by M. D. Cooper
“I take it you’ve decided to trust us, then,” Markus said as he watched the Marines exit.
“You have none of your guards in the room, I don’t think it would be the best start to our friendship under arms.”
The pair relaxed slightly and Katrina folded her hands, pinning Tanis with an unflinching stare.
“If that is the case, then I think it’s time for you to tell your story. We have opened ourselves to you, secrets will only harm us all.”
“Perhaps we can start off with what you intend to do with Yusuf and his cruiser,” Markus supplied.
Tanis looked both of her hosts in the eye—it was clear they expected to have the captives from the Strident Arc turned over to them.
“I’ve honestly have not fully thought that through,” Tanis said.
“Captain Richards,” Katrina’s expression sobered. “I have spent many years mired in the most sycophantic bureaucracy you can imagine. ‘Honestly’ usually means you have an opinion, but you don’t think we want to hear it.”
Tanis sighed. “You have me there. At present I don’t think I should transfer the prisoners to you anytime soon.”
“Do you have a definition of ‘soon’?” Markus asked.
“We have a number of other things we need to cover first. I think that because my people defended you from the Arc and because we incurred the risk of taking their ship, for now we are best suited to hold them.”
“That’s more evasive, not less,” Katrina scowled.
“I’m sorry, it is. Let’s first discuss your initial question. You want to know what the Andromeda is doing here.”
“Very well,” Markus said. “I would like to hear this story as well.”
“We’re an advance scouting party. Our mothership is inbound—it should arrive in several days.”
“Mothership?” Markus asked.
“Correct, the Andromeda crossed from Sol within our main ship.”
“Within…” Katrina mused. “Then it must be a colony ship—but why would such a ship come to Kapteyn’s? There is no charter from the FGT or GSS on this system that I know of.”
Tanis knew that with her next utterance there would be no going back. The fate of the Intrepid would be forever intertwined with the fates of these refugees. If she could avoid telling them the truth she would—but if the Intrepid was to spend over half a century here, they would learn the truth sooner or later.
“What I am going to tell you never leaves this system. You will need to convince your entire population to keep this information to themselves—forever.”
Katrina’s brow furrowed further and Markus looked to the side, his eyes lost in thought for a moment.
“That’s a lot to ask,” Markus said.
“Nevertheless I’m asking it. My belief is that you have no interest in outsystem communications, so chances are this will be an easy promise to keep.”
Markus and Katrina exchanged a long look. Tanis could tell that a protracted, nonverbal conversation occurred between the pair before Markus finally nodded.
“Our colony ship is the Intrepid,” Tanis said.
The name did not register any reaction on Markus’s face, but Katrina nodded after a moment.
“I remember hearing about your ship,” she said. “You had some complications leaving Sol—but that was over a hundred years ago! You should already be at your colony world.”
“A few more years than that, and yes we should be,” Tanis said. “But who’s counting?”
“I don’t understand. You had the best colony pick in hundreds of years, what happened?”
“Our ship was sabotaged as it passed LHS 1565 and we barely made it out of that system. We managed to get our trajectory lined up with Kapteyn’s where we plan to repair the Intrepid before moving on to New Eden.”
Katrina and Markus exchanged another silent look.
“Maybe we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement then,” Markus said.
“Go on.”
“I’m guessing that the repairs you need to make are significant, otherwise you would have made them in-transit. I’m guessing that they require an industrial base and you would really like to establish that without cannibalizing your colony supplies.”
“You’re very perceptive,” Tanis commented.
“More hope than perception,” Katrina smiled.
“I think we could make an arrangement,” Tanis said. “It’ll require the colony leaders to weigh in, but it seems mutually beneficial.”
REUNION
STELLAR DATE: 3266062 / 01.28.4230 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Kapteyn’s Star System
“We really should not do that again,” Joe said as he pulled Tanis close.
“Mmm mmm,” Tanis murmured into Joe’s shoulder as she embraced him with every fiber of her being.
When the Intrepid finally arrived in orbit around Victoria it had been five-hundred fifty-eight days, seven hours, and ten minutes since she and Joe had been together.
They had spoken, once the light-lag between Victoria and the Intrepid had diminished, but nothing compared to simply being in one another’s arms.
“You kept things in one piece while I was away?” Tanis asked with a smile.
“I was just along for the ride. Between Ouri and Jessica all I had to do was make sure the fighters were fueled; then it turned out we didn’t need them at all.”
“I appreciate the effort.”
Joe put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “You took too large a risk—I saw the numbers, Corsia got those missiles with only seconds to spare.”
Tanis gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “You know me, always playing it safe.”
Joe’s expression darkened. “Tanis, I know you are not the most cautious person in the galaxy, hell, you may be the most seat-of-the-pants tactician who ever lived past their first battle…but you have more to live for now.”
She knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending and that his concern was coming from a place of love, but it didn’t prevent her first reaction from being one of anger.
“I was doing what—.” She stopped herself and took a deep breath.
“Joe,” she began again, looking into his eyes, trying to elicit understanding. “I thought long about it, I thought long and hard. I considered a dozen options from running away on up. But I couldn’t leave those people to die. People think I’m a butcher for Toro, but that would have made a real murderer out of me.”
Joe was silent for a long moment.
“You’re right, I know you’re right. I didn’t come up with any better strategies where the Hyperion didn’t get trashed,” Joe said as he shook his head and averted his eyes. “It’s just that…we have something else to live for now and I couldn’t do it alone. I need you.”
“Joe,” Tanis took his face in her hands. “I’m never leaving you again. The entire universe could be burning down and I’ll be with you. I promise.”
“They are?” Tanis asked.
Joe nodded and shrugged.
“Great, now I have to go in there all blotchy and tear streaked.”
She took Joe’s hand and they walked to the maglev station as slowly as they could.
CONSENSUS
STELLAR DATE: 3266062 / 01.28.4230 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
“You had no right to unilaterally make a decision like that!”
Tanis bit back a sharp retort and took a deep breath before replying.
“I think you’re missing the fact that we didn’t control their presence here. I made the call that we’d rather cohabitate this system with the refugees than the people who would pursue them between stars to wipe them out.”
&n
bsp; Gerald let out a long sigh. “I was supposed to be planning our first city on New Eden, not someone else’s city on a barren, tidally locked shit hole. This is not what I signed up for.”
Erin gave him a bewildered look. “You’re kidding, right? We signed up to get away from Sol and build a new future. The Hyperion is filled with people fleeing a far worse life than we would ever have had in Sol, yet you can’t bring yourself to give them a decade of your time?”
Tanis looked around the table at the other colony leaders. Some were nodding in agreement; others wore frowns or even less agreeable expressions.
“A decade is no small sacrifice,” Gerald huffed.
“I’m honestly surprised at the lot of you,” Abby said. “I thought we brought you along because you had drive to build and create. Here we are with an opportunity that few have ever had and you scoff at it?”
Tanis was surprised to find an ally in Abby, but it fit the woman’s personality. Abby was, if nothing else, a woman who thrived on challenge and adversity. Maybe that was why the two of them butted heads so often.
Tanis chose to ignore the gibe.
“Gerald doesn’t speak for all of us,” Tony, the head of planetary engineering, said. “You all know that no one has terraformed a tidally locked super-earth around a red dwarf before. I mean, people have theorized for centuries, but this is the chance of a lifetime. I just want Gerry to stop bitching so I can get my team to work.”
Tanis saw that the biologists were glancing between one another—likely having a debate over the Link.
“Simon,” she addressed the department head. “How does this strike your team?”
Simon pulled his attention back to the larger group.
“Well, I want to be certain I have this straight,” he began. “While most of us were in stasis, the ship got damaged badly enough that we had to divert here. Repairs are going to require use to either dip heavily into the colony supplies, or build up enough of an industrial base so that we can replicate what we need without having to cannibalize our supplies.”
The captain nodded. “That is the decision we made, yes.”
“OK,” Simon addressed Tanis. “Then, when the Hyperion shows up you saved them out of the goodness of your heart—a decision I personally find no fault in.”
Tanis didn’t know where Simon was going with his reflection, but she inclined her head in thanks for his support thus far.
“Knowing they weren’t going anywhere you decided to strike a ‘mutually beneficial’ arrangement where they help us build our industrial base and in exchange we help them build a colony,” Simon concluded.
“That’s essentially it,” Tanis agreed.
“It’s the mutually beneficial part I strongly doubt,” Gerald said with a scowl. “What can these backwater luddites offer us?”
She saw several others, such as Sergey, the head of colony space engineering, nodding their heads.
“Well, we don’t have to build mining infrastructure,” Erin said. “They have a well-equipped platform and the know-how to use it. Once we spin up their colony we’ll be tearing apart this system’s rocks in about the same amount of time it would have taken us to set up from scratch.”
Tanis appreciated Erin speaking up, especially when her boss, Sergey, was clearly not of the same opinion.
“You don’t have to stay up, Gerald,” Terrance said evenly. “You’re more than welcome to take a nap for the next two centuries and wake up in New Eden. I’m sure someone on your team would love the opportunity to work with the Hyperion on their settlements.”
A brief hush fell over the room. Terrance usually took a back seat, allowing the normal chain of command to work its course. Apparently Gerald’s lack of vision grated on him as much as everyone else.
The others who had appeared prepared to side with Gerald sat back in their seats, none ready to challenge Terrance given the finality in his tone.
