Joe maintained alignment with the two remaining scout ships so only one could use its beams on the Andromeda—a feat which took no small amount of skill. The cruiser was maneuvering with every available thruster and the energy output made it glow like a second star on Jessica’s sensors.
Rock said to his squadron.
The fighters boosted at max g toward their next target; as they crossed within fifty thousand kilometers they rotated their pion engines and all beam weapons toward the ship.
Lashing out at their selected targets, the scout ship’s shields flared, desperately bleeding off heat from beams while strengthening to ward off the shotgun blasts.
The squadron blew past the ship and banked around again to make another run—this time at a much more comfortable 50gs.
Jessica stayed close to Carson, clearing defense beams and adding punch to his attacks where she could. The second ship’s shields were weakening and its defenses were also crossing the critical barrier where warheads could make it through.
The fighters arched around for another run, six black specs of power and destruction bent on tearing their foe apart.
At least that’s how Jessica felt when suddenly her HUD went red and alarms showed on a dozen critical systems.
She said over the combat net.
Rock advised.
Jessica began to respond when her external sensors flooded with radiation and then she knew no more.
ONLY THE DEAD KNOW THE END OF WAR
STELLAR DATE: 3283400 / 07.18.4277 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Arc-5 Fighter
REGION: Interstellar Space, Outside Kapteyn’s Heliopause
Jessica awoke alone.
The realization that she had passed from dreams into full consciousness dawned slowly. Everything was dark and she couldn’t open her eyes. Her limbs were constricted and seemed trapped in something almost like a gel…
The shoot suit, I’m in my fighter.
For a moment she felt better, it explained her eyes, the pressure, the cocoon.
But not the blindness.
She should be able to see with the ship, but when she attempted to Link with it, nothing happened. Neither Cordy, nor the dumb NSAI on the fighter responded.
She drew a deep breath, feeling the liquid oxygen course into her lungs. At least life support appeared to be working, that much was reassuring.
Jessica brought her personal HUD up in her mind and reviewed her vitals. What she saw would have made her gasp, were she able to.
Her bones were riddled with fractures, blood vessels were crushed and leaking, several of her fingers were broken and she had suffered third degree burns over most of her body.
While she was out, her internal med systems must have shunted as many of her pain receptors as possible, because she should have been in unimaginable agony.
She checked the time and saw that it had been thirty hours since the battle.
Her mind reeled at the thought.
Thirty hours. Jessica dismissed the thought that she was the lone survivor. The Andromeda and its fighters had been winning the engagement handily when whatever happened disabled her ship.
And gave me a very unhealthy dose of hard radiation, Jessica thought as she looked at her bio report.
She reviewed the logs and came to the conclusion that the second scout ship must have detonated its main reactor. It was the only thing that could have produced the type of radiation she saw in her body.
Her fighter had been a scant three hundred kilometers from the scout ship, she was lucky to be alive—lucky that her fighter’s antimatter containment vessel had remained intact.
Her mind wandered as she imagined her ship drifting in the darkness, a black speck in a black void, likely surrounded by the much hotter wreckage of the scout ship.
Jessica ran the odds of rescue. They came up high—within the first ten hours after the battle.
As the clock slid past forty hours she fought to keep panic at bay.
She had been in the shoot suit, cocooned in her fighter for over three days. She wasn’t given to claustrophobia—no one rated for piloting a fighter could be—but she was starting to feel the need to get out of the ship claw at the edges of her mind.
To get out no matter what, just to see where she was.
What, to stand on my ship and wave my arms?
She forced back the madness plucking at the edges of her thoughts.
She still had not managed to make any data connections to the ship, but she could tell that the life support system was failing. The oxygen content in the liquid flowing through her lungs was decreasing.
Jessica estimated she had only a few hours left before…
A dull thud reverberated through the ship.
It wasn’t the first time something had impacted the fighter, which was what led her to believe she was drifting in the scout ship’s debris field.
But the thud came again and then turned into a low vibration. No, this was no chance collision, Jessica knew this was a rescue.
It seemed like hours—though was only twenty-three minutes—before she felt the ship’s hatch open and the cocoon disgorge her.
A suspension field enveloped her and she finally Linked.
It was Andromeda and the rich timber of Corsia’s voice filled her mind.
The shoot suit’s external optics came back online and Jessica saw Joe and Trist, along with many of the fighter pilots. They were cheering.
It was good to be home.
