by C. Gockel
Carl, a few paces down the hall, abruptly stopped and turned. “Come on, Hatchlings, we want to be on time. Today’s mission is all about timing and is unusually dangerous.”
That was true and yet ….
“You’re the one who is making us late,” James pointed out, striding toward the werfle, Volka and Sixty following.
“I just want to keep my Hatchlings safe.” Carl’s bewhiskered snout shifted from James, to Sixty, and settled on Volka.
Silently, Volka thought, “Who was she, Carl?”
Sixty stooped and picked the werfle up. Whiskers twitching, Carl meekly sat on Sixty’s arm and said aloud, “I just want to keep my Hatchlings safe.”
Volka’s ears went back. That wasn’t an answer at all … or was it?
3
Dangerous
Galactic Republic
Alexis, Alaric, and their company walked aboard the shuttle that would take them to the Luddeccean Net-drive ship. Alaric carefully didn’t look at the men and one woman behind him, even when the gangway rose and the inner airlock sealed. He did not look at the woman disguised as a Guardsman as he made his way to the front of the shuttle, and he and Alexis sat down. He did not look at her as he strapped himself into the seats that faced the central aisle. Just weeks ago, it had come to light that the Galacticans had drones that were the size of dust motes that could transmit data via lightbeam. They could be aboard the shuttle now. If the woman’s identity were revealed, this would be a very short trip.
The pilot said some words on the intercom, and the engines came to life. The shuttle lifted, but the cabin remained unusually silent. It was suspicious … were the Galactican spies watching and wondering?
“Where do you intend to take Mr. Sinclair skiing?” Alexis asked conversationally.
Alaric’s hands froze on the safety straps.
His wife continued, “You don’t know Earth very well at all. I think that you really should push the archbishop to allow Mr. Sinclair to visit Luddeccea—in the interest of interstellar cooperation. You could take him to your parents’ farm. It’s far enough away from society that he wouldn’t cause alarm. This winter would be a fabulous time for it.”
It was nonsense, only barely plausible, but it broke the silence. Alaric took her hand, smiled, and let his eyes slide down the aisle. It wasn’t just him who was nervous; it was all the Guardsmen and the woman, Dr. Zeller, as well. “What do you think, gentlemen?” Alaric asked. “If I was authorized to bring an android guest to Luddeccea, in the interest of interstellar cooperation, and challenged him to a cross-country skiing match, where should I take him?”
Eyes slid to one another.
“Beating him at skiing might not be diplomatic,” Alexis pointed out wryly.
Laughter broke out among the Guardsmen. Alaric squeezed Alexis’s hand.
Suggestions for the coldest places on Luddeccea for skiing erupted from every guardsman but one. Gripping her handhold so tightly her knuckles were white, Dr. Zeller was silent. None of the other Guardsmen looked at her or touched her—not even with a shoulder as the shuttle veered to starboard. It wasn’t just not to raise suspicion; it was also because they couldn’t—it wouldn’t be polite, as she was a person of importance, a woman, and older than any of them. She appeared terrified and alone, and then Alexis addressed her under her assumed name. “I was raised in the tropics as well, Shipman Chasen, and didn’t learn to ski until late in life.”
The shuttle went deathly silent.
Alexis smiled at “Chasen,” all benevolence and kindness. “It is quite easy to learn how, though—at least well enough to enjoy oneself. And quite lovely. Peaceful.” It was, of course, perfectly correct for Alexis to address a frightened shipman thus—whether the shipman had been genuinely a shipman or a woman of importance. As a woman, Alexis was allowed to show sympathy. As someone of importance herself, Alexis wasn’t being disrespectful.
Shipman “Chasen” swallowed and ducked “his” head. The hand that had been gripping the handhold loosened.
Very smoothly, Alexis turned to Alaric and said, “Of course, where I really think that you should take Mr. Sinclair is the Southern Isles. And when you take him, you should take me. I want to see the ice pterys. By all accounts, they are even more adorable than Earth penguins.”
