“You know what you’re doing, right?”
“Of course, I have hundreds of hours logged into flight simulators.”
Flight simulators? When would he have had time to take piloting classes? Then it struck me. “By chance, would you be referring to video games?”
“Yeah, so? They are modeled after the real thing, you know.”
“But if I recall from looking over your shoulder, you usually have a green-skinned, buxom, barely dressed female copilot drooling over you when you fly.”
“Hey, Zen-Hottari only sits there because she gets space-sick in the back. Plus she owes me eternal gratitude and fealty for saving her from a fate worse than death on the planet Zargon, twice!”
“Oh, brother, and we women wonder why men today are the way they are,” Hannah muttered. “So our lives are in the hands of a teenager hopped up on video game testosterone and unrealistic fantasy expectations; is that what I’m hearing?”
“Can we drop it, already? In case you have forgotten, we’re drifting helplessly in space. Shut up, all of you, and let me work.” Max adjusted a few more controls, then took a deep breath and reached for the pilot's yoke. He pulled back on the engine throttle and the view out the front shifted. What had been a broad view of Fleece was now black space…and then the Jeff hove into view and immediately vanished…more black space…Oh look, there’s the planet again. We were cartwheeling end over end toward our doom! Although the rational argument would be that since gravity – or lack of – stayed the same and we shouldn’t feel the shuttle toppling like a pinwheel, it shouldn’t be scary. However, seeing is definitely believing!
Elleen started moaning pitiously, but Hannah and I managed to mostly keep it together. “Max, whatever you did, didn’t work!” I shouted. I glanced across at Hannah, relieved to see her fish a barf bag out of her pack and pass it over to my hyperventilating roommate.
“Hey, it’s not like I read a manual on this thing, you know!” he spat back; his knuckles gripping the controls were beyond white.
“A manual,” I chuckled nervously, “brilliant idea!” I stretched over to where my backpack was tethered and managed to unzip it and retrieve my work computer. I ran the cable out and plugged into the controls on the bottom of my seat. All the while, Max was continuing to fight the controls, and my companions became more and more nauseous. I punched up my directory and directed it to the heads-up display on the main viewer. Crap, not a thing on how to fly a shuttle. I was just about to slam the lid shut in disgust when inspiration hit me. “Kalaya is wise, Kalaya is beautiful...”
“What, are you going loopy, too?” Hannah growled, interrupting me.
I held up my hand in a silent plea for understanding and sang out at the top of my lungs, “Long live the Queen!”
Something happened! The shuttle shuddered and the rotation of views seemed to slow appreciably. A few queasy breaths later, we seemed to level out and the view of Fleece remained directly in front of us as it should. Elleen gratefully lowered her barf bag just as the computer screen in front of us went black. A small furry rodent carrying a small flag appeared to step out onto the screen with a peanut in its mouth. He planted the flag in the middle of the screen, then sat down and began to shell the peanut and eat it.
“Um, what’s with the rat?” Hannah asked.
Recovering, Elleen answered shakily, “It’s plainly not a rat; it’s a short-haired hamster. They were very popular pets at one time. I had three of them and they were super smart.” The creature seemed to be listening to her words as he tilted his head and then nodded vigorously in agreement.
“Hamster, rat, whatever. Why is it here?”
I didn’t know what to say, but I had my suspicions of course. This had Kalaya’s handiwork all over it so I leaned forward in my seat and slapped Max’s hands away from the controls. He scowled at me but took the hint. I shifted my gaze to the screen and put on my best smile. “Why, hello there, little guy, can you take us to Queen Kalaya, please?”
The hamster got so excited I thought he was going to drop his nut, but finally, he just stuffed it into his cheek pouch and danced around some more. Eventually, he calmed down enough to chatter happily and scurry off the screen.
“First aliens, and now you’re talking to cartoon rodents?” Max shook his head mournfully.
“Just wait, he won’t let us down.” And he didn’t. The ship started to accelerate and bank smoothly into what looked like a promising plane of attack into the atmosphere. Fleece was getting larger by the minute. With an enormous sigh of relief, I sat back in my flight chair and looked across at my two friends. “Well, ladies, we’re on our way once again.”
“What was that?” Hannah asked, pointing at the now empty screen. “I mean other than a hamster.”
“That was nearly the human race’s most state-of-the-art AI.”
“You mean that was our version of Kalaya?” Hannah’s eyes got very wide.
“Well, yes and no, Kalaya is far more than just an AI.” I grinned, thinking back to our conversations and all her pranks.
“But why doesn’t it just talk to us like she does?”
“Be careful what you ask for,” Max said ruefully. “The hamster, at least, doesn’t short-sheet your bed.”
“He was developed by the military. They don’t really want their AIs to talk, just interface directly with the right personnel. We don’t have enough experience or history with AIs so the military likes to keep them small and manageable. They would never dream of trusting a ship’s total system to someone like Kalaya.”
“How many hamsters are there in the fleet?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, probably a couple thousand in the Third Fleet alone, I suppose.”
“I’m no expert, but that doesn’t sound like a very good idea,” Elleen interjected. “Chaos theory being what it is and all. And what’s this queen business?”
