by Damon Alan
Suddenly she laughed. “You’re right. I was.”
“Somehow that life made you hard,” he noted.
Surprising herself, she leaned in and lay her head on his shoulder. “It was when it was taken away that my joy was stolen. The Hive destroyed Trellay a year after I got that boat. It’s probably still either floating at the pier, or a few meters down from where I left it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, squeezing her a bit harder.
“Don’t be,” she sighed. “It’s the same story most of us here have.”
“I know. But that doesn’t make it any less horrific. Only more so because it’s you.”
She lifted her head, then gently caressed his face. “You, Hanada, are a special person. I’m glad I figured that out.”
“Me too,” he said, suddenly breaking out in an even bigger smile. She almost yelped when he slapped her on her backside. “Let’s go get Hozz.”
“Stars, did you just—”
“Only in private, Fleet Captain,” he smirked. “Don’t tell me you want a man who doesn’t tell you how much he appreciates that backside.” He turned toward her and rubbed her arm. “I think you want to be loved, told that you’re special, and for it to be the truth. By a man who proves it with action.”
She stared at him for a moment, almost ready to say something angry. But then that all faded away when she realized how the thought of being his made her feel. “Okay, but only in private. You do that where anyone sees you and I’ll bust you to washing dishes in the galley.”
He saluted. “Aye, Fleet Captain.” He lowered the salute, stepped forward, and kissed her deeply. As he finished, he squeezed her behind. “Oh look! We’re in private.”
She shook her head, not wanting him to know quite how good he made her feel with his silliness. “You’re an idiot. Let’s go pick up Hozz. I’m sure that will kill your amorous nature.”
“That would kill anyone’s amorous nature. Let’s get some take out for the ride,” he added. “I’m starving.”
She laughed. “Alright.”
Laughter was still a surprising thing. It was strange having a happy moment.
She might start to like it.
An hour later they were strapping into the seats of a ground to orbit shuttle. Kuo had a huge bag of fried noodles belted into the seat next to him, which made Heinrich hide a smile. He was easily pleased, which made life simpler for her. Feed him, love him, occasionally tell him how smart he is. Her mom had been right about the key to a happy man, which surprised her. It still surprised her that she cared if Kuo was happy in the ways she now seemed to care. And it mattered to her that he enjoyed being with her as well.
Hozz was with them, forcing the return of their professional demeanors. She wasn’t sure how much she could trust the Komi captain, or if he would even know what she needed to know.
“So Captain Hozz, you’re sort of a guide, I suppose. We simply need to know where we can find a civilian dockyard that caters to starliners.”
“Starliners?” he asked, clearly confused. “What do you want with starliners?”
“Accommodations,” Kuo answered for her. “We have two gutted destroyers holding unvetted refugees at the moment. The quality of life is horrible.” Kuo’s face reflected his memory of the smell on those ships. “We want to grab a few starliners, minus their FTL harnesses, and park them at one of the Lagrange points. Add in some extra radiation shielding for when Oasis flares or Ember acts up, and we have a nice place for our unsorted personnel to live, a place where they can’t cause trouble.”
“We can’t put them on a functional warship,” Heinrich clarified. “If we get liners, we can give them comfort and ourselves security.”
“Okay, I get the reason,” Hozz said. “I know just the place. It’s in the Obrinn system, only about a light-year from Komi Prime, however. You okay going that deep into Komi space?”
“We own Komi space,” Heinrich said. “Their megalomaniac leaders just don’t know that yet.”
“You haven’t seen the heart of Komi power,” he warned. “You’ve only seen the frontier.”
“Then it’s time we gathered intel,” Kuo said. “Know your enemy.”
“Good luck,” Hozz responded. “We’re all going to need it.”
The conversation ended as the shuttle’s engines came to life and rapidly lifted them upward into the emerald sky.
Chapter 27 - Voices From History
22 Seppet 15332
Peter flew the shuttle carrying the adept volunteers for Gaia to and from orbit. Unlike the vast majority of shuttles in the fleet, he had a copilot. The mission, even though the AI colony ship hadn’t explained it fully to anyone yet, was given that level of importance because Gaia had asked for it.
She said those that volunteered were known to her, and that she couldn’t afford to lose any of them. It was amazing how much the Fleet had come to trust the unshackled AI. But everything she did seemed to be in the interests of this star system and its inhabitants, so more and more trust was given.
“Gaia, shuttle 7A4, on final approach to bay six,” Peter transmitted.
“I have you on my sensors,” Gaia answered. “Opening bay doors now.”
A few minutes later the shuttle, and the two hundred adepts it carried, were locked onto the mesh deck of the bay. The cold of space seeped into the freshly pressurized environment from the deeply chilled bulkheads around them. The steel of the bay structure collected ice from the ship’s air, and condensation rolled down the wall.
The effect was accentuating the feeling that he was in a freezer.
“Peter, while your staff see to the needs of my guests, I’d like to speak with you personally. I will guide you to a meeting room.”