Good-natured guffaws erupted from the Guardsmen, and the atmosphere in the shuttle was comfortable until they docked with the Net-drive LCS. Alaric’s lips quirked. He couldn’t help but be proud of his wife. She’d handled the entire mission masterfully.
The shuttle pilot’s voice came on. “Please don’t disembark. The captain has asked us to spend the jump to System 8 here.”
The shuttle shook. There was briefly dark and then light, as though the lights had dimmed, and then the pilot’s voice came on again. “We are now in Luddeccean space.”
Everyone exhaled. Shipman “Chasen” sagged. The holographic disguise she’d been wearing abruptly flickered, and then disappeared, revealing a woman with green eyes framed by delicate lines, and gray streaked dark hair tucked into a cap. It didn’t matter now, though. Only a Q-comm-enabled communication device could relay the woman’s identity to the Republic in less than several months’ time—if that. Alaric glanced at Alexis’s purse, and Solomon peered out. A creature capable of telepathy could relay that message too, but the telepathic creatures were on their side in this. Thankfully. Alaric shifted in his seat a little uneasily. Solomon turned his now-blue eyes in Alaric’s direction and signed with his paws. “I’m always on your side, Hatchling. And hers.” He lifted adoring eyes to Alexis as she unlatched her safety straps.
Finishing that task, Alexis pulled her purse—and Solomon—onto her arm, squeezed Alaric’s hand, and went immediately to their passenger. Alaric rose from his seat but didn’t follow.
“Come, Dr. Zeller,” Alexis said. “It will be a while before we are able to dock with Time Gate 8. I’m sure the captain can make some refreshments available for us.”
Dr. Zeller, the galaxy’s foremost expert in quantum-teleportation fusion weapons, rose from her seat. She slipped a trembling hand into a pocket and withdrew something. The knuckles that held it were as white as those that clung for dear life to the safety strap. For a moment, alarm spiked in Alaric’s chest. He took a step forward.
Alexis lifted the trembling hand in her own. Dr. Zeller’s fingers unwound, revealing something metallic Alaric couldn’t see. Alexis’s face dropped in an expression of pure despair. Heart stopping, Alaric took another step, and then Alexis said, “Your wedding bands.”
Zeller nodded and whispered, “I want to put them on … but … my hands.” Her hands were shaking.
“I will help you,” Alexis said. She took what Alaric could now see were bands of white gold and slipped them onto Dr. Zeller’s ring fingers. Alaric’s alarm left him. His breath left him, too. Dr. Zeller wasn’t just a scientist. She was newly widowed. Zeller’s family had been gathering for a reunion in System 5—her husband, her children, and grandchildren. They’d all died, and the Republic refused to declare war after three nuclear bombs had been dropped on one of their most important cities. They called the death of millions a “terrorist operation.” They questioned whether their labeling of “the Dark” as “the Dark” was the reason for such violence, as the name was “derogatory.” They sought to send another ambassador to the Dark after the first had been beheaded. In short, they dithered.
The small woman before Alexis had defected because of it. She’d come to Luddeccea because Alaric’s people were the only ones committed to fight the Dark. Alexis put her forehead against Dr. Zeller’s. The Guardsmen in the shuttle and Alaric remained perfectly still. The door from the cockpit opened with a whoosh. Alaric didn’t turn to look, but no footsteps entered the cabin; he imagined the pilots frozen at attention just like the rest of them.
Tears were sliding down Dr. Zeller’s and Alexis’s cheeks.
“What you have endured,” Alexis whispered, “is unimaginable. We m
ust make sure it happens to no one else.”
Dr. Zeller pulled away from Alexis, glanced up, briefly met her eyes, and then, bowing her head, she nodded.
“Courage,” Alexis whispered, squeezing the other woman’s hands.
Dr. Zeller nodded again, and Alexis drew her through the airlock.
Watching them descend the gangway, Alaric exhaled. There went the most dangerous woman in the galaxy. His lips flattened. Or, perhaps, the two most dangerous women.
For just a moment, his mind wandered, remembering Volka aboard Time Gate 1. Solomon had insisted that she did not know the plan, but that she could be distracted by small talk. His eyes narrowed. Alaric remembered once, when they were together, Volka greeting him from meters away, putting her hand to her mouth, giggling and chiding, “You were at lunch with another woman, but I can smell she was your sister.”
