by M. D. Cooper
Tanis gritted her teeth. This was significantly harder than fighting Kris back in the Sol system. Kris had moved in a way that Tanis could anticipate. Whoever she was fighting reacted before Tanis knew she would act. She had no idea how to win this fight.
Her opponent scored a hit, jamming the wand into Tanis’s prosthetic arm. She seized the opportunity and grabbed where the wrist had to be, making contact and twisting hard.
The other person let out a cry and let go of the wand. Tanis tore it out of her arm and tossed it over the edge of the platform. The voice relayed that she was facing a man.
At the same time Joe added his voice to the local net.
Tanis let out a cry and rushed forward, her arms spread to sweep the catwalk. She hit no one—as expected—and spun, firing her rifle at the top railing of the catwalk where she had been.
Her opponent bellowed in pain as pulses hit his legs in rapid succession. The kinetic hammer blows caused him to lose his balance and fall over the edge.
Tanis gave herself a dose of go drugs and leapt to the top railing. She gauged the distance to the next catwalk up—a good ten meters—and jumped.
Her knees snapped straight and she sailed into the air eight meters, just high enough to wrap an arm around a support beam. She hauled herself up and scampered up the beam to the outer edge of the catwalk above. She grabbed the railing and, in a fluid motion, swung herself up, out and over the railing.
Her limbs were shaking from the adrenaline she had pumped into herself for the jump and she slipped, landing hard on her side, but still on the catwalk.
The sounds of a scuffle came from ahead and she scrambled to her feet, racing toward it. She rounded the curve and Joe’s form came into view.
He was gripping the hilt of a lightwand, struggling for control of the plasma blade with an unseen attacker. Joe swung an arm out, connecting with his assailant and then took a hit in return.
Tanis watched the scene unfold in slow motion as both struggled for control of the lightwand. Then the wand slashed the railing and it buckled under the weight of the pair. A second later, Joe and his attacker were gone. Tanis arrived a moment later, sliding to a stop on her stomach.
“Joe!” she screamed, seeing him hanging by one hand from the catwalk’s support. Tanis could tell that the shimmersuited attacker was hanging from Joe’s leg.
“Hold on,” she said as she reached an arm down in an attempt to grab his other hand.
“That’s the plan,” Joe grunted as he swung his other arm up.
Tanis grabbed his wrist and pulled with all her might. She was able to slowly lift both bodies and had a moment of elation as she realized she would save Joe and catch whoever was in the suit.
Suddenly, searing pain enveloped her forearm. Tanis looked down to see the lightwand embedded in her arm. She felt her muscles weaken and below her Joe’s eyes filled with fear.
He slipped from her grasp.
“Hilda Orion.” Captain Andrews shook his head. “I’ve known her for centuries. I can’t believe she’d do this.”
It was the first dusk the field had known for over half a century. Overhead, the annihilator was dark, no glow emitted from it and no power flowed down its conduits.
“She had to have help,” Earnest said. “There’s no way Hilda could have known how to program a sequence that would cause this level of damage to the annihilator without also destroying it or the ship.”
“She did,” Jessica said. “I caught Mick, the former first mate, in the forest. I secured him and Bob has servitors monitoring him. The one Tanis fought seems to have been one of the Marines that they swayed to their point of view.”
“Mick?” Andrews wiped a hand across his forehead. “I thought he was in stasis awaiting eval at New Eden?”
“The annihilator’s not something we can fix here between the stars.” Abby was pacing as she talked. “Not unless we wanted to pull apart all sorts of other systems to rebuild the specialized materials for the fields. Even then there’s no guarantee we could cannibalize enough to do it.”
She looked like she’d been wearing the same shipsuit for days and Tanis could tell that the engineering chief was getting near the end of her tether.
“What’s the net, then?” Terrance asked. “Can we still make the burn for New Eden?”
“He’s right,” Earnest agreed while doing math in the air on an interface visible only to him. “Our only option is to make the burn for Kapteyn’s Star. We can alter course to reach it in…seventy-two years with braking.”
“Our worst-case scenario, then.” Andrews shook his head.
“We’ll have to power down unnecessary systems,” Earnest continued. “Like the artificial gravity supplementation in areas of the ship that are not over the matter accelerator, and this forest will have to die.”
“File the specifics with me.” Captain Andrews’ voice was resigned. He turned to Tanis, his expression softening. “How’s Joseph doing?”
Tanis brought her focus back to the conversation taking place at the site where Hilda Orion’s body still lay. “He’ll recover. His pilot’s enhancements saved him—the impact was only at 50g and he had mostly hardened his soft tissues before hitting the ground… He didn’t have any neural suppressing in place though.”
