“That reminds me, we also need a doctor,” Zea said. “Kitty Boy likes to get shot.”
“I don’t like to get shot,” I said with a chuckle. “It just happens.”
“Yeah. I know. Always saving people,” Zea said, and her blue eyes glittered in the galley light.
“Another engineer or two would be useful,” Kasta said. “My sister and I can handle a lot of the repairs, but there are the engines, drones, weapons, shuttles, and the various inner workings of Persephone. Her equipment is new, but in the next few years we’ll need to make daily repairs.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said.
“And a housekeeper or multiple people to clean,” Zea said as she looked over my shoulder into the kitchen. “I’m pretty sure the Captain is going to be ordering one of us to clean up the mess he made.”
“No,” I laughed. “You four have work to do. I’ll take care of the kitchen.”
“He is handsome, cooks, cleans, captains a starship, and changes into a tiger-man. Be still my beating heart.” Kasta batted her eyelashes at me and pressed her hand into her chest.
“Sister, your heart doesn’t actually beat,” Paula laughed.
“It is trying to beat!” Kasta giggled. Zea and Eve laughed along with the twins, and I felt a bit of heat come to my cheeks.
We spent the rest of the meal talking about who we needed to add to the crew, then we spent another quarter of an hour afterward reviewing what we had of the plan. Zea, Kasta, and Paula didn’t like the idea of Eve being alone with Commander Tunar-Roz and her Marines, but we really didn’t have much of a choice. I asked them to go back to their duties, and then set about cleaning the dishes in the kitchen. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cleaned a dish, but while the task wasn’t unpleasant, it wasn’t as much fun as cooking, and I wouldn’t have minded someone else doing the work.
I ended the job by wiping down the countertops, and I nodded to myself as I admired my handiwork for a few moments. I knew I was just bored, and looking for shit to do, but the Marines taught me to do everything with excellence, and the kitchen was in better shape than when I started cooking.
I hung up the towel, turned around to head out of the galley, and then flinched when Persephone’s alarm began to scream.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I dashed from the galley and ran toward the elevator. The door there was already opened, and the doors closed as soon as I entered. I turned to press the button for the bridge, but the car was already moving, and it opened half a moment later.
“What’s going on?” I yelled as I ran past the gunner’s station. Both Zea and Eve were sitting in the pilots’ seats, but I didn’t see Paula and Kasta.
“I dunno, we just got-- oh shit!” Zea gasped as she pointed at the screen.
There was a plume of red-purple light shooting from the surface of Uraniel. It extended out of the atmosphere and into space like a flashlight beam through the darkness, and as I watched the color changed from purple to red, pulsed in intensity, and then slowly shifted back to purple.
“Where is the light coming from?” I asked as I sat in my chair.
“Uhhh I’ll give you three guesses,” Zea said as her fingers tapped on her controls.
“The strange temple they unearthed,” Eve said.
“Yeah,” Zea moaned. “It’s like coming out of it all weird.” The screen shifted so that we saw a zoomed-in display of the black temple. The purple-red light seemed to drip from the corners of the thing as if it was blood dripping from a wound. Only instead of falling down, it dripped up and fell into space.
“Eyyye yah,” a voice whispered in my left ear, and I almost jumped out of my chair. I turned, but there was no one standing next to me. I turned to look at Eve, and she met my eyes.
“You--” I began to ask, but she nodded.
“It is a signal,” Eve said.
“Uhhh. Huh? What do you mean? It’s just light. How is it--”
“It is more than light,” Eve interrupted Zea.
“What is it?” Paula and Kasta ran onto the bridge and then sat next to me.
“Whatever is in the temple was asleep. Now it is awake and broadcasting.”
“How do you know?” one of the twins asked.
“I do not.” Eve shrugged. “Not for sure. This is a feeling I have.”
“Your instincts are never wrong,” I said. “I’m guessing you are going to tell me this isn’t good news?”
“No,” Eve said with a frown. “Persephone asked you to take us here. My guess is that she knew what was on this planet. It is probably something terrible.”
“And it’s probably calling more of them here.” Zea put her pretty face in her hands. “How much time do you think we have?”
“I am not sure, but not enough time. There is a communication coming from Captain Renalta.” Eve looked to me.
“Audio only,” I said.
“Captain Adam?” the man asked.
“I’m here,” I replied.
“What did you do when you were on the surface of Uraniel?” he growled.
“I did nothing near the building shooting light into space.”
“You must have done something. Lights don’t come out of excavation sites on their own.”
“I am confident you had your scanners tracking us while we were on the surface. You know damn well that we didn’t do anything to cause the building to light up.”
“What about the antenna you put on top of the Commerce Building?”
“It was a booster so we can ensure our communications aren’t interrupted by the buildings,” I said.
“How do I know you are being honest?”
“How do I know you didn’t do something?” I gestured for Eve to mute the line and then I looked at Zea. “Did they launch any sort of drone or probe down to the excavation site?”