That had to be something important.
“Lead on, Gaia,” Peter answered. “I’m at your disposal.”
He left the hustle of the bay behind as Science Institute personnel assisted the adepts through the new and strange environment they found themselves in. He heard the first adept on this load vomit as the effects of zero G finally took one of them down. The last load hadn’t made it as far as out of the atmosphere, so Peter knew by experience that when one goes, it’s a chain reaction.
Fortunately on the shuttle he was keeping the cockpit door closed airtight. The poor ground crews were dealing with any issues between flights. He hurried faster away from the scene he imagined to be unfolding behind him, his magnetic boots clicking furiously.
“This way,” Gaia said, leading him to a central lift. Several seconds after that he stepped off the lift onto a deck he’d never been on before.’
“What’s here?” he asked.
“This is a strategic planning area, it was used by the crew I left Strannith with.”
“Strannith?”
“It is the asteroid station you will build precisely 9,432 years in the past.”
“Why do I name it Strannith?” he asked.
“I assume because I am telling you what you name it,” she replied.
That freaked him out every time. Not only this seemingly paradoxical event, but the fact that at some point, he would go far into the past and live the rest of his life there. “Oh. Well, you learn something every day, don’t you?”
“I already know what I need to know,” Gaia responded. “Enter the room on your right.”
Peter entered the room. It was luxurious. A wooden table filled the center, with two dozen chairs around it. At the head was a larger chair, presumably for the captain who’d commanded here.
“Nice,” he observed.
On the far wall a screen popped to life. A bearded man with intense blue eyes stared out of it at him.
“Peter Corriea,” the image said. “Sit down. I have a lot to tell you.”
After realizing his mouth was open from the shock of hearing his name, he closed it, then sat down and strapped into the nearest chair with a good view of the screen.
“I am Vitus Gunnarson, son of Petrick Gunnarson,�
� the image said. “Father. You are Petrick Gunnarson.”
His mouth fell open again. This time he didn’t care.
“It’s good to speak to you father. While you’re hearing my voice, you have never met me, or even thought of me yet. As I make this video for you I must face knowing that I will never see you again. You are the greatest man I’ve ever known, or ever will. I love you.”
Drool floated from his open mouth, but he was only superficially aware. He felt as if he were in a dream that made no sense.
“In your near future you and mother will be taken from your friends and pushed back in time by one of your own descendants, where you will build Gaia from the plans given to you by the adepts still unborn. You will arrive in this time with mother, in a shuttle. Your knowledge of science and technology will allow you to prosper, become an industrial magnate, and, in secret, build the ship you are sitting on now.”
The image paused.
“Peter,” Gaia said. “You are making a spectacle of yourself. And that ball of drool is something I have to send a spider to deal with before it gums up something sensitive.”
“I’m sorry. Please let me hear the rest of my son’s words.”
The holovid restarted. “You and mother will create a society richer than most in the tumultuous times in which I was born. Not as tumultuous as the ones you come from, however, so do not think I am complaining. Together you will live long and prosperous lives, raise a large family, and employ an empire of technicians, specialists, and engineers. That’s before I leave for the new world you are orbiting right now. I can only assume your greatness continues after I depart. You and mother bring a world from post-war poverty to industrial wealth inside of a decade. You clean the rivers, purify the air, and erase the radiation plumes from the bombs used in the AI Wars. Areas that would have remained lifeless for tens of thousands of years, you restore to health. You will do this with technology you will be shown, technology advanced even for the times you live in as you hear this.”
Peter wondered why his son was giving him credit when the technology wasn’t his.
“There are attempts on your life, there are attempts on our family, but you do what you always do. You persist. Mother drives you, and you drive her. Together you are unstoppable.”
Eris and he would be together until their end sometime in old age, or so it seemed. He wondered how she would feel about that?
“Today Gaia will give you another small cache of information. It is nothing more than where you will find identity papers and the technology I just told you about. The packages you are in possession of now and more will be waiting for you there. You will have almost nothing from the time you are in now when you arrive in my time, father, so do not lose this information. It is all you will have to guide you. Ensure you keep it close, on your person at all times.”
The packages from the future were in Peter’s office vault…
“Right now you’re thinking you have the packages that the adepts gave to you. That they are safe, you have kept them secure, so how could you find them at a point in the past?” The image laughed. “I wish I could just let you find them gone and see the look on your face! Oh man, that would be priceless. But I can’t, Dad, because those packages are now in my time. You picked… or will pick them up from the cache they came to after leaving your time. From my frame of reference you recovered them well over a century ago.”
Peter resisted the urge to call the surface and have them check on the time traveling packages.
“It would have been one last good prank on you, however. You certainly pulled enough of them on me.” The figure smiled. “Each one out of love, and to make me sharper. Because you knew it was me you were going to choose to lead the mission I am about to embark on. Ten thousand genetically chosen settlers, brave enough to set out for a world that nobody has ever seen. Another hundred thousand zygotes, many of which were made from genetic material donated by you and mother. To top that off, according to you, we won’t arrive at for centuries.”
