by Mark Wandrey
Minu,
I knew you could do it. You have never been one to let anything stand in your way. I have no way of knowing how long it took you to get to this point. You have all my entries now, and I can't give you anything more. I know you will figure out what I've been up to after you read them all and do some investigation. I also know you'll probably be pissed after all the running around I've made you do instead of just explaining everything. Even now, I can't risk anyone else getting this message by mistake. Some incredibly gifted hacker, or an accident of the ghost in the machine. It doesn't matter. I've given you the tools you need. Good luck.
Father
“Well that sucks,” Aaron said from beside her.
“That's my father,” she said, not really mad, just feeling empty. She turned to Pip. “What's the story with the rod?”
“It was your father's personal PCR. It has every portal he dialed over several years.” He glanced at the tablet with its copies of her father's diaries. “I guess you have to put the two together.”
“Must be what he meant by the tool,” Minu said.
“He didn't make it easy,” Pip gestured at the script floating over the PCR, “they're only Concordian codes. Without entering our references, I don't know what worlds these are.”
Minu pointed at the last one in the list. “We'll have to backtrack one at a time. We have to get to a portal.”
“What about the ships?” Kal'at asked; the first thing he'd said after following them to the landing bay. “We may have enough power aboard to bring them to life.”
“We'll come back after we chase a few of these portal addresses,” she said. Everyone nodded in understanding. They were here for her anyway, what would a few days or weeks matter? “Lilith, can you get us to the closest world with a portal?”
* * *
Accelerating above the speed of light once more, Minu lay on the bunk in her cabin and paged through her father’s diary. Many thousands of pages were now available to her, thoughts and insights by the man who had helped raise her. Here he was writing about what he saw on a junk pile. Interesting conflicting information that didn't match evidence from other junk piles. Here is an image taken from a dead colony world of their portal. It all seemed disjointed to her. What was her father getting at? Where did this all lead?
Aaron came in quietly, fresh from finishing a shift in the CIC. He undressed and slid under the sheets behind her, gently kissing Minu on the neck and slipping an arm around her waist. She smiled and sat the tablet on the little stand next to the bed before rolling over. His strong arms encircled her and she purred at the feeling of safety it gave her. He wasn't just holding her; he was holding his new baby as well.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked about the diary.
Minu reached down and gripped his hardened length, stroking it lovingly. “Very interesting.”
In a few minutes, he'd completely forgotten the question, but she hadn’t. Even as she gasped in pleasure and clung to him, she didn't forget. One way or another, it was all coming to an end.
Chapter 35
April 27th, 534 AE (subjective)
Planet Richter, Galactic Frontier
Minu glanced back at the shuttle and hoped it would be okay. They had elected to take one of the Kaatan's shuttles instead of the Phoenix because it was somewhat more robust, and Lilith could control her own shuttle if she needed to. She shouldered her pack and turned to look at her husband when the planet lived up to its namesake. The ground heaved and a deep groan reverberated through the air.
“Shit,” she growled and dropped to one knee. A few meters ahead Aaron did likewise. The four Rasa soldiers just adjusted a slightly wider stance and crouched slightly. They were only a little over a meter tall and more naturally sure footed than their human counterpart.
The ground bucked and heaved for almost a minute. Behind them the shuttle’s pneumatic landing gear hissed and jerked, keeping the shuttle almost perfectly level. Finally the earthquake, or Richter quake on this world, began to subside and the two humans got to both feet. Behind them the shuttle seemed no worse for wear.
“Everything okay?” Lilith asked Minu through the implant.
“Fine,” Minu assured her. “That was a nice little shock.”
“Six point nine by your scale.”
“What if the next one is worse? Can the shuttle handle it?”
“The shuttle can handle up to an eight. Should anything worse happen, I will remotely lift it off and hover through the quake. I can quickly come and get you in the same situation, should it be required.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Minu settled her pack and the shock rifle over the other shoulder and nodded to all the others with her. The ceramic concrete road under her feet was cracked and fissured in a thousand places. The roadway had been a major thoroughfare untold eons ago. Now it was only recognizable as a road due to the lack of plant growth. The durable special concrete was designed to last forever, but constant quakes had turned the roadbed into something that more closely resembled gravel. It was still deep enough that plants couldn't grow through it.
The city center was several kilometers distant. It looked about like the roadway. Few buildings maintained their structure as more than a reminiscent shape. Some smaller buildings were mostly intact. Anything over a few stories had long suffered failures of one sort or another. Some leaned against others, while some had disintegrated or fell across the roadway.
They were lucky the world Lilith had found was not too far from the derelict fleet, and had been scouted by Chosen. It was considered useless and too dangerous for any detailed salvage, but her files held a map including the location of the portal in relationship to some landmarks.