“Hmmm. I haven’t been watching that closely, but I can check the videos.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Thirty seconds. I’m running a query,” Zea said, and I saw a smaller window of video open on the bottom left side of the screen near Zea’s chair.
“-- the audacity of you thinking that I might have caused this! You have no idea who you are speaking with. I have one of the most decorated careers in the entire Lith Dae Navy.” Renalta had continued talking, and I asked Eve to unmute the line.
“You just suspected me,” I said. “I’m trying really hard not to get ang--” I started to say, but then Zea waved to me, and I looked over. She pointed at the screen and then pressed a button on her controls to enlarge the image.
It showed a replay of a probe circle around the black temple, and then land on the west side. Zea backed up the video a bit and then panned back to the six starships, the patrol boat had moved to the other side of the planet some fifteen minutes before the probe circled the site. It was obvious that Lith Dae had tried to send it without us noticing.
The clock read thirty-four Earth minutes ago. It was right when we were in the middle of dinner.
“Oh? You are getting angry? I’m--”
“Shut up!” I snarled, and I saw Zea’s eyes get wide when I interrupted Renalta. “A little over half an hour ago, you launched a probe that circled the building now sending out the light pulses. Looks like you tried to disguise it by launching on the other side of the planet, but we have eyes on that site. You’re a fucking idiot if you think we caused this when it was obviously you.”
“How dare you--”
“I’m sick of your shit, Captain Renalta. I’d like to help the people on this planet, and I’d like to get paid, but I’m starting to wonder if your two-hundred rhodium is worth the effort.”
“So you are backing out of our deal? I should have figured,” he hissed.
“You just lied,” I said. “You’re trying to find any reason to board my ship. It isn’t going to happen. I’m going to give you a few options.”
“You aren’t the one to be giving me dema--”
“Shut the fuck
up, asshole,” I said, and I saw Zea’s face turned white. I also saw Kasta and Paula stiffen in their chairs beside me. “Option one is that you attack us right now. You’ll beat us, but I’m launching every damn piece of ordnance I have at your personal ship. You’ll die along with us.”
“No, Captain Adam. I’ll--”
“We have two hyperdrives,” I interrupted him with the slight lie, but I didn’t want to tell him we had a warpdrive. “We’ll get our first volley out before your fleet can pin any shots on us, but I don’t really want to die today, and neither do you, so option two is that you let us do the job you hired us to do so we can help these people. You stop trying to wiggle your way onto my ship, and you feel a shred of gratitude that we were here to do the dirty work for you, so you didn’t have to risk the lives of your own crew. Once we are done, you give us our rhodium, and we go along our merry way. Now, which option do you choose?”
There was silence for a few moments, and then I heard the man sigh. “If you don’t let my team accompany you into the government center, I’ll take it as a sign you are planning to betray us.”
“Fine.” I might have been able to push back on his request now that I had won this small victory, but I really didn’t want to engage in a dogfight with him and his fleet. We’d lose, so I would just run instead, and that wouldn’t help the people who might still be alive on this planet. “I’ve got work to do. I don’t know anything about the weird temple down there, or the light coming from it, but you’d probably be smart to pull your probe away, and not send any others. I’m closing connection now.” I nodded to Eve and she cut the communication off before I could get the man’s response.
“Dammmnnn,” Zea said with a long exhale. “I thought you were going to get us into a fight.”
“He’s a chicken-shit,” I growled. “He knew he did something with his probe. He’s probably worried about it since they don’t understand the technology. He intended to push the blame on me and then negotiate a visit to our ship. Once here, he’d try to take Persephone from us.”
“Is everyone in space a pirate?” one of the twins asked, and I shrugged.
“We aren’t,” Zea scoffed. Then she looked at the screen, to me, to Eve, and then back to me. “What now?”
“If that signal moves at lightspeed. I can’t imagine it will get to anyone important soon.” I thought about the strange trio of planets stuck between the two red stars. Was the signal for someone or something on those planets? That solar system was on the other side of the Milky Way. I didn’t know the exact navigation math without looking in Persephone's computer, but it would probably take at least eighty-thousand light years to get there.
“What if it moves faster than light?” One of the twins leaned toward me, and I could smell that it was Paula.
“It will still take time for whoever hears the signal to get here.”
“Unless they also have a folding drive,” Kasta said with a frown.
None of us spoke for a few minutes. Instead, we watched the strange light erupting from the black building and tunneling into space.
“We need to get this done tomorrow at dusk when the government center doors open. We might not get a second chance,” I said.
Chapter 12
We worked for the next twelve hours on the cars. As soon as the twins installed the first two autopilot controls, Paula switched to looking at the code while Kasta taught me how to install the other units. When I finished installing my first drone controller on the third car under her supervision, she switched to figuring out how to put the armor on top of the vehicles. Once she had a good process for that upgrade, she showed me how to attach the metal plates, and we jumped between installing the drone controls and attaching the armor to the cars.
The work was exhausting, but Kasta didn’t get tired. She wasn’t strong enough to lift up some of the heavier plates of metal, but I was able to do some of the work with the aid of Persephone’s other repair and building equipment.
