by M. D. Cooper
“I’ve been staring at that damn thing for nine days now, and I still can’t believe that it exists,” Jessica replied audibly to Finaeus.
“You should see Airtha some day,” Finaeus said, a wistful tone in his voice. “The star is bigger than the Grey Wolf; we pulled a lot of mass off it—making it, oh…about Saturn-sized. But we made good use of all that carbon when we made the ring.”
“Oh yeah?” Cheeky asked from the pilot’s seat.
Jessica had almost forgotten that Cheeky was down there; neither of the two women had spoken in the hour before Finaeus had arrived and broken the silence.
“Yeah,” Finaeus chuckled. “We built a ring out of carbon—massive, makes the old stuff in Sol look like kid’s toys. Way out—much further than Saturn’s outer rings were from Saturn itself. Just a gleaming diamond ring around the star. Threw a few terrestrial worlds in orbit, too…high inclination, so they only get short eclipses from the structure. It was my greatest work….”
“Was?” Jessica asked.
“Oh, well, it’s still there, but my core-damned brother gave it to her—now I don’t think of it so much as my work, as her den.”
“Who?” Jessica asked.
Finaeus pulled a tired smile across his face. “Another time, perhaps, dear.”
Jessica frowned. Finaeus certainly liked his enigmas. She hoped that he would be of use to Sera. What was this man capable of—especially after being exiled—that could grant Sera whatever leverage she thought she needed?
Cheeky snorted. “Well, this star mining operation may be magnificent, but it’s a nightmare to fly into. Those black holes they’re spinning around the star create killer EM and gravitational fields.”
“And just think,” Finaeus said. “Krissy is taking us in the easy way. Even with graviton field dampeners, your ship would be ripped to shreds from the shearing forces on other approaches.”
“Yeah, I can see that shit on scan. Not even sure our stasis shields could deal with that. Gravity can still reach through them—we’d probably have to go solid bubble.”
“Solid bubble falling toward a star,” Jessica said. “Not my idea of a good time.”
“There must be a doldrums ahead, otherwise they wouldn’t have a station that far in,” Cheeky said. “Any idea how long ‘til we hit it?”
Finaeus shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. They’ve added more black holes…upped the rotation since I last looked it over. Can’t be too much further, though. We can see Gisha Station, and it’s not that big.”
“Not big?” Cheeky asked. “Thing’s at least a hundred-and-fifty kilometers in diameter.”
“Yeah, but it’s next to a ring wrapped around a star.” Jessica frowned. “Just about anything looks small next to that.”
“Good point,” Cheeky replied.
“Great. Interior berth.” Cheeky shook her head as she rose and stretched. “Jess, do a girl a favor, and take the helm for a bit? I want to get dressed and eat before taking her in.”
“Sure,” Jessica replied as she took in an appreciative look at Cheeky’s ass. “Find something that covers more than just a few square centimeters, will you? Sera said these Transcend types are prudes.”
Cheeky paused at the bridge’s entrance and looked back at Jessica with a raised eyebrow. “I can cover up no problem. What are you going to do, doll-girl?”
“I can dress down.” Jessica shrugged.
Finaeus snorted. “I’ve been on this ship for weeks, and I find both your statements dubious at best. Not that I’m complaining. It’s not often I’m in the company of such fine women.”
Cheeky laughed and left the bridge, while Jessica slipped into the pilot’s seat. She initiated a flight-control systems analysis and glanced down at herself.
In the Inner Stars, her lavender skin and hair barely drew a moment’s notice. Even her exaggerated proportions were not extreme, compared with many of the men and women she had seen.
Still, all her clothing was tight, revealing, or both—usually both. Could the Transcend really be so uptight that these simple physical tweaks were frowned upon?
“Was Sera pulling our leg about how uptight things are in the Transcend?” Jessica asked Finaeus.
“Transcend is a big place,” he said with a shrug. “There are places where people have completely done away with physical bodies; places where they’ve turned themselves into weird dolphin things and live in oceans. But at Airtha, and where the military is concerned? Yeah, I’d say she’s not far off.”
“Don’t tell Cheeky about the places with the dolphin-people. She’s going to want to see how they are between the sheets…or the kelp…whatever.”