They'd done a circuit of the city, the only surviving one on an accessible landmass, until she'd fixed the landmarks. Her navigator had held their destination fixed with the planet’s geomagnetic field, and linked with Lilith in orbit. They might be forced to alter their course a few times, but they'd get there. Leaving the shuttle at the edge of the city was just insurance that a building didn't fall on it while they were gone. Her daughter valued every part of her ship.
As she walked next to her husband, she swallowed a moment of nausea. Every morning she woke to race for the bathroom in their tiny cabin aboard the Kaatan. It seemed the last few days en route to Richter from the derelict fleet the morning sickness had been less extreme. She continued to handle it the same way as the first time; a mild medication with a brisk workout.
She didn't know if either helped, but her tone was returning. She'd saw in the mirror that morning as they geared up for the mission that her muscles were once again showing through the taunt skin on her tummy. Just in time to get all fat with a baby inside, she'd thought, and then smiled. A life was growing inside her.
“You awake?” Aaron's voice snapped her back to the present and she silently admonished herself for not paying attention on an alien world. She'd taught thousands of recruits that daydreaming was the quickest way to become a statistic, and here she was doing it herself.
“Sorry, a little preoccupied.”
“Thinking about little Aaron junior?”
“Oh, sure it's a boy, are you?” She smiled; glad he was as interested as he seemed to be. They'd both been forced into parenthood the hard way with Lilith. And though they'd stumbled now and then, and Lilith only allowed them to be her parent up to a point, it was still a relationship they all had grown to cherish.
And Lilith seemed to be as excited as any of them about becoming a sister. Minu knew she was watching for five hundred kilometers overhead, ready to rain death on anyone or anything that dared to challenge her family. It was that side of the girl that scared Minu the most. She could be as merciless as the situation called for; emotions didn't enter into the equation. But as the years had gone by, some normal human emotions were beginning to manifest. And that could be just as dangerous as the lack of them.
“First a girl, next a boy,�
� Aaron continued the banter without missing a beat.
They both carried their shock rifles cross-body, harness clipped to the mid-stock point and hooked on right shoulders. It would only take a second to raise the weapon to the ready. Aaron kept his eyes moving, looking for any place where an ambush could be set up or a trap might be set.
Three of the Rasa also carried shock rifles, and one a beamcaster. Everyone sported Enforcers as sidearms, the reptiles a newer model with a somewhat smaller cartridge. They didn't have the forearm muscles of the humans and found the original 15mm rounds too robust. Theirs employed a 12mm bullet. Not as devastating, but still incredibly powerful at close range.
The Rasa weren't sure how to handle Minu's pregnancy. As an egg-laying species, they carefully protected their progeny until hatched, at which point they were steadfastly ignored and allowed to run feral. The young stayed close to their parents by instinct, fending for themselves and occasionally even preying on each other until turning about five years old. At that point they bonded with a mature adult and began their education and civilizing. They considered humans’ reproductive process rather time consuming and disgusting.
“And what if it's a girl?” she asked.
Aaron pretended to be examining a rare surviving five story building through his rifle scope. They all wore advanced contact lenses, built by the Kaatan, which allowed them to view images from their rifle scopes without having to bring them to shoulder, so she knew it was a delaying tactic.
“It worries me,” he said finally. Minu glanced at him and saw his eyes shining when he looked away.
“Why?”
“Because girls in your family seem destined for greatness.”
“And that's a problem why?”
“I just want our next child to be normal. You know?”
Minu thought for a few steps then nodded her head. She knew only all too well. During her time teaching at the University of Plateau then founding the War College she'd felt almost normal. She'd wondered more than once how a common life would have been if she'd gone to school instead of the Trials. Maybe she'd have a big family now with a bunch of kids running around. Some might even be almost as old as Lilith, without all the negative sides of her life. Normal.
Then she looked at where she was, walking along a crumbling roadway on an alien world almost a thousand light-years from the world she'd been born on. One of the elite Chosen who served humanity. In her career she'd fought for her people many times, and found invaluable treasures and advanced science that had saved innumerable lives.
“Boy or girl, it will be our child,” was all she could say.
Aaron glanced at her and nodded. There wasn't anything more to say. He knew the power of the family he'd married into. The Groves had never been anything more than mildly successful at business and he was the first to serve as Chosen. The quiet undertone of the Groves Industries success had always been the steady presence of Minu Groves.
Years ago he and her other three closest friends had all seen something in her and decided to place her in charge. Cherise once said that someone had to lead, and she had known it would be Minu from the first time she set eyes on her. Known that the red headed girl with the dangerously flashing green eyes would be a force to be reckoned with.
Now Minu and Aaron were having another child. The die had been cast, and there was no going back.
* * *
Like any of a hundred worlds she'd visited, the Portal was in what had once been the town center. Even on planets with populations in the hundreds of millions the portal spire was always in the center of the largest city. Minu guessed this particular town was maybe a hundred thousand beings, plus or minus. Far too small for a spire.
