by M. D. Cooper
Cara and Tim stood beside him, watching the objects move like ghosts. Em whined next to Tim.
Tim reached for Andy’s hand. Andy held Tim’s sweaty fingers for a minute before pulling both the kids in close to him. The image of Ceres shifted subtly as a large piece of debris hit the atmosphere and he had the feeling he was going to fall into the display.
Fran gasped.
Andy fell silent for a minute, unable to take his eyes off the shifting pieces of the ring as more sections peeled off.
Eventually, Fran asked,
Andy nodded.
Andy settled back in at the pilot’s station. He checked his astrogation one last time and set the target on Callisto local space, entering the preparatory commands in all secondary ship systems. Sunny Skies ran last minute diagnostics and verified seals across the ship. He got a couple small failures in the main cargo bay and a seat-failure on a point defense cannon but nothing that would hold-up the acceleration. The shields came back green.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
STELLAR DATE: 09.21.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Departing Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Approximately fifteen minutes after Sunny Skies began her exit burn from Ceres local space, the proximity alarm for an inbound object screamed in the command deck. Andy quelled his initial response: the expectation of another meteor storm. Pulling up the short-range scan, he located Fugia Wong’s cargo skiff and activated the audio channel. It was flying dark, not broadcasting any registry information.
“Incoming craft this is the Worry’s End. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Worry’s End. Are you prepared to receive?”
“You’re coming in awfully hot. Are you ready to brake?” Andy was amazed Wong was able to speak considering the G-forces the cargo skiff must have been pulling.
“Adjusting now.”
“I thought she said something about stasis?” Cara asked.
Andy shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the others.”
IR scans picked up an attitude adjustment that flipped the skiff end-over-end. The main thruster fired, sending a plume of red and orange across Andy’s display. He watched the velocity readings plummet as they matched Sunny Skies’ outbound burn. Wong had been coming in fast enough that she didn’t require nearly as much braking as he expected. Her delta-V matched his in less than a minute.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “I’m opening the cargo bay doors now.”
With velocities matched, all Wong had to do was slide her craft into the open bay. Of course, any mishap meant her little cargo container would get smashed like an egg on Sunny Skies’ hull. In the TSF, he’d executed combat landings daily, but that was in a close-combat fighter with hundreds of attitude thrusters that could turn him at ninety degrees on a pebble if he’d wanted.
The skiff floated closer to the hull until it disappeared inside. Andy pulled up the cargo bay surveillance and checked radiation levels as the skiff’s magnetic skids locked to the deck. He sent the command to close the bay doors and re-establish environmental control in the cargo area.
“I have you,” he said.
Wong released a sigh in the audio. “Copy,” she said. “You coming down to say hello?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Andy said.
Andy stood and stretched.
“Cara,” Andy said. “I’m going down to meet these new arrivals. You lock the door to the command deck and don’t let anyone in unless I give you the all clear. Keep Tim in here with you.”
Cara looked up from her console and nodded, lights from the various panels reflecting in her eyes. For a second it looked like she had Fran’s implants.
“What if Em has to pee?” Tim asked.
Andy gave Tim a tired a smile. “Then you let him pee.”
“He doesn’t like to pee on the deck.”
“That’s good for us. Do your best Tim. I won’t be gone long.”
“Why is Cara always in charge?”
“Cara’s the oldest. You listen to her.”
Cara gave Tim a smirk. “I’m so mean to you, too.”
“Yes, you are,” Tim said.
“Dad,” Cara asked. “What do I do if you don’t give the all clear? Is Fran going to come up?”
“Then you assess the situation, gather information, and make a decision.”
“That sounds like a TSF training manual.”
“Apparently it worked for somebody. Keep your monitoring channels open and talk to Lyssa if I can’t answer for some reason. You can still do that, right?”
Cara tapped her console. “Lyssa, are you there?”
“I’m here,” the AI answered, her audible voice sounding only slightly older than Cara’s.
“You guys chat, then,” Andy said.
He took a last look at the holodisplay that had zoomed out to show their route from Ceres to Calisto in Jupiter’s orbit. At this distance, the asteroid belt looked more densely packed than it really was. They would never come within a hundred thousand kilometers of another object unless they wanted to. Still, he couldn’t help looking at the green shield status and checking the proximity alarm.
Andy walked into the corridor and turned to close and lock the bulkhead door to the command deck. The door moved slowly, closing off his view of Tim playing with the puppy on the far side of the chamber. The bolts engaged heavily. He tapped the pistol at his waist and wished he hadn’t left the rifle in the safe room.
“You hear me, Cara?” he asked over the ship channel.
“You just left,” she answered immediately.
“Just making sure.”
In a few minutes, he was outside the habitat ring airlock in one of the new EV suits with a helmet clipped on his belt. He took deep breaths and began climbing down the corridor to the cargo bay. The ship was only accelerating at 0.2g but it was enough to make the main passageway leading to the cargo bay a dangerous shaft.
>
He laughed.
Lyssa said. Something in her voice made it sound like the distinction worried her. There were humans she could never communicate with. There was a sharply drawn line between the past and the future.
Was there? It seemed they had been living in this future for a long time, that his dad was the holdover. Even if the basics of humanity would never change: natural childbirth was still happening on some isolated outpost in the JC or a slum in Jerhattan on Terra, someone was dying of cancer, someone had just suffered a heart attack…a child had just died. The line between what humanity had always been, and something like Lyssa was, would just keep spreading out, blurring, until it became a future that contained the visions of both humanity and the sentient AI.