“That’s the last one!” Kasta said as soon as we finished soldering the final piece of metal on top of the hatch of the sixth car. She clapped her hands together four times as she jumped in the air.
“I didn’t think we would get it done in time,” I said as relief flooded my body. I jumped down from the roof of the car where I’d been aligning the metal so the android woman could do the attachment work. She raised her hand as soon as I landed next to her and I gave her a high five.
“We are a good team,” she said, and her fingers slid through mine when our hands touched each other.
“Yeah,” I said as I wiggled my hand in an attempt to untangle her fingers. She didn’t let go though, and I realized I was going to have to say something.
“Do you want to take a shower?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. We had both changed out of our flight suits and were wearing orange mechanic’s overalls they bought when we were on Queen’s Hat. We were both covered with grease and dirt from the repairs, and I would need three showers to get back to my usual state of cleanliness.
“Yeah,” I said again, and I tried to untangle my fingers once more. She still didn’t let go.
“Can I wash--”
“You finished!” I heard Paula shout from the other side of the hold, and Kasta let go of my hand.
“With time to spare,” I replied as she walked around the small fleet of cars.
“They aren’t going to win any beauty contests, that’s for sure, but I’m surprised you are done already. I finished the work on the drone code, so I came to help.” The engineer was right. The cars were already all sorts of ugly, but the added plates of armor on top made me think about an egg wrapped in foil.
“Let’s go check on Zea and Eve to see how they are doing,” I said as I pointed up to the bridge.
“Okay, but then you both need to take a shower.” Paula wrinkled her nose.
“That’s what I was just telling him,” Kasta said.
“Hmmm.” Paula glanced at her sister suspiciously. “I bet that was what you were telling him.”
“Innocent until proven guilty.” Kasta gave her sister a cute smile.
“Let’s go,” I said, and the twins followed me out of the hold. We were on the bridge a few moments later and found Zea and Eve sitting at one of the gunner stations.
“What’s the status?” I asked.
“I’m almost done,” the blonde hacker said with a yawn. I felt exhausted, and I guessed my other friends must have been struggling to stay awake.
“We’ve finished the cars and Paula finished with the drone code. She was going to give us an update.”
“I am interested in this topic,” Eve said as she fixed her red eyes on Paula.
“We know the drones have a limited AI. They were programmed to attack these wasps, and then their code was changed so that they targeted anything alive or made of metal with radiation shielding components. We were fortunate to escape on Persephone in time. The drones probably wouldn’t have been able to destroy her instantly, but they would have gotten caught in her atmosphere engines, and then she would have been sitting prey for them.”
“We got lucky,” I said as I remembered my own narrow escape from the cyclone of bird drones.
“The code is contained in each of the drones. They were initially set up to get updated from one of the many control modules across the planet, but Captain Renalta is asking us to run it through the code contained in the northwest bunker.”
“That is odd. You would think they would have installed thousands of them across the planet.” Z leaned back in her chair with a thoughtful expression.
“I think they did, but then the citizens of Uraniel dismantled all of them except for the one they had access to. Maybe they are working on the code themselves with hopes that they can alter the drone’s behavior.” Paula leaned against the map table and then ran her hand through her long blonde hair. She also had dark circles under her eyes, and I guessed she could plop down in one of the chairs and fall asleep insta
ntly.
“I feel like we are missing something,” I said, and the four women turned to me. “Captain Renalta knows we want to help these people. He must know we’ll encounter them in the bunker. He must know they will tell us what is going on. I don’t see his angle.”
“He will threaten us,” Eve said. “He will have men around me, a fleet of six ships that can attack Persephone, and he can close the doors on whoever is in the southeast bunker. That is his leverage if you betray him.”
“We are playing into his hands,” Kasta said. “Even if we change the initial code in the government center and the drones, they still have six ships against Zea all alone on Persephone. He’s got all the leverage.”
“Maybe not,” Zea said with a wicked grin. “He doesn’t know we only have a skeleton crew, and I’ve been working on this code. I think I might be able to make the back door I’m putting in swing around and smack them in the ass.”
“Oh?” Kasta asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll talk about it after Paula finishes,” Zea said as she turned to the other twin.
“After the code is updated, they will hang around the northwest bunker for two hours. Then they will all scatter toward the other cities on the globe. I did some math on their flight speeds. It will take about eighty earth hours for them to update the rest of the drones on the planet with the new software and return to the dig site where that strange temple is. Once they are there, they have instructions to try and pick through the front door of the building.”
“Fucking idiots,” Zea groaned. “Eighty hours doesn’t seem like a lot of time when they are only flying at night.”
“The new code will enable the drones to function during the day.”
“Ahh. Makes sense,” Zea said with a nod. Then she raised her hand to cover up her yawn.
“My update has changed it so that they do their wait, but won’t attack us,” Paula continued. “Then they will spread across the globe to transfer the code. The drones will then all meet at the temple, but they won’t do anything until we instruct them.”
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