironhorse was very tall, very strong, and carried the aura of a man who had life all figured out, and didn’t think it was a very big deal.
“She’s a Guilder,” Kyoto left the rest unsaid, that Guilders were misfits, outcasts, or to use that most damning of Republicker epithets, anti-social. It was an obvious, but not-completely-spoken, slight, which Kyoto probably thought was subtle. “Do you know who she reminds me of? Flight Captain Jordan. Have you ever thought of pursuing her?”
“Flight Captain Jordan is married,” Ironhorse muttered, not looking up.
“I thought she lived alone,” Matthew put in, glad for the opening to steer the conversation away from Eliza. Jordan was a beautiful woman, untouchably beautiful, at least to mortals.
Ironhorse was stoic. “Flight Captain Jordan lives alone because she gave her love to man once and he hurt her.”
“Who told you that?” Kyoto asked.
“No one had to tell me. A sensitive man can tell from the way she carries herself.” Driver was tempted to ask what a sensitive man would deduce from the way Eliza carried herself, but he refrained. He told himself it was because he did not buy into Ironhorse’s aura of self-assuredness, but part of him knew that he wasn’t ready yet to know about Change’s inner life.
Pegasus – Primary Command/Main Bridge
On the day of the launch, Tyro Commander Redfire looked over the Command Center, where every station was occupied by a Lieutenant, in dress Odyssey Project uniform, not a Specialist to be seen. Lear was at the Second Station of the Inner Bridge, deliberately not looking at him. He had heard about the fireworks of the previous day, was sorry he had missed it, and wore a grin a hard kick to the groin could not have erased.
“All support ships cleared?” Lear barked.
“Affirmative,” answered the Flight Control Officer.
“Field Generators Primed?”
“Confirmed, all Gravitational Propulsion Fields Primed and Enabled,” answered the Duty Engineer.
“Hair combed, teeth cleaned, trousers latched,” came a voice from the rear. Keeler strode onto the bridge. “Ho! Wait a second.” He latched his pants and continued toward the command chair. He had also dressed for the occasion, wearing the uniform of an Admiral of the Commonwealth Fleet, from the time of the Ninth Crusade.
Lear looked at him with some faint disgust.
“What?” Keeler demanded.
“Why are you wearing that instead of your project uniform?” Lear asked, her tone a delicate compromise between respectful inquiry and scalding reproach. Cheeky, Redfire thought, so soon after
“the incident.”
“This is in honor of my ancestors, who fought and fell in battle defending the Commonwealth against the Adversary, the Abomination, and those other unholy names we gave those who lost the war,” he proclaimed. “By extension it honors who served the fleets of Earth and the Commonwealth in millennia long past.”
She looked at him gravely as he took his seat, but it was too close to launch time to get into an argument.
“Besides,” he added. “These epaulets look fabulous!”
Redfire failed to suppress a tight-lipped smile. He knew this meant no one was going to ask him to take off his gloves again. Keeler activated a display, checking for reports of system glitches, and the results of the Watch’s sweep of the ship for saboteurs, stowaways, and such. He came up dry on both accounts.
The Communications Officer, a handsome Republicker female, Lt. Daria Standard, spoke. “Incoming simultaneous transmissions from Corvallis, Sapphire and City of Alexander, Republic.”
“Do they want to know if we want to change our interplanetary comlink companies?” Keeler asked.
The communications officer seemed momentarily confused. Unless you warned a Rep that a joke was coming, it tended to go right by them. “N-nay, sir. It’s the president of Republic and the Chief Executive of Sapphire.”
“Uh-oh,” said Keeler. “Now, we’re in for it. Put them on the side viewers.” The display in the forward part of the bridge was showing the last of the support ships pulling away.
On the two side displays were the President of Republic and the Chief Executive of Sapphire, whose official title was “Leader Guy¹.”
“Good Morning, Mr. President,” Keeler said to one, and to the other, “Hoy, Brian, how’s your wife and my kids?”
The two leaders began to speak at the same time, before the Chief Executive of Sapphire demurred.
The President of Republic continued. “Prime Commander Keeler, Executive Tyro Commander Lear, officers and crew of Pegasus…”
“That about covers everybody,” Keeler muttered.
“The hearts and minds of Republic’s people are with you on your journey. We will meditate on your success.”