Volka had not been deceived today. Nor had she said anything. Would her silence endanger her later?
His jaw got hard. Sinclair hadn’t been able to accompany Alaric and Alexis to the shuttle, and Volka—Admiral of eighteen faster-than-light ships—had some mission at the same time. The same mission? He frowned and shook his head in frustration. What danger had she gotten herself into?
4
Quantum Disruptions
Uncharted Space
Inside the pod, 6T9 sat with his knees nearly at his chest. His face was peeled half away so that he could be jacked directly into the pod’s sensors through the port in his temple. The excess skin from his face was crushed against the visor of his helmet. If, like a normal cyborg or android, he left his neural port exposed and hadn’t covered it with synth skin, he wouldn’t have the extra “face roll.” He’d covered it up because the independent traders he’d traveled with used to tease him by sticking French Fries, styluses, fingers, and other bits of anatomy into his port. If he’d had the ability to maim and cause harm then … he wouldn’t have had a covered port, and Carl might not have sought him out to help rescue Sundancer in Luddeccean space, and he wouldn’t be crushed in this pod.
He was fully suited, a shell within a shell, and he had a hover pack on his back. With his eyes, he saw only the pod’s dark interior. Since he couldn’t close the one eye with half of his face rolled away, he turned off his visual sensors and saw through the pod’s cameras instead. Like the plumbing ‘bot aboard Time Gate 5, the pod “saw” in 360 degrees. For a moment, 6T9 was disorientated as his mind sought to organize the strange perspective. The pod was aboard Sundancer, in the middle of her bridge, and he saw the ship’s floor, her ceiling, her walls, and Volka, all at once. Volka was distorted and oddly flattened by the camera until he created an algorithm to give her and the world perspective that he was more accustomed to. She held Carl in her arms. For a moment, 6T9’s eyes caught on Carl. When Darmadi had suggested Volka might be Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury, 6T9 had been enraged—he should have said it. He’d looked away and seen Carl, Shissh, and a tiny werfle in Alexis’s purse staring at a point beyond Fleet’s section of the gate. Their tails had lashed in time. Volka had been distracted later, too. Something had obviously happened. He might have said something, but then Carl had said, “I just want to keep my Hatchlings safe.”
6T9’s brows knitted together—or tried to. He only had one brow at the moment. Carl, and The One in general, had superiority complexes as large as supernovae. They were arrogant and domineering. They had less compunction against genocide than humans. But they loved their adopted “Hatchlings” with the same obsessive devotion mammals and birds gave their young. Carl had nearly killed his tiny werfle shell to save 6T9’s synthetic hide. So that statement of protection meant something.
But then again, Carl wasn’t against his “Hatchlings” going on today’s mission. Static fizzled beneath 6T9’s skin, and his circuits darkened. He let his focus go past Volka and Carl to FET12 and the Marines that were the new crew. Volka spoke, and he heard her through the pod’s receptors, voice echoing strangely, as though she were speaking into a tin can. “Be careful.”
What an exquisitely strange expression. What 6T9, James, Jerome, and TAB, the Q-comm previously embedded in Jerome’s digital tablet were about to do defied any definition of careful. Had the expression at one time been, “be as careful as can be,” an abbreviation would make sense. In a dangerous situation, the extra second saved by shortening the phrase could be the difference between life and death. He pulled up his dictionary of idioms but found no indication that the expression had evolved in that way. However, the dictionary only went back a few hundred years. Perhaps in the 2020s humans had expressed themselves, “Be as careful as you can,” before four of the words had been cut, thereby saving lives and perpetuating the more ambiguous, unintuitive, revised—
“Sixty?”
Lieutenant Dixon spoke from behind Volka. “6T9, are your auditory receptors functioning?”
“They are functioning,” 6T9 replied. Now it was him sounding like he was speaking through a tin can. “I’ll try to keep my synthetic hide in one piece, Volka, or at least try to bring all the pieces back.” He grinned, or tried to. Without half his face, his muscles didn’t work right, and the sensory receptors in the roll of skin pressing against his visor produced a malfunctioning light.
