Standing at the Bridge, Estefan watched the intricate dance between the ship and the collection sleeve, its’ plethora of connector units and hoses creep-crawling about the outer hull of the spacecraft, programmed to search out their individual plugs, nozzles and fittings autonomously.
“We have hard dock,” announced the Pilot to the front left of the Captain’s cocoon-like chair. At the same time, the Null-ship vibrated, as it became one with the station.
“Very well, synchronize all systems to Aegis 2’s ‘Swarm and initiate full takeover mode,” ordered Captain Edward Covington, waving away his ‘Swarm, coming to stand next to the Keeper. “We are ready, m’Lord.”
Estefan nodded. “Have my wives meet met at the main airlock. We will take our leave of you and your crew, Captain. They have performed with excellence and deserve commendation. Please provide me with a complete manifest. I would like to thank them personally for their hard work and care of my family, and you too, of course, Captain...”
Captain Edward nodded, allowing a thin line of a smile. He knew how generous the Keeper could be at times. He was already looking forward to the gifts and the perks and the women (and men) his overlord would soon be showering upon him and his crew. A few of days in bed with a couple of flexible young girls seemed just ticket. He could almost feel their supple skin and flexible bodies rubbing against his own…
A harsh warble, followed by a continuous claxon ripped him from his train of thought. It was the emergency master alarm!
“Report!” shouted the Keeper, his ‘Swarm somehow already activated and conducting a system-wide query.
Reyna’s seductive voice replied within five seconds. “Ships inbound, from vector 2.225 degrees off the elliptic…
“..Tracing origins… stand-by, stand-by, stand-by...
“…Origin – the Kuiper Belt. Destination – Luna Prime.
“My Lord, it is the returning fleet of Jacob Rodriguez, Chief of Security, and High Commander.”
“Mother help me!” exclaimed Estefan. “Run life-search; is my cousin on board any of the ships returning?”
The Neuro-Nanoswarm swirled and flickered above his head. “Negative, my love, he is not present on any of the returning ships.”
Estefan sighed. “Hail their new commander and have them dock here at Aegis 2, inform him, or her, I want a full report as soon as humanly possible.”
“As you wish, my love.”
He waved his ‘Swarm away. “Captain,” he said inclining his head.
“M’Lord,” was the cyborg’s reply, but the Keeper had already vanished from the Bridge.
*****
Estefan arrived at the main airlock, small teak box with ornate hinges and an undefeatable, poison locking mechanism, tucked under his arm. He was dressed more casually today, wearing self-stitching jeans, a tight-fitting black knit shirt and matching black, thick-soled work boots. It was the sort of outfit he wore when he had a lot to do, forgoing pomp and circumstance, opting to leave his priceless suits and shoes in his armoire for the day.
All eight of his wives were already waiting for him, milling about nervously. By now, they had heard the news that Jacob’s fleet was inbound – without Jacob. They were dressed casual as well, having dawned shorts or mini-skirts, or skin-hugging tights with a variety of blouses and tops in a wide array of color. To a one, they wore either flats or sneakers, most of them of the accelerator variety. If they needed to move quickly, they could.
His eyes lingered over Mena and Ruby, who had been kind enough to come to his bed the earth-night before and express their sexual prowess in a variety of tantalizing acts. Ruby was being coy and glanced at him through her eyebrows. Mena, on the other hand, stared right back with a smoky cast to her face. She had never been shy. She liked for him to remember it was her who had fucked him, thoroughly, whenever one of their trysts got especially steamy. Usually, he didn’t need her to do anything to help his memory. Mena was a goddess in bed.
“What have you heard, Effy?” asked Ramona, wringing her hands. She had known Jacob years before she had been his girlfriend and later, his wife.