“Thank you, Mr. President, sorry you can’t join us.”
“Ranking William,” said the Leader Guy. “Good luck. Our prayers soar with you.”
“Za, right…. I mean, thanks, Brian.”
“Any last words of wisdom for the folks back home?”
Keeler stood, raised his walking stick and shook it at the monitor. “Stay out of the liquor cabinet, and no parties! The planet better not be a mess when we get back.”
“Gotcha,” the Leader Guy said and made a finger-trigger motion.
Keeler ended with a traditional Sapphirean farewell. “Fear no evil.” The Leader Guy provided the traditional response. “God is near.”
“Transmit off.” Keeler regained his Prime Commander’s seat. “Shall we blow this star system?” Lear barked orders. “Comm, signal all crew to secure for departure. Navigator, confirm course heading. Helm, full ahead on my mark.”
She was answered with three rapid “Affirmatives.”
Keeler brought up a display on the arm of his chair that gave him fingertip neural link access to any panel or monitor on the bridge.
“All stations report enabled,” Lear ordered. Her own excitement was palpable.
“Navigation enabled.” Eliza Change as a full set of interfaces began to assemble around her. Every station on the bridge used this technology as the fastest link to the system each crewmen monitored.
However, the Navigator required maximum integration, to enable her mind and the ship’s mind, the artificial intelligence housed in the BrainCore, to operate as one. Sensor gloves grew over her hands, and a visor across her eyes. Tendrils of dark plastic material wrapped around her arms and legs, and traced the nerves of her neck and spine. Redfire watched Keeler staring in fascination – and perhaps revulsion – as the ship’s molecular knitters built the technology around her.
“Helm enabled,” Reported the helm officer, looking at Eliza nervously, perhaps glad his station required only a discreet ridge of interlinks around his right eye, cheek, and chin and on the back of his left arm.
“Tactical enabled.” Redfire reported. His face was clean, as were Lear’s and Keeler’s. Not having interfaces knitted to the face for each duty shift was a privilege of rank for which the captain seemed relieved.
“All outer bridge stations report enabled,” Standard confirmed.
Lear looked at
Keeler, who gave her a nod. “Helm, take us out,” said Lear.
The Helmsman, made a gesture as though he were folding something in the air with one hand. Far below, the fore and aft Gravity Engines throbbed to life, unleashing energies that would have paled mighty suns. Around the ship, space and time began to warp, to curve, swelling into waves that pushed the ship along as it rode atop. Pegasus surged forward. 1,000 kilometers away on either side, the unfinished Republic and Sapphire sent out laser beams as though to guide the ship on its journey into the cold eternal night.
Redfire watched his tactical display as the shipyard and the unfinished Pathfinder ships behind him rapidly disappeared. He noticed the commander had fixed his own attention, not on the ship’s course, but on his arm display, which was showing System Status.
He’s still worried about the glitches, Redfire thought. But as the ship accelerated, every system appeared to be running perfectly.
“Report, Navigator.” Lear ordered.
“We have cleared the outer cometary belt and are still accelerating, now at .015c,” reported Lt.
Navigator Change from beneath her veil of technology.
“How long is the voyage to Meridian?” Keeler asked.
Change answered. “Meridian is 83 ly from the Republic system. Approximately .83 ly in e-space.
Figuring in an acceleration constant for n-space and e-space … if we catch a swift current, including ramp-up and braking time, approximately 33 days in transit. In the time it takes us to reach Meridian, nearly eight years will pass on Sapphire and seven on Republic.” Keeler looked thoughtful for a moment and then relaxed, “Thirty-three days, hm, we ought to have a mixer, to get to know each other.”
Pegasus – Avalon Ballroom
The mixer was held a few nights after launch, scheduled to correspond with Pegasus’s transition into hyperspace. Keeler had chosen to make his mixer formal, in salute to the occasion. Looking out across the multi-leveled expanse of the ship’s largest ballroom he felt gratified. Like all of the ship’s ballrooms, Avalon was named for a colony-world on Pegasus’s itinerary. Its designers hoped it would be the site for receptions of planetary dignitaries, where treaties, agreements, and memoranda of understanding would be signed. Keeler liked it better as it was tonight, the place where his crew was having a good time.