She rattled off the words quickly, her mind barely registering that she was talking. All she wanted was for this conversation to be over so she could get to the hospital to see Joe.
Terrance made a hissing sound. “I’m sorry… I’ve heard that is excruciating.”
“Too bad he didn’t stop her from trashing our annihilator instead of taking a swan dive,” Abby grunted as she continued to pace.
Tanis’ eyes snapped up, drilling into the engineer. “You know what, Abby, your highness? I’ve had just about enough of your fucking ingratitude. Nothing is ever good enough for you, is it? I’ve put my life on the line for this ship more times than I can count, I’ve put my team’s life on the line and what do I get from you? Bitching!”
“Yeah?” Abby turned and walked toward Tanis. “Maybe if your team could do its god-damned job we wouldn’t be in this situation. Your security is like a fucking sieve! Every time we turn around someone is taking a chunk out of my ship. I almost wonder if you aren’t behind this!”
Tanis held herself back from driving a fist into Abby’s mouth and instead stepped forward, putting her face mere centimeters from Abby’s. “You self-righteous little worm! I saved Intrepid from being blown apart before I ever fucking stepped aboard. It’s you who somehow missed half the components being sabotaged. I’ve done what no one else managed to do—keep your incompetence from killing us all you—”
Tanis slumped, the rage evaporating, replaced by shame. She turned her back and took long, slow breaths trying to regain her composure; trying not to break down in tears.
onal…it’s not…>
Tanis felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see that it was Captain Andrews. Terrance, Earnest and Abby were all walking to the lift, most likely going up to the maglev that ran across the top of the chamber.
“That was uncharacteristic of you, Tanis.” Andrew’s voice was concerned, yet contained an edge of caution.
Tanis wiped away the tear she felt making its way down her cheek. “I’m sorry, sir. I normally don’t have… I don’t…”
The captain nodded. “I know what you mean. I haven’t had someone I love in some time, but I recall the feeling when you see them hurt.”
The captain’s eyes had grown unfocused as he spoke, but he gave his head a quick shake and smiled. “But Bob says the doctors are optimistic for Joe. You’ll be interested to know that Joe may have said a few uncharacteristic things as well on the several occasions you were blown to bits back in Sol.”
Tanis laughed. “Yeah, he told me about some of those times. I promised to try not to have as many near-death experiences. I guess I should have made him promise the same.”
“He’s up in Engine’s hospital. Let’s go up there and wait for status.”
The captain led Tanis away, leaving Jessica to monitor the forensic bots and stare up at the Annihilator, wondering how Myrrdan had orchestrated this.
KAPTEYN’S STAR
STELLAR DATE: 3241829/ 09.23.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Interstellar space near LHS 1565
The engines were running at low thrust, their last correction burn completed two weeks earlier.
In the intervening days, the remaining areas of the ship had been fully secured by Brandt’s Marines and the engineering staff reported everything to be as fixed as it was going to get.
While Tanis and Jessica still suspected Myrrdan of being behind everything, Mick had confessed that Hilda and he were working alone. He claimed Hilda had awoken him and forged entries in the ship’s sensor logs to show him as still being in stasis.
The story was sketchy, but plausible, and with no evidence pointing to Myrrdan many assumed the threat had passed.
Tanis didn’t believe it for a minute.
She drifted in and out of sleep, as comfortable as she could manage in the chair beside Joe’s hospital bed. The doctors had placed him in a medically induced coma, granting his brain the rest it needed to repair itself—along with help from an army of nano.
Her back twinged, complaining about sitting in one place for too long, and she found herself suddenly wide awake, sleep out of the picture.
Not for the first time, she pulled up the most recent survey data from the Kapteyn’s Star system and placed it on the room’s holo display.
The stellar primary was an ancient red dwarf orbited by two large terrestrial worlds, one well within the star’s habitable zone and another along its outer edge. Several smaller dwarf worlds floated in the periphery of the system.
Earnest had determined an industrial base would be necessary to rebuild the components required to repair the annihilator and the ramscoop. The ship’s leadership also agreed that a proper repair of all systems and replacement of suspect sensors should be completed while at Kapteyn’s Star.
As a result, the stay in Kapteyn’s would be much longer than the stay in LHS 1565. On the order of a century.
“Are we there yet?” a weak voice asked from her right.
Tanis was out of her chair and embracing Joe before she even knew she had moved.
“Whoa…easy girl, things feel a bit stiff and sore here.”
Tanis leaned back and looked into Joe’s tired eyes.
“I’m sorry; I’ve been waiting a bit for you to come out of it.”
“How long—oh, that is awhile,” Joe said with a grimace. “I guess that’s what I get for trying to see if I can fly.”