A LONG DAY’S END
STELLAR DATE: 3285312 / 10.12.4282 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: High Victoria
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
Tanis stopped before one of the station’s wide observation windows and Markus’s chair glided to a stop beside her. They had nearly completed their round of the station; a tour they had been taking every month for several years now—ever since Markus had retired from active governance of the Victorian colony to convalesce on the station.
“I can see it how it will be,” Markus said as he gazed over the world below him. “Oceans, forests, people everywhere. It’ll be a paradise.”
“It’s going to be amazing,” Tanis said with a nod. “Even our engineers didn’t think they could do so much with a world like this. Your people’s drive deserves the credit. You never would take no for an answer.”
Markus chuckled, the rasp wheezing at the end and he stifled a cough before responding.
“You know me, ever the optimist.”
“I wish you’d let our medics help you,” Tanis said. “We could give you decades more.”
Markus waved his hand dismissively. “You know my answer; why do you always ask? You’ve given me far more life than I ever expected. The old dog messed up my DNA too much to give me more time than this—not without me becoming someone else—or a machine.”
The plight he faced was one many of the elder Victorians were grappling with. So much of their base DNA was corrupted by generations of long-term exposure to the extreme radiation around Sirius that the older they got, the more prone they were to cancerous growths.
Medics aboard the Intrepid could repair their DNA, but they would need to replace much of it. A recipient of such treatment would have their body’s base code altered. Many, like Markus, found that to be undesirable.
“Do I seem so much worse for it?” Tanis asked.
Markus looked up at her, his wrinkled smile causing her to respond in kind.
“You’re the best damn-looking half-robot woman I’ve ever set eyes on. Heck, if I’m to believe you, there are actually two women living in that head of yours,” Markus said with a wink.
He never doubted AI’s existence, but he liked to prete
nd he did; that Angela was just Tanis’s snarky alternate personality.
Angela commented on Tanis’s stream of consciousness.
Angela laughed.
“You’re talking to her, aren’t you,” Markus asked.
“How could you tell?” Tanis asked. “I’m pretty sure I don’t give it away.”
“You don’t, I just guessed. You as an individual may be inscrutable, but human nature isn’t so hard to figure out.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Tanis replied.
“I don’t think you should worry about it. You’re probably the most stable person I know. If your brain were going to turn to mush it probably would have done it years ago.” Markus gave her a gentle pat on the arm.
“OK, now I wonder if Angela was relaying our conversation to you.”
Markus gave a short laugh.
“Nothing so sinister. Being this close to death gives you a different sort of perspective. I know being in charge of the fate of so many makes you constantly evaluate your abilities and doubt your own qualifications—or it’d better,” he said with an evaluating eye cast her way.
Tanis raised her hands in mock protest. “No lack or self-doubt here. I know I look implacable to everyone, but I’m not. I thought I had royally screwed it several times over the years.”
“Yet you always pull a trick out of your hat,” Markus said. “You’ve done it in battle a hundred times and when you turned your hand to politics and diplomacy you navigated those waters just as well.”
“I think my skill at politics is an extension of my abilities in battle. Everyone thinks I’m a crazy bloodhound and no one wants to see if I’ll snap and kick the tar out of them to get my way.”
Markus chuckled. “I’ll admit the thought crossed my mind once, but I never gave it any serious consideration.”
Tanis smiled. “Glad to hear it.”
The pair watched in silence as a shuttle passed the observation deck, bringing a load of passengers in from the Hyperion to the station. Tanis brought up the manifest and final destinations of the shuttle and passengers. Most were going downworld to Victoria on vacation, while a few were transferring out to the colony on Tara.
“Your people are really multiplying—is that the right word? It’s just impressive to see them really take hold of this system.”
“It’s what makes this worth it,” Markus said. “To think, we who were once destined to spend our lives in small quarters on a single platform, now have a whole star system to ourselves. No small thanks to you.”
Tanis waved her hand. “I helped you because you were here and needed it. You’re the ones that got here on your own steam. That took guts.”
Markus nodded contemplatively, but didn’t speak.
“You think of the other Nimbus you left behind, don’t you?” Tanis asked.
He took a long moment to respond. “I do. I wish I could have figured out a way to save everyone, but that would likely ended with the death of everyone on the Hyperion. My duty was to them first. Hard as that is.”
“I have some understanding of that,” Tanis said with a nod. “Every commander does—or should. At some point it comes down to them or you.”
“That’s a dangerous sentiment,” Markus said. “That would lead me to wonder if you’d someday make the same call with me and my people.”
“I would,” Tanis said without hesitation. “I know it sounds horrible—I would not do it easily, but if it came to us or you, you know what I’d choose. I know you would too.”