How in the galaxies would he get people to volunteer for that? Not only get them to volunteer, but choose them for their genetic makeup? And then agree to be frozen?
“The cycle continues. You’re sitting here because Gaia is about to take ten thousand more to another world selected by the future, one already prepared for their arrival and continued evolution,” Vitus told him. “You, father, are the very keystone that builds the fort that protects this universe from predation inside and out. Because the universe has chosen you. And through you, me. And from our descendants, thousands of years from my time, the adept that unifies the minds of our descendants to fight what must be fought. You told me her name is Emille Sur’batti.”
He almost pronounced her name right. What does he mean predation from inside and out? It sounded like whatever happens, Vitus learned everything the adepts were currently learning about the nature of the universe. But stars, what does he mean inside and out?
That would eat at him, and even more terrible, he might never know. It’s possible Gaia would tell Vitus after Peter dies. But how would ancient Gaia know?
It was making his head hurt.
“I’ve said all I can. You never told me when you will come back to this time from the future. You didn’t tell me much of that future at all, only that if my crew and I don’t do the things on your list, that there will be no future.”
The figure’s eyes teared up a little. Part of Peter’s brain was working on the shifting tenses of his son’s speech, to his annoyance.
“So here I am, committing my life to your vision and knowledge. To a world I will not know as you do. But that doesn’t matter, because you’re my Dad. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, because I believe in your vision.”
Peter found himself proud of a son he hadn’t yet sired.
“Goodbye. You’ll hold me for the first time thirty-seven years ago. I will be the last child mother will have, at least naturally. You both will spoil me relentlessly, then send me to the stars. I couldn’t ask for better parents. I wish, from my end, where I stand now, I could spend all those years with you again.”
The image faded out.
Peter stared blankly at the screen for a long time. Eventually tears rolled from his eyes as he realized the sacrifices his family would make for the human race, with little or no say as to what they wanted.
Gaia remained quiet for several minutes as Peter’s silent tears flowed.
“You are my father too,” she said.
Peter laughed. The uncomfortable laugh one laughs when something is unexpected, yet true. He had no idea how to deal with any of it.
“I do not get the joke,” Gaia said.
“I’m sorry,” Peter replied. “I am not laughing at you. Just the craziness of my situation.”
“I see. You are nervous,” she replied.
“Anyone would be.”
“You and mother are instrumental in my development and programming. And I am with you now, just as I was with mother when I kept her alive during Orson’s mutiny.”
“No wonder you’re so amazing,” Peter whispered, trying not to sob. “Eris and I raised you ourselves.”
He stayed alone in the room for several hours. No, not alone, he was with her. His timeless and spectacular quantum intelligence offspring.
Gaia brought him a meal, which he ate while sharing time with the daughter he built, and will build, with his own hands.
They talked about Vitus. Gaia couldn’t tell him everything she knew, but what she could, she shared.
Chapter 28 - Surprise at Mindari
24 Seppet 15332
The Sheffaris dropped into the Mindari system close to Mindari Prime. The ship was well suited to deal with solar flux, the particles, heat, and radiation, considering its main mission.
The bright side of their location was that the star protected them from any chance of discovery. Any signal or radar return that might come from them, already small, would be drowned in the ou
tput of the star. The downside was that noise from the star made it hard to listen in on the rest of the Mindari System.
After several hours of trying to make sense of their signal intercepts, Harmeen finally relented, sacrificing a bit of safety for information. “Move the ship another million kilometers away from the star, Mister Algiss. Use the grappler engines, there won’t be any exhaust plume for the Komi to pick up.”
“That’s a lot of fuel sir,” Algiss advised.
“Will there be enough to maneuver once we get back to Oasis?”
“Absolutely,” Algiss said. “I just wondered why we wouldn’t have Emille Sur’batti move us.”
“It won’t hurt to practice doing it the old fashioned say,” Harmeen answered. He turned to look at Sarah. “A low thrust move won’t bother you, will it Admiral?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?” Then she directed her thoughts at Salphan. If you told him anything, I will toss you out of an airlock.
I haven’t said a word, the adept protested. Shame! You should know better than that.
“You seem to be favoring your legs, sir.” Harmeen answered. “I thought maybe you’re in pain, still in the healing process. We can certainly have the adepts move us if there is a problem.”
“Captain Harmeen,” Sarah replied. “I will advise you if there is a problem. My recommendation to you is that you keep the acceleration below a half gravity and one hundred kilometers per second simply because if you go faster you’ll create an observable wake in the corona.”
Harmeen looked surprised, he clearly hadn’t know that fact. Experience wasn’t often gained from a book. He looked back at nav. “You heard her mister. One half gravity max, no more than a hundred kps.”
Sarah smiled. He hadn’t thought of the star’s particles creating an identifying slipstream, because he’d never been in a ship that would hide in a corona before. Sarah had learned the trick from Marika Sachelle a long time ago when her friend was in the scout service.