Tanis was glad to hear Terrance speak. He had said little since her return to the Intrepid and she wondered if he was angry with her for the situation with the Hyperion.
“No, fine,” Gerald finally said. “But I’m not staying up the whole time. I want to enjoy my years on New Eden, not some bleak rock under a dim, red star.”
“Noted,” Captain Andrews said before turning to Tanis. “As we have previously discussed, the Admiral and I will spend much of this layover in stasis. Pending any objections, I am naming you Lieutenant Governor of the Kapteyn’s Star colony.”
He looked around the table, his gaze lingering on Gerald and a few others. No one spoke.
Tanis had assumed her title of general and role of XO would be enough to ensure she had the authority to keep things in line during this build-up. Apparently the Captain and Terrance had other ideas.
She had forced her attention from the congratulatory messages that came in over the Link as the captain turned the meeting over to her.
“Then it is settled. Tanis, it’s your show. Lay out your plan.”
DECEPTION
STELLAR DATE: 3270373 / 11.17.4241 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: High Victoria Station
REGION: Victoria, Victorian Space Federation
The shuttle completed its docking maneuver and Tanis stepped across the threshold onto the newly christened High Victoria space station.
“Have a nice stay, Lieutenant Governor,” the co-pilot said as she departed.
“Thank you, Samantha, will you be getting off duty soon enough to attend the party?” Tanis asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Just have to clean up and then I’ll be making the rounds.”
“Good, you’ve pulled a lot of long shifts getting this station and its strand built, you deserve a bit of the celebrating.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Samantha replied.
Tanis chuckled. “Good, I know I will.”
The debarkation area was nearly empty—The shuttle had been one of the last for the evening. She walked briskly past the ship berths, still amazed at what had been built in a scant seven years.
It was a feat she would have considered impossible given the state of the Intrepid and the Hyperion just over a decade earlier. But the drive the crew of the Hyperion—now known as the Victorians—showed was inspirational. The results spoke for themselves.
The refugees and the broken-down colony ship. They had made the most unlikely of pairings.
She stepped through the security scanner at the end of the debarkation area and into the corridors beyond. The halls were spare in design, but colorful with different murals and patterns flowing one into the other.
A mother with a young family rushed by, on their way to the celebration. Behind them, moving at a more stately pace, came an older couple. They nodded in greeting to Tanis who fell behind them.
The contrast between the two groups was pronounced. The mother and her children were dressed in a riot of color. Their style reminded Tanis of the crowds on the Main Sweep of the Cho back in Sol. Not so the elder couple. They were dressed in the drab colors and simple clothing their people had worn for centuries.
The generation born on the Hyperion during the long transit between the stars—when the crew had to rotate out of cryopods after a decade under—had created a segment of the Victorian population who never knew the yoke of oppression.
For them, the ship had been like a prison as it crossed the black, not the comfortable home it was to their parents.
When the Hyperion arrived at Victoria, they exploded from it, eager to take any work that would see them down to the surface or out into space.
They absorbed as much of Sol’s culture as they could through the Edeners, as they called the crew and colonists of the Intrepid, adopting clothing, music, and even speech patterns.
Their elders saw it as disrespect for the
ir long-standing traditions, but the new generation saw it as the just result of their parent’s long struggle
Markus did his best to see both sides. He knew that meeting the Edeners was a stroke of luck that changed his people’s destiny forever.
Instead of scratching for resources, barely surviving in the Kapteyn’s system, they would build a modern colony with technology they could never have dreamed of.
But he worried that his people would lose their identity and so he and the Victorian leadership crafted a plan with Tanis and her colony government that would see a slow transition of technology over the course of six to seven decades.
The High Victoria station was an important step on that journey—a clear symbol that the Intrepid was living up to its end of the bargain.
It granted the Victorian colonists on the surface access to space without having to use Intrepid ships. From there, their own short-range shuttlecraft could ferry people to the Hyperion and its steadily progressing sister platform, the Titan.
Tanis boarded a lift with the young family and the elderly couple. It rose slowly from the outer to inner ring; as it did, the tug of centripetally generated gravity lessened. The doors slid open into a sea of moving color, and cacophony of sound.
The mother ushered her children out into the din and Tanis gestured for the couple to proceed her before she stepped out into the corridor.
The celebration for the official commencement of the station was well under way, with music, food and dancing. One thing Tanis had observed about the Victorians is that they never missed the opportunity for a good celebration.
Downworlder colonists mixed with the station and platform crew; a smattering of Edeners were mixed in—though hard to spot amidst the towering Victorians.
She grabbed a drink from a servitor and took a draught as she surveyed the celebration. Ahead she saw Peter and Sarah moving through the crowd, Sarah holding their newborn son. She hadn’t met the newborn yet, and eased her way through the gathering toward the couple.