Union of Souls (Gigaparsec Book 3)

by Scott Rhine

  Roz shook her head. “I agree with Echo for once. If we take them with us and bungle the jump, we’re murderers.”

  A thin trickle of urine came from beneath the female Bat. Evidently, entertainment exports had taught her that word. Roz spoke gently to the woman for several moments to calm her.

  Kesh asked, “How much fuel?”

  “Well, at ten parsecs per hop, we can squeeze two out of a single tank if we don’t fly in normal space for too long,” Echo said.

  “About half a tank would cost us fifteen million credits.”

  “Fill the tank in case we have to skip a stop,” said Roz. “Remember Cocytus?”

  “Thirty million? Can we at least steal the fuel to make it look like a robbery?” asked Kesh, flexing his neck frills in agitation.

  “No,” said Echo. “We pay for everything.”

  Reuben paced the bay. “Great, the helpful bandits. They fixed everything on our base and were so nice that we felt bad blowing them out of the sky.”

  “No need to shout,” Roz said. “I just soothed our guests. I don’t need you working them up again.”

  “We need to take the anti-missile beam projectors with us, or we’re dead. Period.” Reuben clenched his teeth, waiting for anyone else on the team to grow a brain.

  “He’s right,” Max said. “We need the defenses.”

  “Can we afford to pay for the projectors?” asked Roz.

  Kesh grunted. “They looked like military surplus to me—used. It might take all the cargo we have left, but sure. I’ll run a depreciation and regional economic analysis and get you fair market value to the credit.”

  “To midnight requisition that much hardware, we’ll need to lure in and overpower the remaining two crew members,” Max said.

  “Only one,” Echo corrected. “The other is speaking to Ensign Grady right now. I’ll keep watch out-of-body.” Her hologram vanished.

  Max loaded his tranq pistol from his medical bag.

  “What are we going to trade for fuel in Clarke’s Oasis?” asked Roz. “I don’t want to blow our gold reserve at the first stop.”

  “I already struck a deal for some shrimp vats, but the Bats might take our music library in trade,” Reuben bragged. “DJ Noir is very popular here. Should we steal the shuttle, too?”

  “Too identifiable and too expensive,” Kesh said. “We’ll wait until we’re closer to the target to acquire that. Other than food, water, and spare parts for visiting ships, this station has nothing of value. We’ll force the stationmaster to swap the church land grant for a quarter of the fuel. Maybe then he won’t press charges.”

  Roz’s objections about forcing anyone were cut short by Echo’s report. “Oh, dear. Grady shot the Bat with a stun pistol.”

  The men ran from the room to respond. However, it was wily Alyssa who talked the clueless stationmaster into coming aboard for tea with the Magi.

  Chapter 6 – Ethical Debates

  Max and Echo kept an eye on the Bat guests. Alyssa and Herb learned to drive a forklift to move the heavy ore payment out. The rest of the team ripped out the station’s beam projector. Roz had them photograph and label each part with the designation from the manual.

  “Why so much detail?” demanded Reuben.

  “Two reasons,” she replied. “First, there are no uninstall notes, so we have to reverse the procedure in the install guide. Second, this turret was meant for a Bat battleship, and the mapping to a civilian station isn’t precise. Recording how they adapted it will help us adjust the device to fit our ship.”

  Next, she rotated the spherical ship so the external hard point opposite Deep 6’s shuttle bay was within reach of the station’s cargo crane. Then she supervised the installation with all three of the mechanics in vacuum suits. She started by opening a hatch on the side of the Magi ship, revealing a wide variety of cables.

  Reuben moved the massive hemispherical turret into place with the crane, hovering above the mount point like a UFO above a stalled car on a desert highway.

  Grady brooded. “The reactor won’t produce enough current.”

  “I know my ship, ensign. We might not be able to accelerate fully at the same time, but she’ll power anything the younger species can build.”

  Grady shook his head. “It’s not right, sir.”

  The old repairman never complained, so she asked, “What’s really bothering you?”