Andy’s thoughts bounced between memories of Summerville and the question of what they might find on Proteus. All of it seemed propelled by the woman he was about to meet. If Heartbridge had pushed them out of Cruithne and M1R, somehow she was going to push them further in a direction he didn’t know if he wanted to go. He had a bad feeling about it; one he couldn’t completely define.
He didn’t like that when Fugia Wong said she was bringing friends, she meant more AI. In less than three months, he had gone from piloting a ship with a barely functioning diagnostic system to being surrounded by the only aliens the human race had yet to meet.
Andy reached the ‘bottom’ of the passageway, hit the control panel on the cargo bay airlock and waited for the system to cycle. A bead of sweat grew on his temple and broke free, slowly falling toward the airlock. He swatted it away but it stuck to his hand. The airlock opened, showing him Fugia Wong standing on the deck, leaning back against the battered cube of the cargo skiff.
She was a short, slim woman with precise features and round, dark eyes beneath a bob of straight black hair. She was wearing a close-fitting suit of light armor with reinforced sections at forearms, shins and shoulders. She stood with one hand on a blocky pulse pistol in a long holster at her hip.
As he stood on the airlock, staring down into the cargo bay, a man and a woman climbed out of the crate. The woman looked to be at least fifty, with curly grey-brown hair, and pale eyes in a long face. The man appeared to be at least seventy, but when he clambered onto the side of the crate, he stood straight as a lamp post. A soldier’s gaze went immediately to Andy as he came into sight.
“Captain Sykes,” Wong said. Her voice had a stronger sarcastic tone in person. “It’s about time we met. Is my package still safe?”
“Safe as the last time you asked,” Andy said. “Who are you friends?”
Wong pointed at the woman. “This is May Walton, recently Senator of the Anderson Collective, and this is Harl Nines, her bodyguard.”
Andy locked his magboots onto the deck, and awkwardly walked down the cargo bay, stopping a few meters from Wong. He looked at May Walton again. Nothing in her clothing or demeanor suggested she was a senator.
“How significant is it that you’ve brought a Senator from the Anderson Collective onto my ship?”
Wong smiled. “That’s an excellent question, Captain Sykes. Should we go upstairs and talk about it?”
“No, we shouldn’t. You tell me what’s going on and I’ll decide if you come aboard my ship.”
“We’re already aboard your ship, Captain Sykes,” May Walton said.
“You’re not. You’ll notice I’m wearing an EV suit. I’ll open those bay doors and clean house if I don’t like what I hear.”
Nines didn’t appear to like the sound of that. He moved closer to Walton and Andy got a look at the two pistols hanging from either side of his belt, both looked like strangely antique projectile weapons.
“There’s nothing you need to be concerned about, Captain Sykes,” Wong said, her hands raised and tone mollifying. “As far as the Anderson Supreme Governing Council is concerned, Senator Walton died in the ring accident. Her remains won’t be found for several days, if ever. Her loss is a great blow to the great terraforming project.”
“You destroyed their secondary ring,” Andy said.
Wong shrugged. “I implemented a failsafe built into the construction system to protect the ring from unexpected exterior impact.” She rattled off the explanation like she would be just as comfortable reciting computer code. “Imagine frozen rope struck by a rock. The ice falls off but the rope remains intact, except here the rope dropped the ice first so it could take the strike. In the event of a meteor shower, the central grid jettisons the construction shell to reduce the mass of the base support system. They’ll rebuild. The Collective is good at that.”
“How many died?” Andy asked. “You seem to be forgetting all the people on that ring.”
Wong pursed her lips. “I’m sure Ngoba Starl told you were are at war. Maybe you were on the fringes before. I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”
“He said a war was coming. Honestly, it sounded like bullshit to me. I’ve heard plenty of people talk about coming wars in my life.” He shook his head. “So, she’s going to Callisto with you…is that the arrangement?”
“Her and my package and then you won’t see me again.”
Andy looked from Wong to Walton and Nines. The bodyguard’s face had settled into a continuous scowl that made him look like an angry statue.
“Why are you doing all this?” Andy asked. “Tell me why and I’ll take you to Callisto. Keep lying to me and you can leave with your package.”
May Walton took a step forward. “She’s part of you, isn’t she?”
Andy blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“The AI. Hari Jickson’s first AI. You were implanted? Yes?”
“I was,” Andy said warily.
An almost religious-looking smile broke out on Alys’ face.
Wong raised her eyebrows as if surprised.
Senator Walton raised a hand like she was reaching for a bird.
Lyssa said.
The senator smiled.
Wong cut in.
Fugia Wong squinted at Andy as though she was searching for something.
Wong shrugged.
Andy rubbed his jaw, trying hard to keep himself from grabbing his helmet and activating the cargo bay doors. She had a point, even if he didn’t want the extra trouble.
Lyssa didn’t hesitate.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 09.24.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: En route to Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
They were still two weeks out of Callisto when Andy decided it was time to finally scan the dog. He spent a half hour calming Tim, then gathered the happily grinning Em into his arms and carried the puppy down to the ship’s cramped medical bay. Tim, Cara, Fran and Fugia Wong followed. Fugia had taken a liking to the dog but it was her constant jokes about pirate attack that pushed Andy over the edge.
“What are we going to do if we find something, Dad?” Tim wanted to know. “How are we going to get it out? Fran said our autosurgeon can’t work on Em.”
“We’ll worry about that if we have to. This is just an urban legend. You have to remember that.”
“Then why are we doing it?” The anxiety in Tim’s voice was deeper than Andy had ever heard, even when he’d wanted to know when Brit was coming back two years ago.