Finaeus laughed. “I’ll keep it to myself, but I suspect that there is little in this galaxy that Cheeky has not sampled.”
Jessica shook her head. On that subject, she was in complete agreement with Finaeus.
USURPED
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Regent Mary, Near Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Admiral Krissy slipped the final button into its hole at her collar, and tugged on her uniform’s jacket to ensure it was straight. She adjusted one of her ribbons and nodded. This will do nicely.
Finaeus…Finaeus was a handful on the best of days. She wanted him to remember how things stood, and who was in charge when they met.
Krissy frowned, wondering what reason Lloyd would have to reach out to her personally. Perhaps it was to request a change of docking location for the Sabrina. He probably wouldn’t like that she had given the starfreighter an interior hub berth.
Keep your enemies close, and all that.
Krissy wasn’t surprised he would say that. Lloyd preferred things to stay the same—exactly the same—forever. Even her coming in early—with or without a foreign ship—would have upset him.
Lloyd shook his head in her mind.
“Shit,” Krissy swore aloud. Grey Division was the last thing she wanted to deal with right now.
“Civilians,” Krissy said with a sigh, as she leaned against her cabin’s bulkhead and closed her eyes for a moment.
Although, she’d take civilians any day over dealing with Grey Division.
No one—at least no one that she knew—had a clue exactly who Grey Division reported to. Their official title was the 137th Division of Space Force Strategic Research, but few believed that their core mandate was research.
The consensus was that they were the military version of The Hand, without the pretense at diplomacy.
Hemdar gave the mental equivalent of a snort.
Krissy pushed herself off the wall, gave her uniform a final tug, and palmed her cabin’s door open.
Outside, a pair of lieutenants, followed by a commander, rushed down the hall on their way to duty stations for shift rotation. They stopped and stood at attention as she exited her cabin, and she gave them a nod, which set them back in motion.
She turned left toward the Regent Mary’s bow, where the bridge lay—not on the bow, of course, but far enough away from both the engines and the ship’s nose to offer some modicum of safety in battle.
That was what she liked about the Mary—she was a safe ship. Not the largest in her fleet, nor the most well-armed; but the safest. The Mary had seven layers to her hull, and every bulkhead bore additional reinforcement.
It wasn’t that Krissy was a coward. Far from it. She had flown in a combat drop just last year. However, when she was commanding a fleet, when all those lives depended on her making the right call, then she wanted to be safe.
She climbed the ladders up two levels to the command deck, where she passed by the entrance to the CIC and her offices. There was nothing in either that demanded her attention at the moment; the bridge would be where she could best observe and control whatever happened next—which was hopefully nothing.
When Finaeus had arrived nine days ago, demanding access to the jump gate for a speedy return to Airtha, Krissy had wondered what his intentions really were. If there was one thing she knew about Finaeus, it was that he rarely revealed or stated his true goals—she had witnessed that firsthand time and time again.
Nevertheless, whether she turned him away or sent him to Airtha—on his ship or hers—she needed to bring him down to Gisha. If for no other reason than to see him once more. Out of necessity—certainly not desire—she had also reported his arrival to the Admiralty.
She’d known they would be annoyed that the President’s brother had finally reemerged; but to send in a Grey Division ship to pick him up? She had always suspected there was more to his exile than the brotherly spat born out of his crazy rantings.
Krissy stepped onto the bridge to a call of, “Admiral on the bridge” from the ship’s XO, Major Nelson.
She noted the traditional straightening of backs and additional attentiveness that always came once the bridge crew spotted her arrival.
The Mary had a good crew, though sometimes its captain seemed less than professional. Such as now, when he wasn’t present for their final approach.
“Major Nelson,” Krissy nodded as she approached the command station near the back of the bridge.
“Admiral Krissy,” Nelson replied, throwing her a quick salute. “We’re t-minus ninety-three from port. There’s a gravity-berm we have to ride, and then it will be smooth sailing the rest of the way to Gisha.”
“Very good, Major Nelson,” Krissy replied. “And where is Captain Lin?”
“He is in engineering, ma’am. The chief reported an issue in one of the cooling systems that required a reactor shutdown, and he wanted to review the problem himself.”