“Nothing new, Mona, but I’ve instructed the captains of the remaining ships to rendezvous with us here on Aegis 2. We’ll know more soon enough. First, I want to get this thing stowed and secure,” he answered pointing at the expensive wooden box halfway hidden under his arm. The box with the ludicrous pair of sunglasses within it, tucked neatly in fluffy swaths of velvet. He still found it unconscionable that the Shadow Spark was hidden within the lens of Ray-Ban Aviators. Every time he thought about it, all he kept thinking was what Maverick would have to say about it. Absently, he wondered how many years had it been since he’d last seen Top Gun…
He shook the stupid thought from his head and gestured toward the airlock. “Let’s get to the Corvette and put this madness behind us.”
The women moved as a unit. He unlocked the air-tight aperture. It opened like a giant part of a camera, spiraling open from the center outward. They walked through it and the outer one beyond, which was exactly the same only slightly larger, and came into an attenuating umbilical, large enough for them to walk through, three abreast. It wasn’t a long distance to the multi-deck terminal, but the way meandered, so it seemed to take longer than it should’ve.
They walked through yet another pressurized portal as they came into the terminal proper and were met by both Anthony Cardenas and Ellen Fernandez, the CEO’s of Draxis Corporation and the Deep Core Mining Company respectively.
Anthony strode up to Estefan at once, extending his hand. “Dad, it is good to see you,” he said as the shook hands for a few moments, then embraced. Estefan had to do so with one arm only.
“I miss you, boy. How have you been?” asked the concerned father into the ear of the other.
“Good, good – business is steady, orders are steady, and so there is no need to worry.” He broke their embrace, but not fully. He looked directly into his father’s eyes. “War can be extremely profitable.” His arched brow told Estefan he had heard something of the goings on while the Synod had visited Europa.
“It is my contention to avoid it for the time being,” said the Keeper quietly to his oldest surviving child. “But don’t misunderstand me, son, if someone wants to pick a fight with us, I’ll gladly oblige all comers…”
Anthony nodded and backed away as his half-sister stepped between them.
“Enough talk, I want to give my Daddy a squeeze,” said Ellen, somehow managing to sound like a little girl despite the fact she was one hundred and fifty eight years old.
Estefan’s face beamed at the attention and he embraced his second oldest daughter (with Sandy) as tight as she hugged him. Their heads arched back from their bodies after a time and she gave him a quick kiss on the lips before breaking away from him entirely.
Anthony already had his mother in his arms. He engulfed her tiny frame and spun her around in circles as though she were a Raggedy Ann and not the woman who had given birth to him.
Sandy came up then and placed here arms around both Ellen and Estefan. The others hung back for a second, letting the family groups present enjoy a little “alone time”, even if it was for only a few minutes and they weren’t actually alone.
“Are you alright, Dad? I heard things got a little hairy on the Jovian Moon,” inquired Ellen, more subtle than her brother.
Estefan bobbed his head. “We’re all fine thanks to your mother. If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t know how we would’ve got out of the mess we found ourselves.” He craned his neck to give Sandy a peck on the cheek. Ellen glowed like she used to when she was ten, watching her parents express their love before her. Even now, Estefan could tell it filled her heart.
Some things never change.
The immediate family members came apart and the extended members rushed into the fray, expressing much more warmth and animation than the last time they had been together. They were outside the strict traditions of a Gathering.
&nbs
p; A few minutes later, after the din had died down and the conversation slowed, Estefan looked toward his oldest living child. “So Tony where is this Corvette docked, I would like to get rid of this annoying piece of cargo under my arm and send it on its merry way.”
“It is one level up and two berths down,” replied his son.
They wasted little time, making their way toward the newest – and fastest – spacecraft platform to have come from Anthony’s, Draxis Corp. shipyards.