Volka’s ears came forward, a wolfish sign of aggression. “You had better.”
Dixon said, “We’re ready for the drop off.”
Volka hadn’t argued that 6T9 shouldn’t go, but her ears sagged. 6T9’s hands flexed automatically within the confines of his gloves, which twitched within the confines of the pod. He wanted to touch her ears. He’d left her once out of jealousy, and now he was leaving her for memories: Davies and all the people of New Grande he’d collaborated with as he’d tried to save the city from the Dark’s invasion. At one point, he’d joined forces with the New Grande Remote Control Hover Enthusiasts Club and brought down vessels controlled by the Dark. Over the ether, the operators had sounded like children. He’d known them only by their “flying names.” He did not know how many were alive and how many were dead. He had to do this for them.
6T9’s voice echoed in his ears. “Understood. Switching over to mindscape now.”
Mentally disengaging from the pod’s sensors, he projected himself in armor into a gray nothing of a mindscape. An armored avatar of James joined him. “Volka” appeared in the mindscape—or rather, an avatar of Bracelet appeared in the mindscape wearing a “Volka”-like accessory. Bracelet shone artificially brightly on the shadowy Volka’s wrist. “Reporting for duty, Android General 1 and Mr. Sinclair! My server’s processors are your processors!”
Bracelet had let her Q-comm chip be thrown into a singularity beam. The chip had been destroyed by the beam, but Sundancer had followed the entangled particle that was the chip’s connection to the powerful server on Time Gate 1. The entangled particle was trapped in Sundancer’s bow, unable to be plugged into a useful robotic form, but her server was still active on Time Gate 1, and James and 6T9—or their servers—could talk to her.
6T9’s Q-comm lit. So much of his personality was the interaction between his local sex ‘bot software and hardware and his powerful remote server. Bracelet—as a Bracelet—hadn’t had much local hardware or software to interact with. He’d always thought of her as being pure server, but in the mindscape, she held onto the ghost of her former physical self. Had her physical form shaped her server as much as her server shaped her? Had his physical self shaped his server? With what they were about to do, the question seemed unusually significant. He might be only his server self before the mission was done.
Another envirosuited avatar entered the mindscape. This was Jerome, formerly the communication officer aboard Sundancer. When Volka had become Admiral Wolf, the Skimmers had chosen their captains exclusively from her former crewmates. Volka had explained, “They don’t want to know any other humans as deeply as they know us.” She’d added more darkly, “I don’t want to know any other humans as deeply, either.”
“Humans are so terrible, Volka?” 6T9 had asked with a raised eyebrow.
She’d sighed. “It’s not just the terrible, it is the wonderful that is hard to know, too.”
6T9 thought of the voices of the Hover Enthusiasts Club, and he thought of Davies giving his life for the people of New Grande. He knew them so little and losing them hurt so deeply. He thought he understood.
A blue-white light pierced the mindscape, and for an instant, 6T9 was blind.
“What was that?” asked James when the light faded.
Jerome’s avatar blushed, and he held a hand over the neural port in his temple. “TAB, Buddy, I think you made yourself a little bright just there. You nearly blinded us.”
Jerome’s port flickered, and a slightly mechanical voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “Excuse me, that was not my intention. This is the first time I’ve had direct access to human-ocular apparatus.”
Jerome dropped his hand. He’d plugged TAB’s Q-comm chip into one of his own neural port’s drives. Jerome’s mind was directly connected to TAB’s server, and TAB was connected to his mind. “This is a fascinating experience,” TAB commented. “It might almost be worth getting myself blown up for.”
Jerome’s eyebrow hiked, and his gaze went sideways. “Err …”
TAB’s glow dimmed. “Of course, I would not want you to get blown up.”
Jerome shook his head. “Thanks, Buddy, back at you.”
“Where is FET12?” James asked.
“He was with Volka on Sundancer’s bridge just now,” 6T9 said. “It may take him a minute more to get to the aft compartment, settle down, and link into the holomat.”