“Hmm,” Krissy grunted.
Hemdar took her meaning and sent her confirmation that Captain Lin was indeed in engineering inspecting the reactor, while replying on the bridge net,
Krissy stepped to the bridge’s central holotank and pulled up a view of the ship they were spending all this effort on—the Sabrina.
If the ship had shown up without Finaeus aboard, she would have been tempted to blow it to dust and forget she had ever seen it; but Director Sera Tomlinson had passed orders that whoever found the Sabrina was to render whatever assistance it required—up to and including sending it to either Airtha or New Canaan.
It created a lovely conflict of interest. New Canaan was an interdicted system and there was no way Krissy could allow a ship passage there, no matter what orders The Hand had passed down.
Luckily, Finaeus had asked for a jump to Airtha, which was much less problematic—if it weren’t for the fact that he was in an Inner Stars vessel.
For starters, the Sabrina didn’t even have the bow-mounted Ford-Svaiter mirror required to traverse the jump gate. They would have to retrofit one onto the freighter.
Which assumed that she could even allow such a thing to begin with. An Inner Stars ship gaining jump gate tech and travelling to Airtha? To the heart of the Transcend? It was unheard of.
The intel on the ship indicated that it was crewed by smugglers and criminals that Sera had picked up during the years of her own exile. There was even a member of the interdicted New Canaan colony aboard—if reports were to be believed. No, there was almost no chance that this ship would ever reach Airtha.
Even less so now that a Grey Division ship was present.
As though he had read her mind, Major Nelson approached the holotank and spoke quietly to Krissy.
“Admiral, I assume you noticed the GD ship?”
Krissy nodded. “Yes, Stationmaster Lloyd saw fit to ruin my morning early and let me know about it.”
“They’re here for him, aren’t they?” Nelson asked.
Krissy raised an eyebrow. “Either that, or me. Which do you think it is?”
The major appeared to not have expected such a caustic response and he nodded wordlessly.
“Someone doesn’t want him to fly into Airtha on that freighter—which isn’t a bad call—but if they think that Finaeus will willingly get on a GD ship, then they’ve another thing coming.”
“How will he stop that from happening?” Nelson asked.
Krissy shook her head. “I have no idea, but if raw cunning ever took a physical form, it would be Finaeus.”
Bes replied.
Krissy used her personal encryption key to unlock the authentication section of the data stream and read the order’s source.
It simply read as originating from the Transcend’s Admiralty, not from any specific person—just like every other order she had ever received from the Grey Division.
She reviewed the orders, and found that they were as she had suspected. Turn over Finaeus to Colonel Bes, extract the Sabrina’s AI, and then send all the humans and AI on the ship to Henover for interrogation.
That part at least made a bit more sense. Fleet Intel at Henover was a far better destination than the Greys. An addendum caught her eye. It noted that if Jessica Keller was indeed aboard the Sabrina, she was to be sent along with Finaeus to Colonel Bes.
Back to wherever it was the Greys operated out of.
Krissy ended the communication and ran a hand through her short hair.
Krissy wasn’t sure, but there was no way she was going to let a colonel walk all over her. That was a short road to having one’s command undermined.
She gave Hemdar a token response as she considered the addendum regarding Jessica Keller, the colonist woman.
The existence and location of the New Canaan colony was a well-kept secret. Even Krissy didn’t know where it was—only that the GSS Intrepid had indeed met with the Transcend’s Diplomatic Corps and been given a world in exchange for their advanced nanotech.
Which was something that still rankled her. Just their nanotech; not their cutting edge picotech, or their stasis shields.
She imagined what the Transcend fleets could do with stasis shields. The Orion Guard wouldn’t last a decade with scale-tipping tech like that in the TSF’s hands. She’d gladly lead the charge to chase them to the edge of the galaxy if need be.
Then they would finally have peace—the first since the FTL wars broke out five thousand years ago.
UNDERSTANDING
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Near Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
"Until now, I had always wondered if the Transcend was a trick," Cargo said in a quiet voice.
"No trick," Finaeus replied. "As your eyes can attest."
Seeing the mining ring up close, Jessica had to agree. It was a thing of wonder—and they were still a quarter AU away.