They had named it a Corvette after many of the sleek combustion engine cars, sea faring ships and later, Grav-cars, Skycars and Spacecraft, named for the same reason. Earlier renditions boasted of raw power and unadulterated speed, but this Corvette was different. Yes, it was fast. Yes, it was sleek. And yes, it was much, much more than that. It was shaped more like a bullet than anything else one could compare it to with a pointed nose followed by a featureless cylinder. It was nearly two hundred meters long and twenty-seven meters wide and completely smooth. It was stealthy as most ships were nowadays, but it was also Null-capable, so it couldn’t be detected by Celestes. But, that wasn’t its only evasive feature though.
It was the first to employ what Draxis was calling a Chameleon hull. Chameleon wasn’t a new tech, but it had been perfected by Anthony and his vast team, so the ship was almost as good at visual concealment as was an octopus. It wasn’t just background color and tint it could replicate; it could duplicate texture as well, which was a giant leap forward in Chameleon capability. If it landed amongst pebbles and boulders, it outer hull would form like pebbles and boulders all along its surface, even give off the same ambient heat or lack thereof. It could literally disappear in plain sight.
Like all the Corvettes of the past, it was fast as well. It was the only vehicle in the Solar System thus far equipped with Grav-Jump 10-rated engines, capable of reaching 99.96% the speed of light, a velocity unheard of, even in twenty three eighty-five.
Estefan walked down a similar umbilical he had traversed a few moments ago and enter the Corvette alone. He entered the Null-Corvette and immediately trudged up to the ships’ armored Null-hold, which was effectively a Null-field within a Null-field, and placed the exquisite wooden box within. Upon locking the hold, he made his way to the automated Bridge and set the Null-ship to “elusive-burst, random flight”, and then left without glancing about.
He came into the midst of his family, his mind set, his expression grim.
They all stood near an observation window, watching the Null-Corvette glide away on impulse-mode until it was but a speck against a thousand, thousand specks. A second later, it became a solid line, stretching across the cosmos for as long as the naked eye could see.
The Shadow Spark was safe, finally.
It was only a few moments later, Flavia’s Neuro-Nanoswarm chimed. The remnants of Jacob’s fleet had arrived.
It was time to get answers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Chapter 64 ~
(Summer – 2018)
Busted!
[He is furious now, intent on getting through the most agonizing portion of this chapter from his youth. He has to find answers. His cousin is missing.]
“So, tell me, Steve, how was it?” demanded Ramona, the very second I opened my eyes.
I blinked rapidly to rid my mind of sleep, attempting to clear if from the tailings of a dream. My vision improved enough to see my girlfriend’s head hovering above me. She had one eyebrow raised higher than the other, a sardonic smirk spread across her face.
“How was what?” I asked gruffly, sitting up on my elbows, seeing I had slept at the foot of the bed again, after finishing my late-night talk with Tirza.
Ramona was propped on her elbows too, although she was lying on her stomach whereas I was mostly upon my back. Her hair was akimbo, but pulled back in an elastic scrunchie, her broad face and grey eyes belying, she too, had just awakened. She was wearing light, cotton pajama set, sleeveless with short bottoms. It was plain white with dark, paisley stitching throughout.
She edged her way closer to me on her elbows, her full breasts rubbing together deliciously as they swirled from side to side with her movements. “How was Tirza? Did you do her sitting on the toilet or did you lie her down in the bathtub? Or… did you guys do it standing up? Was she facing you or did you get her from behind.” Her voice was light-hearted, but her eyes were too icy, and the tone didn’t sound genuine.
I guess the thought of Tirza and I being together bothered her. Which might strike one as odd, since she was practically sharing me with three other girls already, but Ramona always had a strange territorial methodology, one I had come to understand during our time as a couple. She liked to be the one to choose, the one in-charge of what was “ok” and “wasn’t ok”. It’s sort of simple when you think of it in those terms.
I sighed and wiped at my eyes, feeling the grit beneath my fingertips. “It was nothing like that, Mona. We were just talking, confessing actually - if you want to hang a sign on it.”