  “Stunning that dock worker took a lot out of me. Now I’m jumping at shadows, worried that every Bat in the sector is out for revenge. I could justify that as self-defense or a misunderstanding, but stealing a weapon like this is way over the line into piracy.” Inside the helmet, sweat rolled down his forehead, but he couldn’t wipe it away. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to shoot at another Union starship—to risk killing everyone on it. W-We’re not the bad guys.”

  Roz took the torch from him. “Good and bad are a bit subjective right now. You’re not cleared to know all the details, sailor. Do you trust me and the navigator?”

  “Yes, sir. But once we commit this crime, the rest become easier. I don’t want that. After a while, nothing separates us from the Phibs. If you continue this operation, I’ll be forced to resign.”

  She nodded inside her helmet. “We can’t leave you here, ensign. The Bats would arrest you as an accomplice. If you wait until the first stop in Human space, we’ll give you a complete retirement package and a recommendation.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Go move enough of the radioactives to the shuttle bay in order to counter the weight of the turret.” Balance was everything on a Magi vessel. “Then load any of their mail from the Magi to Human space into the cargo bay. Filter out crates from the last month, or delivery will look too fast.”

  When the old ensign was gone, Reuben switched to point-to-point comms. “This is going to take us too long without him. My part was supposed to be installing the software and testing the response times to calibrate our controls.”

  “Just sit there and read me the instructions. I’ll do all the work.”

  Wriggling into the gap beneath, Roz attached the turret to ship’s power and the internal control network.

  Despite the zero-g environment, Reuben was terrified the crane would slip and crush her. He checked the safeties after each connection he announced from the master list. Occasionally, he had to look up specifications for her. The integration took hours.

  Once all the cables were attached, Roz took her laser and marked a precise distance from the primary power tap. There, she inserted a heavy post into the hull as an anchor. “The drive-signature detection dish on this unit is phenomenal.”

  “Bats are good at listening.” Reuben waited until she was clear of the dome. “Make certain none of the cables snarl.” Soon the hole in the side of the turret slid down over the post. He resisted making a sexual innuendo only out of respect for Roz.

  “Contact,” Roz said when the dome rested flush against the hull. As Reuben rotated the turret slowly, Roz called off degrees remaining until the other couplings clicked into place. “Full stop.”

  “Stop confirmed. Holding position,” Reuben reported. This part of the procedure felt like watching paint dry, but they couldn’t afford any mistakes.

  She attached docking clamps in three locations to hold the turret in place temporarily. “Any objections to my welding it down as is?”

  After triple-checking, Reuben replied, “Close enough for government work. Welding is a go.”

  Roz triggered a bright arc, and the welder sealed a meter-long seam.

  Duty done, Reuben spoke up about his own fears. “Won’t we be seen by other ships on our two-week exit path? Someone is going to be inbound toward the station before we reach the jump point.”

  “We’ll turn off station monitors and jump from a few kilometers off the starboard bow. That’s the beauty of the subbasement drive—anywhere to anywhere. Our next stop is the nexus at Clarke’s Oasis. You can hint to the Salizar crew about
some magic Magi cloaking device we use when exploring new worlds. They’ll buy it.”

  The pair worked around the clock, sealing and testing the new defenses. People contacted Roz constantly for instructions. Echo complained that the shrimp tanks reeked and there wasn’t enough space in the shielded zone for all of them.

  “Leave a couple tanks at various locations in the ship as a control for the experiment,” Roz decided. “If a few shrimp end up merged together with two heads, we won’t feel bad, and someone can still eat them.”

  Reuben had more stamina than a Human, but Roz pressed on by sheer willpower. Often Max would convince her to come back inside to eat or rest. Most recently, he demanded she come back inside for a meeting. For the next hour in space, she was in a foul mood, slamming toolboxes and smacking buttons.

  Back in the locker room, she surprised Reuben. “Sorry. That was unprofessional. Max and I are still learning how to fight.”

  “There are rules?”