Like always, she tried to guess at what the beings who'd lived here might have been like. Had they been a peaceful people who farmed the land, built well designed machines, raised their children, and hoped for a bright future? Or were they a warlike species who dreamed of conquest? What fate had become them?
Perhaps it was the seismic upheaval of the planet that made it uninhabitable. But she'd seen much less hospitable atmospheres where people still lived. The Traaga would probably consider this place a paradise. Maybe the Squeen were living on a world similar to this one, where no-one would think to look for them. Concordian technology had tamed far worse.
The six of them broke into three teams of two. Aaron and Minu were of course one team, and the Rasa split to make up two more.
One pair of the dexterous reptilians skittered up the remains of a building to set up a sniper’s nest. With so few buildings over one story remaining, they were afforded a nearly perfect field of fire surrounding the town square.
The second team of Rasa quickly circled the square, performing a visual search for listening posts. Many species routinely left behind recording devices to learn who was visiting what planet. Of course they placed their equipment near portals. It was also SOP for most species to hunt and destroy each other’s listening posts.
“All clear on lookout, boss,” hissed the Rasa over her communicator.
Minu smirked and shook her head. Even the Rasa were calling her ‘boss’ now. Then she remembered to be glad it wasn't ‘commodore’!
“No sign of monitoring devices,” the other team reported.
Minu glanced at Aaron on the other side of the alley where they were keeping down within sight of the portal. As always, it came down to someone exposing themselves in these sorts of situations, and she was never one to letting anyone else take the risk.
She unclipped her shock rifle, cradling it in the crook of her left arm, and set up. Aaron was less than a step behind. They moved quickly but didn't run, knowing that sure movements were more effective than a dead run. They needed to be within ten meters of a portal for the PCR to link with it. She'd wondered a lot over the years at the wisdom of that decision.
They reached the portal and knelt on the dais. The arch popped open, glistening in the midday sun. Aaron took up a position next to her, his weapon ready and eyes searching as she took out the PCR and brought it to life.
A moment later, the portal blinked twice in response and the two devices were linked. Script appeared above the rod and she began to sort the data.
Chapter 36
April 28th, 534 AE (subjective)
Planet Richter, Geosynchronous Orbit, Galactic Frontier
Pip stared at the screens of data floating before him with what he'd come to think of as his first level of consciousness. He still remembered the old days, before a Rasa accelerator had torn a chunk from his brain when that was the only level he possessed. Now he possessed three levels of operational consciousness, and another two unconscious levels.
The computers implanted in his brain by the Kaatan medical intelligence had successfully reconstructed his higher faculties, but at a price. He secretly suspected he wasn't really conscious at all. More of an echo of who Pipson Leata once was. He had all the memories (or most of them), all the knowledge, and certainly all the creativity that was once Pip. But what he lacked was passion.
Once years ago he'd been in love. Twice, truth be told. First with Minu, when he had been still young and before he had knew what he really wanted. That love had still burned, but secretly within him when he slowly fell in love with the woman that would become his wife.
Cynthia was as different from Minu as a woman could be. Meek, quiet, completely lacking in self-confidence, and completely smitten that a Chosen would be interested in her. Even if this Chosen was a rather small one who was trying desperately to hide his Rusk heritage.
The relationship grew slowly, almost a surprise to both of them. Movies on days off from Steven’s Pass (where Cynthia worked in Chelan), then occasional dinners, and a short camping trip one weekend. They'd held hands, kissed, then touched tentatively a few times. Even as inexperienced as Pip was, he knew the next step was any day. Then the Rasa vendetta came, and he nearly died.
He only possessed haunted memories of the
years that had passed after his injury. Ages passed in his trapped consciousness, unable to understand why he couldn't wake up, trapped with his own thoughts, and trapped with his own regrets.
And thus he awoke with those years of self-hating regret as all there was to anchor himself. Minu had risked everything, along with most of his friends, to go out into the deep unknown and find a way to bring him back, but he'd never been able to truly thank her for that.
Pip never understood that part of himself. He liked to justify it by weighing his accomplishments against the price they'd paid to bring him back. It was the same part that married Cynthia, even though he felt almost nothing for her. It was that part which had used her for every sexual adventure he could imagine or read about. It had let her get pregnant, because she wanted to. And it was that part which finally just left when it all became too much. He never wanted any of it anyway.
So now he spent more time aboard the Kaatan than anywhere else. He didn't have to be aboard to link with the ship’s computers, it was just easier to be away from the annoying distractions people provided. He took care of his carnal deeps with intermittent trips back to the surface. Other than that, the only person he interacted with on a daily basis was Lilith. And he considered her more like himself than the rest of the noisy, bothersome, irrational human race.
Various levels of his consciousness worked on different tasks twenty three hours a day. He would have to disengage his first level of consciousness from time to time for a few hours. Most people called it sleep. To Pip it was more like a chance to empty his memory buffers. He could work on problems so quickly that his brain's computer eventually filled up and he started to fog over. He could simply work on fewer things, but that would be boring.