I reached out and touched her wrist, somehow able to discern the contact would open my mind to her. It wasn’t a huge leap of deductive reasoning on my part. Ramona’s mutation had been strengthening along with the rest of ours. She could see things in an uncooperative mind now. No, it wasn’t about power or ability. It was about clarity. I wanted her to see the night before with the same resolution as a Blu-ray disc. I wanted her to feel it.
Almost immediately, the softness chipped and fell away from her face, leaving behind an inner mask of intense focus. I purposefully played the events of earlier that morning in my mind, gazing into her eyes, watching the truth of my memories slowly dawn across her visage. I could feel a tingling sensation spread about the crown of my head as she delved deeper into my thoughts, asking for every nuance of what transpired in the bathroom. I let her, more than a little glad to show her the unbridled hurt and bitterness that had existed between Tirza and me, including the inescapability of our feelings for one another. The fact Tirza and I still loved each other was something she had to know, something she would have to grow to accept. I had promised my ex-girlfriend I would never leave her side, and it was a promise I intended to keep.
“Told you,” I said just above hearing, a few minutes later, when she finally withdrew from my consciousness.
She blinked back remorseful tears. “Sorry, Effy, I didn’t know things were really that bad between the two of you, so much left unsaid and all…” Her voice lost volume as she lost the conviction to keep speaking.
“It’s not like I told you much about it, my dear, so don’t be too hard on yourself,” I said nonchalantly, glancing about the Loft, realizing only Ramona and I were in the large chamber.
“Maybe that’s why I was so jealous of her,” admitted the vivacious teen at my side, “because you didn’t talk about her all that much.”
I half-smiled for her benefit, but my mind was elsewhere. “Where is everyone?”
She took the scrunchie from her hair and shook her head from side to side, making her hair fan out about her. “The girls are in the bathroom. Your brother and sister and Jolene went to their rooms to freshen up, so that just leaves you and –.”
I never heard what she said next. Right then, before I could do anything other than sit there struck dumb with shock, the door leading to the Loft opened and my mother walked in, about to tell me something. I had no more than a split-second to realize she was still in her pink, threadbare robe she wore around the house on the weekends. Then it dawned on me, this was a Saturday!
What the fuck was I going to do?
She stopped as though a bolt of lightning had struck her from above. Her mouth opened in a silent “O”. Her eyes were wide as she peered at both Ramona and I half-naked, lying across the bed. Our positions were so compromising, I could tell in an instant, she knew we were sexually active and had been for some time.
Ramona trailed off, following my gaze. She sucked in her breath the moment her eyes fell upon
my mom. She spun around like she was a top, coming to sit as chaste as she could manage in the scanty nightclothes she was wearing.
“Ramona! Estefan!” were the only two words my mother managed to say when the girls emerged from then bathroom, talking animated and loud. All of them were still in their pajamas, none of them wearing underwear. My mom had eyes like a hawk. There was no way she would miss that detail.
There was a collective gasp from them and a resounding, “What is going on here?” from my mother, who was glaring from them before the threshold of the bathroom door to me and Ramona on the bed, fire in her eyes.
“Mom!” I shouted, astonished I was able to make any sound, because it felt like I was being strangled by Darth Vader¹, using his Force Choke² on me with unbridled malice.
She turned on me, her fists balled at her sides. “I asked you a question, what is going on here?” she repeated herself through clenched teeth.
“It’s not what it looks like, mom.” (Even though it was precisely as it looked) “They all have good reason for being here, I promise,” was my attempt at mollifying her line of thought.
“If it’s not what it looks like, then why are you girls dressed like this around my son?” She took the time to glower at each and every one of them, making them squirm where they stood, making them blush beat red. “Ramona, you know better than that. We’ve talked about things like this. I told you what I expected of you. I don’t like this!”
My girlfriend dropped her head to stare in her lap. She might be many things, but, more than anything, she was respectful to those who respected her.
“Mom, it’s not that big of a deal, ok.” I knew I was venturing onto thin ice, but what else could I do?
Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten Page 71