  “Of course. We can’t feel each other through the Collective Unconscious like you can, so we have to rely on words. The trick is to feel we’re being heard without damaging the relationship. Half the time, we get angry over a misunderstanding. Usually it’s his tone, not the words that piss me off.”

  Reuben snickered. “CU has nothing to do with it. Even with ewes … or a certain galactic-level telepath, I still get in trouble for the tone.”

  Roz could tell he was referring to Ivy by the way his face fell. Bone weary from work and stress, Roz stripped out of her vac suit. It was a sign of her absolute trust that she wore nothing but underwear beneath. At the flash of her well-muscled posterior as she removed her woolen socks, Reuben buried his head in a locker. Evidently, being married to two other people had lowered her modesty.

  “I wish I had time for a shower.” Roz shimmied into black, form-fitting pants capable of displaying a wide array of colors and patterns. The current theme was the map of Union space overlaid with a glowing, blue grid. Einstein never envisioned space being curved in this manner. “You’ve both had a lot more relationships than I have. Does Max order all his girlfriends around?”

  Max’s previous lover, Lisa Troutwine, had been a Lunar Intelligence officer who had used him to get a promotion. As a cold fish, she had been known to her co-workers as The Trout. Because comparison made Roz insecure, the members of Deep 6’s crew referred to the spy as She who Must Not Be Named.

  “Only the ones it would kill him to lose,” Reuben replied. “So just you.”

  “Lucky me,” Roz replied, buttoning a light-colored silk blouse.

  “Luckier than you’ll ever know.” He still had his head buried in the locker to hide his own emotions.

  She pulled on knee-high boots to complete the swashbuckler outfit. “Ivy feels that way about you, too.”

  “She mentioned that in her will.” Just when he thought the wound was healed, he had watched the recording. Her final words had twisted the dagger in ways he hadn’t imagined. Her share of the profits went to her nieces and nephews so they would never need to work as spies, but all of Ivy’s possessions on the ship had gone to Reuben. She had spent most of the five minutes telling him he was the sweetest man she had ever met.

  Roz unfastened her hair and let it cascade around her shoulders. “What’s the problem then?”

  “She claimed everything she did on the voyage was to protect me and make me a better person.”

  “Yeah.”

  He lifted his head to lock eyes with her. “Even the infidelity?”

  “Oh, honey. You weren’t ever supposed to know.” Roz pulled his head to her shoulder. “She felt she had to do that or Lord Aviar would’ve recruited our other pilot, Deke. You saw what happened when Yenang went rogue. Without Deke’s loyalty, we wouldn’t have survived.”

  Reuben pointed to his forehead. “That makes sense up here but not down here.” He pointed to the area near his navel.

  “What, Goats’ emotions reside in the stomach?” Roz joked.

  “Sure. Yours do, too. I’ve heard yours growl when you’re upset. A ewe won’t sleep with a man until he can prove he’s a good provider. Even Ivy knew the importance of a good snack the next morning.” His voice cracked on her name.

  Roz left him alone to change. However, Reuben decided to attend the meeting in his dirty work coveralls because he hadn’t done laundry in over a week. Instead, he used the privacy to reflect on Ivy’s last words. “If you love me, serve your people.”

  For the sake of eighteen months of joy, he was supposed to give up any hope of future happiness? It wasn’t fair. Reuben wanted to break something of hers, some part of his inheritance that he hadn’t already smashed. However, her storage closet was as empty as his stomach.

  ****

  When Reuben meandered into the meeting, Roz was wrapping up the summary. “So, we wiped the evidence of our presence from all internal cameras and external sensors. We bribed the stationmaster not to report the assaults, and the crew should be stuck in the cargo airlock for hours. All we need to do now is escape. Max, how did disabling the station’s ansible go?”

  “Explosives would be handy next time.” They had a surplus of mining supplies from when the Blue Claws used the ship to haul iron ore.

  Roz said, “We don’t want to be labeled terrorists.”

  Shrugging, Max sat back down.

