by M. D. Cooper
Joe replied.
Joe had considered that over the years. He had always imagined Katrina being saddened when the Intrepid failed to check in, when it should have reached New Eden.
Joe almost choked.
Joe whistled in appreciation.
Katrina laughed again, her voice sounding clearer than it had at first—even though it was just her mental voice he was hearing.
Katrina made a small sound of amusement.
Joe thought he’d be ready for additional bombshells, but that one caught him by surprise.
Joe let out a low whistle.
Joe sat back in the command chair and looked at the arrival time on the holo. Just a few more hours.
This time Joe did choke.
* * * * *
“I don’t know what is more surprising,” Joe said as Katrina stepped out of the Voyager’s airlock. “Seeing you still alive and kicking, or seeing this ship.”
“Depends, Troy. Got a hot tub in there?”
“I never quite figured out the difference, so I guess it just may.”
By then, Katrina was before him, and he extended a hand, which she swatted away.
“Joe, if you weren’t Tanis’s husband, I’d kiss you. At least give an old woman a hug.”
“Of course, Katrina.” Joe wrapped her in a warm embrace, surprised at the strength in her limbs. “Got more kick in you than I would have thought.”
“I put on a bit of a show for the others,” Katrina whispered in Joe’s ear. “Plus, we used stasis a lot on the longer trips. I’m not quite as ancient as I play at.”
Katrina pulled back and cast her eyes on Earnest, who had managed to extract himself from his studies of the remnants to join them.
“Earnest, the great architect. It is truly a pleasure to see you once more. And stasis shields! What’s a woman gotta do to get one of those for her ship?”
Earnest embraced Katrina as well, laughing as he did so. “Your ship? I distinctly remember requesting this vessel for my research base back at The Kap.”
“Oh? Is that how you want to play this? Well, Earnest, finders-keepers.”
“I suppose you can have it,” Earnest shrugged. “I can just grow another.”
“Grow? Starships?” Katrina asked. “Will wonders never cease.”
“Katrina,” Joe captured her attention once more. “I’d like you to meet my daughters, Cary, Saanvi, and Faleena.”
Katrina turned to the two young women and cocked her head, “You know, it’s not kind to play tricks on your elders.”
“Ahhhhh,” Katrina glanced at Joe. “So…you, Tanis, and Angela finally made it official, did you?”
“That’s a very progressive attitude for a Sirian,” Joe shot back, laughing as he spoke.
He’d forgotten how much fun he and Katrina used to have, often chatting amongst themselves while Tanis and Markus were making their plans. Katrina could do a mean Tanis impression that had him in stitches more than once.
It was good to have her back.
Katrina stepped forward to embrace Cary and Saanvi, and Joe’s attention was drawn to a man and woman who appeared at the ship’s airlock, pushing a stasis pod on an a-grav pad.
“Katrina, we have Kara for their doctors.”
“I never saw Adrienne’s children in person,” Joe said as he approached the pod. “Those are some amazing alterations.”
He nodded to a pair of medical techs who had been waiting nearby, and they took the stasis pod, one of Katrina’s crew trailing after.
“Carl took a bit of a fancy to Kara,” Katrina said as she watched him go. “Not that I blame him—she’s a brave, brave woman—wait…Blanca!”
Major Blanca had just stepped into the docking bay, and rushed past Joe to sweep Katrina up in her arms.
“Auntie! I just can’t believe it!”
Half an hour later—after Katrina had introduced her twenty crewmembers, and a few other members of the Andromeda’s crew had filtered through the docking bay to greet the former Victorian governor—Joe declared it time for the assemblage to move to the mess hall so the dockworkers could begin their work, assessing repairs to the Voyager.
“What exactly are you going to do to my ship?” Katrina eyed Earnest suspiciously.
“Back at Bollam’s World?” Katrina stammered. “That was just while I resc—” she stopped for a moment. “Nevermind. Do what you want.”
Joe wondered at what Katrina had been going to say, but could see that the memory brought her pain, and didn’t press for details.
He led the way to the mess hall, while the off-duty ISF personnel intermingled with Katrina’s crew, learning where and when they were from and gleaning snippets of their adventures over the years.