“Just Kalaya being Kalaya; she has a bit of a narcissistic streak.”
“More like a bit of a bat-shit crazy streak,” Max snickered.
“Well, who’s crazier? A synthetic with illusions of grandeur or five sane people about to allow a hamster to pilot them through sixty kilometers of turbulent atmosphere where the outer hull temperature will reach three thousand degrees Celsius?”
That shut up Max, Elleen, and Hannah for a few minutes; oh, this was going to be great fun!
When the shuttle finally broke through the atmosphere, we were gifted with a spectacular view of the Aurora in all her glory. Our hamster did a better job of piloting our shuttle through the rough upper atmosphere than our human pilots had four days earlier. Even though she had seen it all before, Hannah was still plastered up against the window next to her seat. Elleen, likewise, was contorted around to assess the view in the other direction.
“Wow, this is amazing! Mountains, valleys, rivers, and streams! Look, there are those big sheep from the vids!” Elleen gushed happily.
Hannah just rolled her eyes and huffed, “Girl, you can see sheep in your sleep. This side of the shuttle is where all the action is. You should see the size of the ship down there; they’ve uncovered more of it in four days. It actually looks like it might fly again someday.”
I shot her a dirty look for her lack of faith. Undeterred, my roommate continued to point out amazing, at least to her, topographical features as she retorted, “Hannah, it’s just a ship. I came along on this ride to escape a ship. Why would I get excited about turning around and getting right back on one? Look, a marmot!”
The Aurora seemed to be doing her best to rise up to greet us as we edged closer. Individual hatches, engine pods, and loading bays were now visible. She looked to be almost completely free of her earthly tomb, and as the sun reflected off her skin, she glistened like glass. Glass that moved! As we dropped closer, I could see that the hull was covered with hundreds, if not thousands, of drones. Like worker bees, they bumped and gyrated over the Aurora’s surface with an occasional splash of sparks indicating plac
es where cutting was still required. She was shaping up well; the dirt and grime were gone, as were the superficial scratches.
“Impressive,” Hannah murmured. “Laree, what are those machines? They weren’t here last time.” She pointed. They were huge, arranged two on each side of the great ship, evenly spaced amidships. The pinnace drifted closer to the same landing pad we had used a few days ago. At first, I thought they were new structures, but then my attention was drawn to the undercarriages. They weren’t buildings; they were massive mobile platforms. Each sat on six sets of drive tracks originally designed to propel one of the huge mining machines, the wyverns. A squat turret shrouded in metal plating sat on top of the assembly. Rising above the machine, pointed skyward and anchored deep within the bowels of the unit, rose a massive artillery barrel easily three times as long as the carriage.
“I think it would be best not to ask,” I said guardedly.
“They’re guns,” Max whistled appreciatively. “Big ones. Based on what I have seen Kodo use as a hand weapon and their size, I would say these are anti-orbital platforms. Might even be able to fire into deep space; at least, I wouldn’t be surprised if they could.”
“Should we be worried? It looks like this shuttle could fly down the barrel of one of those things. Are they going to use those things on the Jeff?” Hannah asked, a touch of panic seeping into her voice.
“They could, certainly,” Max confirmed with an easy smile. He either knew more about the subject matter than the rest of us or was just bluffing. “But they won’t. They have no desire to destroy us or they would have done it already. Hell, just bumping the Jeff with a ship this size would flatten us. They wouldn’t need a cannon.”
I was surprised by his comments. Normally, he would try to demonize Kodo and Kalaya every chance he could, and this gave him every opportunity. To his credit, he merely said, “I don’t believe they really want to use them, they just want to leave in peace.” Was this my brother speaking?
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” said Hannah evenly. “I would be more concerned if they weren’t preparing for the worst. The fact that they are tells me they have a healthy fear of mortality and are rational beings. We can deal with rational, even if our fleet can’t seem to grasp the concept.”
Max cleared his throat. “If you ladies are done gawking, we’re about to land.”
Sure enough, we were coming in for a soft touchdown on the landing pad, our route taking us close enough to one of the gun platforms to verify that it was certainly real and lethal enough. It wasn’t some fake piece of window dressing designed just to give our military pause.
With impeccable grace, our hamster stuck the landing with hardly a bump. The screen showed the little guy giving us a salute of sorts and then waddling out of the frame, his mission accomplished.
Elleen rushed past the rest of us to be the first one out. She ran out away from the Aurora until she found the first patch of green grass that hadn’t been disturbed by the wyverns. Like a dog, she threw herself on the ground and started rolling around, giggling hysterically. The rest of us, except for Drik, calmly walked out and stood watching her as she regressed into a two-year-old.
Hannah finally stopped her with her boot so that she ended up looking up at us. “Having fun?”
She blushed happily and beamed back up at us. “If I said no, would you let me go?”
Hannah shook her head. “Nope. In fact, no matter what you say, I think you’re about done. You are representing the human race right now and I’m pretty sure the hamster has far more dignity.”
“But I like the dirt. Just smell it, Hannah; it’s wonderful. You guys go on ahead. It’s been so long since I’ve been on an actual living, breathing planet that I just want to enjoy the beauty.”