  Grady rose to give his report on the same mission. “We entered the station command center at 16:23 with the access badge Reuben forged for us. While I was disconnecting the device, I found out the communication device was accessing several other station subsystems.”

  “Like what? The bank records? Payroll?” Roz asked.

  “Security. Cargo manifests.”

  Echo appeared in holo form. “Did it transmit a report?”

  “When I clipped the wire to the cameras, the ansible lights started blinking. Mr. Ellison used those vibro gloves of his to shove a crowbar through the casing. Darnedest thing I ever saw. Blue smoke leaked out, and the whole side of the room went dark.”

  “He triggered the anti-tampering mechanism,” Echo explained.

  Grady swallowed hard. “Sir, I swear I heard a scream.”

  Roz exchanged a glance with Echo. “It’s just equipment. Your conscience has you imagining things.”

  “Wasn’t ours to destroy. Those things are expensive.”

  Echo shook her head. “The Bankers were clearly using it illegally to gather intelligence. They voided the user agreement.”

  “It could have been a simple, weekly update.”

  Reuben cleared his throat. “Ensign, you know what they say in the military. Once is coincidence. The Bankers forgot to make our loan payment. Twice is bad luck. At Phoenix, they had a warrant out on Roz for something she didn’t do. The third time?”

  “Enemy action. Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll check the data buffers on all the interfaces and find out what the ansible was after,” Reuben said.

  “No chance. They all melted, every connection.”

  “Hmm. Not suspicious at all.” Reuben repeated Max’s synopsis. “Explosives would have the same result with lower risk. Do the Bankers cheat like this all the time, or just around us?”

  Echo drifted to the head of the table. “Speculating on our enemies gets us nowhere. I called this meeting to discuss our handling of Jeeves.”

  Roz snorted. “We should continue to care—”

  “No,” snapped the Magi. “We are uplifters. Our hand cannot be seen.”

  “That horse is already out of the barn. Too late to close the doors now,” Reuben muttered.

  Folding her arms, Roz expressed agreement. “We’re her family.”

  “Actually, she was my pet,” Max said. “Since we reclassified mimics as protosentient, the rules have to change.”

  “It may seem like a fine legal point, but Magi cannot be seen by the candidate species,” Echo said. “As my mates, you two are also Magi. Case closed.”

  “We’re not ta
lking about an entire species. We’re talking about one child, stolen from her home and helpless.”

  “In the wild, these creatures would be left to perish or flourish on their own. We cannot play God.”

  Roz raised her voice. “We’re still treating Jeeves for the damage the Saurians inflicted.”

  “We cannot risk cultural contamination.”

  “Bull. As a child from a pre-Stone Age culture, she doesn’t understand 99 percent of what she sees. We’re allowed to give them twenty-seven concepts. Language and numbers will count toward that. We’ll keep careful records of what we teach her and keep her in the jungle. Jeeves can be our conduit to the other mimics. No artifacts—ideas only.”

  Echo’s tone remained reasonable and level. “That will be for the mentor species to decide. With the imprinting you’re engaging in, this species might become worshippers or slaves. The hand of the uplifter must not be seen.”

  Roz shrieked. “That’s a stupid rule, and we both know why you made it. Jeeves isn’t Human.”

  Echo raised a single finger to silence her. “In my studies of the security recordings, I have noted that Jeeves is taking on attributes of each species that helps her, losing her own identity: Bat ears, Human eyes, and Goat arms. Who knows what foreign microorganisms infect her tissues. She may already be too modified to return to her people. A pack of chimps will tear apart the anomaly. Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  “We may have already changed her too much for her to return. The choice comes down to this: do you want to make this child happy, or do you want her to make you happy? You cannot have both, beloved.”

  Roz was crying. “What do you recommend?”

  “What we have already implemented. We keep Jeeves in stasis until the Convocation. All in favor?”

  Hands went up all over the room, all except Roz’s. “But with all this work, I haven’t spent time with her.” The pitch of her voice increased, indicating tears to come. “I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.”

  “Giving up a child is never easy,” said Alyssa.