“I would.” Markus shook his head as he spoke. “Life has made us hard—maybe too hard.”
“Let’s talk about something else, something happy,” Tanis said, not wanting to remember those words as some of her last to Markus.
“I won’t ask you what you think about Tom getting elected for his second term as President down on Victoria, then,” Markus said. “You probably don’t have happy feelings about that.”
Tanis laughed, “Not especially. I did hear that Agnes and Dmitry are great grandparents now. Agnes seemed especially happy since she was just able to have the one son.”
“She was already planning the child’s first birthday when I saw her last,” Markus said with a chuckle. “With three of her other grandchildren pregnant she’ll soon be the matriarch of her own clan. A long journey for the woman who manned the desk outside my office where so much of our little rebellion was planned.”
“Hah! Little rebellion.” Tanis couldn’t help but notice that no matter where she steered conversation today Markus waxed nostalgic. Maybe that was what happened when you calmly stared your end in the face.
A comfortable silence stretched between them for several minutes before Tanis spoke up.
“I’m starved, and now that they have those pig farms on Victoria one of the commissary’s up here is serving BLTs. You in?”
“Absolutely. Let’s see if my people can make bacon to satisfy your refined palette.”
TRUE COLORS
STELLAR DATE: 3286965 / 04.22.4287 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Sperios Outpost, Victoria
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
Tom glanced at his companion across the table in the dimly lit bar. He didn’t trust her, but he knew she hated the Edeners as much as he did, even if she was one—in a manner of speaking.
“How much longer is your contact going to take?” he asked. “It’s not like this is the sort of place I’m known to frequent.”
“Relax,” his companion said. “No one here is the sort to spread stories. All they care about is working hard, getting their pay, and drinking it down.”
Tom glanced at the bar’s other patrons. She was right, no one seemed to be paying them any special attention. His companion blended in like she had been at the bar every day since it first opened. She did that everywhere, no matter when or where they met, she looked like she belonged. She could be anyone she wanted and never raised so much as an eyebrow.
He knew his attempt to blend in was less successful, but dressing down was not one of his specialties. Still, being in her company caused her mysterious powers of obscurity to shroud him as well.
“There he is,” she said softly and gave a small hand signal to call their contact over.
The man slid into the seat beside Tom. He was non-descript, shorter than the Victorians, but not so short that people would know who he really was.
“How was your trip?” Tom’s companion asked.
“As well as could be expected. I was undetected if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I should hope so,” she replied. “I own everyone on that route—though they don’t know who it is that holds their leash. They think they’re helping the almighty Tanis Richards and are so eager to do so.”
“She’s quite the powerful figure in this system, alright,” the newcomer said. “Enough that I wonder about this plan of yours. Do they really have what you say they do? We lost three ships working out how to get past that damn sensor net.”
Tom wondered, not for the first time, at the value of the research the Edeners were undertaking. The Sirians were allotting a considerable amount of time and effort in getting it. His companion had only told him that it was the most advanced tech in the galaxy and that she would share it with him and the Victorians if he helped her.
Only later did he discover she was also working with the Sirians. His companion had assured him that they were just a means to an end. Once she had secured the technology she would not share it with the Sirians.
She better not. If his mother knew he was sitting across the table from a Sirian spy she would kill him—and not figuratively.
>
“They do,” his companion replied to the Sirian. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, though right now it’s too hard to get at. That’s where you come in.”
“Yes, more of our resources, put at the disposal of these traitors,” he said with narrowed eyes cast in Tom’s direction.
“Listen he—,” Tom began, but was silenced by his companion’s raised hand and stern look which she then turned to the Sirian.
“Watch yourself, friend. One word from me and you die here and now. You are here as a partner, act like one, or you’ll be replaced. Don’t think your government values you more than what I can give them.”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it and nodded slowly.
Tom gave the man a smug look and turned to his companion.
“What is our next move, then?”
She smiled, her face pleasant, but her eyes cold.
“Why, we wait for the old man to die.”
MOURNING VICTORIA
STELLAR DATE: 3288931 / 09.08.4292 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
Tanis said.
Kim replied.
Tanis bit back a terse reply. The latest generation of Victorians possessed a sense of entitlement and disdain toward the Edeners that made their parents appear positively grateful. It was far more prevalent on Victoria than on the stations and Tara, though it was still present everywhere.
The original crew of the Hyperion, those who had worked and lived under the Sirian oppression were nearly gone. She would be damned if she was going to let this flunky stop her from saying her final farewells to one of them.
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