“Yeah, well,” I countered, “beautiful it is, but also very dangerous. It may not even be safe this close to the ship. There are vicious packs of wolves that believe they own this world.”
“Aww, fudge! Those are the creatures that followed you here?”
Max chuckled. “More like chased us nearly out of our wits. They are tough bastards; the only things that really work on them are high-powered rifles or the wyvern machines. And since I don’t see either nearby, I suggest we help Drik unload and get inside quickly.”
We dragged a reluctant Elleen along by her arms. All the while, she insisted she wasn’t afraid of wolves and looked back longingly at the green space behind us. We managed to gather most of our packs and head toward the Aurora. Conveniently, the same ramp that we had exited from days before dropped down politely at our approach. Joyfully, I led the way up the platform and into the metal passageways of the Aurora.
Once inside, I felt as if a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. The sense of coming home was unlike anything I had experienced since before our parents had died. Everything looked shiny and new and I took that as a sign of hope that things were farther along in preparation for the Aurora to fly again than I had dared expect.
Hannah stopped and looked around. “Well, we’re here; now what? On a ship this size, we could be lost for weeks looking for two people.”
“Don’t worry, the queen of this vessel already knows we’re here,” I grinned. My faith was rewarded by the sight of my favorite synthetic organism sauntering down the passageway with a big smile on her face. With a cry of delight, I threw myself forward and gingerly gave her a pretend hug, which she returned enthusiastically. “It’s so great to see you again, Kalaya!”
“You too, Laree.”
“You don’t sound all that surprised to see us.”
“You, not so much. However, I am surprised to see that you brought friends, and even more surprised to see that Maxwell was brave enough to return.”
“Yeah, he surprised me as well. Wait, you knew I was coming back? How?”
“Laree, you are as predictable as the sun. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that your ultimate place was here on board the Aurora. Although, I am a rocket scientist so that makes that argument kind of pointless, doesn’t it?” By now, the other two girls had wandered over, leaving Drik and Max to bring up our gear. “Elleen, Hannah, I wasn’t expecting the two of you to join Laree on this little adventure.”
Hannah poked a long finger at Elleen. “What can I say, she’s crazy; but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to study alien physiology. Besides, I have a lot of questions for you people.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do. I can probably guess most of them, but they may have to wait until after we find out if we are all still alive tomorrow.”
“I just wanted to get off the Jeff,” Elleen added mournfully, still looking back in the direction of the door we had just entered.
“Oh, really? Is that all?”
“Yup,” she said confidently.
“So your reasons have nothing to do with the fact that your bag is filled mostly with soil survey and analysis tools?”
Her jaw dropped. “Hey, I sleep with those! And how did you know that?”
“I know everything on this ship, “she said with a smile that was somehow creepy.
“Great, more women,” Kodo’s voice echoed from behind Kalaya. “As if things weren’t bad enough with just one.”
“Watch it,” warned Kalaya playfully.
Kodo was covered in grease and grime, but I didn’t care. Tears of joy welled up and I hugged him, too. My actions apparently caught him off guard as he just held his arms out to the side as if some random small child hugged him.
“Hug me back or you’re dead,” I growled, and he reluctantly did, as I just savored the moment.
“Laree, I’m getting you all dirty, and this oil doesn’t wash out very well,” he complained. I let go of him and looked down at my jumpsuit. Sure enough, I was now covered in grime as well.
“I can deal with a few oil stains. Besides, I’m sure Kalaya has something to get them out.”
“Yeah, kill it with fire, I always say,” she said snarkily.
Kodo continued, “So why are the five of you here? Surely not just to say hello. We sent you home to the Jeff for a reason; your own safety, if I recall.”
“Right, of course. I needed to warn Kalaya about the military, but the transmission cut out. I haven’t heard from you in days aside from that small message, so I started to panic. This was the only way I could warn you in time.”
“About what?” he asked sharply.
“The military fleet; they are a lot closer than we had originally thought.”
“How much closer, exactly?”
“Four days out…but that was over three and a half days ago!”
“In a matter of hours then,” he said sternly and looked to Kalaya for answers. I was shocked to see her frown and turn away from him. I have never seen her behave like this before; normally she is doing anything and everything to keep his attention on her. He reached down and took my hands. “You shouldn’t have come, Laree, no matter what the reason. It isn’t safe here, especially now.”
“Please don’t be mad, Kodo. While we may have come for different reasons, we’re all adults. We knew the risks involved before we came.”
He gently dropped my hands. “Well, it sounds like you have everything all figured out. I better get back to work then.” He shot Kalaya a look of disgust and hurried off.
“Kodo, wait!” Kalaya called after him, but he didn’t stop.
She turned back to me. “Laree, can you please take your friends to the guest quarters. I’ll join up with you in a bit.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.” She took off down the hall after Kodo, leaving the four of us alone again.
“Was it something we said?” Elleen whispered, her head turning back and forth between us.
Hannah grinned. “Oooh, I think Mommy and Daddy are fighting. Maybe this will be my big chance with the hunk.”
Bewildered, I tried my best to change the subject. “So…who wants to try out the hot tub?”
Chapter 20
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