“You should keep your flying to the black,” Tanis smiled.
“Did I at least save the day?” Joe asked with a grin.
Tanis couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Uhhh…not really, no.”
Joe’s face fell. “Seriously? How come you get blown to bits and get to save the day and I just end up busted up?”
“If you recall,” Tanis said, “Trist saved the day back on Mars 1. I was just blowed up.”
Joe harrumphed followed by a long groan. “Ohh…I shouldn’t have done that. You’d think they would have stretched me while I was under.”
“They did, this is the limber version of you.”
Tanis and Joe sat in silence for a few moments, staring into one another’s eyes. Joe’s gave a flick as he accessed the shipnet.
“Kapteyn’s eh?”
“We’ve taken to calling it ‘the Kap’.” Tanis smiled. “Seemed pretentious for a star to have ‘star’ in its name.”
“Don’t make me laugh, I bet it hurts more than a harrumph.” Joe threw a grin Tanis’s way. “So what’s the story, everyone going back into stasis soon?”
“Pretty much everyone already is, except us, some medical staff and some of the command crew.”
Joe’s eyes locked on Tanis’s. “Who’s on first shift?”
“No more shifts, Bob wants to lock the ship down during transit—but you and I have dispensation.”
“Dispensation?” Joe looked puzzled.
Tanis reached down and took his hand in hers. “I thought maybe you’d want to spend some time together before we go back under.”
A slow smile crept across Joe’s face. “Why not? We have all the time in the universe.”
MYRRDAN
STELLAR DATE: 3241835 / 09.29.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Interstellar space near LHS 156
The figure slipped out of its shimmersuit in a darkened corner of the ship—a place not on any maps or schematics; electronically shrouded from the AI.
Losing Hilda and Mick had been unfortunate, but everyone was expendable in this venture. In the end, the desired outcome had been achieved. The Intrepid was not going to New Eden, it would be building a far less optimal colony on Victoria, one of the worlds circling Kapteyn’s Star.
The temptation to begin working with the picotech would be too much. Earnest would bring it out of wherever the AI had hidden it. Then it would be ripe for the taking.
The figure stowed its shimmersuit and donned its uniform. Minutes later it was walking through the corridors of the Intrepid, heading to its assigned stasis chamber.
As long as it could keep Tanis fooled for the duration of the trip and the initial build-up on Victoria, everything would work out perfectly.
BUILDING VICTORIA
M. D. Cooper
DEDICATION
This one is for the fans. Thanks for the emails, messages, and encouragement.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, I owe my faithful beta readers (especially Jill) for their thoughtful comments and great ideas.
I also would like to thank Anglada-Escudé et al for taking a long look at Kapteyn’s Star and finding two super earths there. The story was better for your discovery.
Lastly, thanks to Kapteyn’s Star; you peculiar point of light in the sky that will pass us by, likely never to be seen again.
PROLOGUE:
SILENCE BETWEEN THE STARS
STELLAR DATE: 3243433 / 02.13.4168 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Interstellar space, near Estrella de la Muerte
It was dark again.
The ship coasted through the void, the relative warmth and light of LHS 1565 long behind it. Ahead, the dim, red disk of Kapteyn’s Star was barely visible.
Bob monitored the thickness of the interstellar medium, keeping watch againt
dense pockets of plasma and molecular clouds. With the scoop barely operable, the ship was all but naked as it drifted through space.
Though it was only moving seventeen-thousand kilometers per-second, a cluster of atoms, or stray plasma could do significant damage.
As if to emphasis his thoughts, sensors registered a hit on the dorsal arch, and he detected silicate residue in the meter-wide dent on the hull.
If an AI could worry, Bob worried.
He re-ran fuel consumption simulations, looking for any energy savings he could manage to increase power to the scoop and shields. He decided on which sacrifices to make and shut down more sections of the ship until only the habitation cylinders were lit and warm.
Bots herded animals from the ship’s other parks to the cylinders, where they were introduced to the ecosystem in the least destructive ways Bob could manage.
He knew the humans would appreciate the effort to save their plants and animals—though the sentiment was largely lost on him.
Other parts of his mind continued to focus on the internal component analysis he was performing.
Bob watched the ship through every sensor he possessed; checking and cross-checking every piece of data gathered, testing it for accuracy and corruption every way he knew how.
The humans blamed themselves for the calamity in the LHS 1565 system—or Estrella de la Muerte, as his avatars had named it. However, he found more fault in himself. He was faster, smarter, and more powerful than a million of them; yet he failed to detect the sabotage done to the ship.
It was an event which would not repeat. He and Earnest worked long and hard to discern a method for detecting any sabotage and component corruption. There would be no further modification of his body.