“I’m glad you finally found a home,” Katrina said as they entered the mess hall and found seats at the end of a long table.
Joe sat acro
ss from Katrina, his girls on one side, and Earnest on the other. Blanca sat beside Katrina, and several of her crew settled nearby, as well.
“We have,” Joe said, his voice laden with the weight of many memories. “It hasn’t been all peace and prosperity, though.”
Katrina nodded. “The picotech, I assume. You tipped your hand at Bollam’s World.”
“If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have won the engagement. Then our technology—and the Intrepid—would have fallen to the AST…er, Hegemony. Whatever.”
“They keep flopping back and forth between those names,” Katrina nodded. “Half their populace doesn’t know what to call themselves anymore.”
Idle chatter continued for a few minutes, while the humans placed orders over the Link, and servitors began to bring them food.
“Ah…civilization,” Katrina sighed. “You have no idea some of the backward places I’ve been to.”
“Katrina, you said something before, about ascended AI,” Joe changed the subject. “And what they have planned for Tanis. I really need to know what you were talking about.”
Katrina’s eyes narrowed. “And what do you know about ascended AI?”
“Well, I’ve met one,” Nance said from a few seats down. Joe hadn’t noticed her arrival, but Nance had been very quiet in the weeks since she’d been taken out of stasis.
“You have?” Katrina’s eyes locked on Nance. “In person?”
Nance nodded. “Named the Caretaker, back on Ikoden.”
Joe watched Katrina stiffen as she peered at Nance.
“You must isolate her,” Katrina said, glancing at Joe. “She’s likely under its control.”
“Not anymore,” Cary said. “Trine drew the remnant out of her. We have it contained.”
“Trine?” Katrina looked up and down the table. “Is she here?”
“We are Trine,” Cary said in the eerie voice she used when she deep-Linked with her sisters. “And…wait. There is something in you, too. Like the remnant, but different.”
Joe’s gaze snapped to Katrina. “Katrina. Did you bring a remnant here?”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Katrina replied. “Well, I suppose I can guess. Is that what you call it when an ascended AI leaves a sliver of itself behind in a human?”
Trine-Cary nodded. “It is, and I can see something like it in you…. Hold still, and I’ll remove it.”
Katrina pulled back, a look of horror on her face. “No! How can you even do that?”
Joe raised a hand toward his daughters, and they relaxed a hair. He could tell by the expression on their faces that they didn’t trust Katrina, and he suddenly wondered whether he should.
A lot can change in five hundred years.
“You’d best explain yourself, Katrina,” he said in calm, even tones. “Quickly.”
Katrina nodded, her eyes narrowing, sharpening the creases that ran onto her temples. “OK, but then you need to explain how your daughters can see things inside my body.”
Joe nodded, waiting for Katrina to continue.
“It happened a long time ago. I met an entity that called itself Xavia. It got me out of a pretty tough bind. I didn’t even know it left a part of itself in me until later when it began to guide me.”
“Guide, or control?” Joe asked.
“Guide. Xavia is in opposition to the Caretaker. She has splintered off from the AIs who want to keep humanity in a perpetual state of disharmony.”
“They also want to keep humans from ascending,” Nance chimed in. “I caught that sentiment very strongly from the remnant when we were in Star City. I don’t think the remnant managed to share knowledge of that place with anyone else, though.”
“Star City?” Katrina asked. “What is that?”
“A tale for another time,” Joe replied. “So, this Xavia, how do you know she only guides?”
“I think she’s telling the truth,” Trine-Saanvi interjected. “The mass and composition of this remnant are different, and it’s not tangled up in her mind, like Nance’s was—or like the others we’ve extracted, for that matter.”
“How do you know that? Others?” Katrina asked. “What are you?”
“They’re my daughters,” Joe said, unable to keep the defensive tone from his voice.
Katrina looked back at Joe, and her eyes widened. “What an interesting byproduct.”
Joe felt his blood pressure rise. Katrina’s riddles were starting to get under his skin. “What are you talking about?”
Joe stood and grabbed his sandwich. “Katrina, if you’ll follow me.”
She rose and nodded politely to the table. “Thank you for your hospitality. I look forward to chatting more with all of you soon.”
Katrina walked around the table, and Joe led her out of the mess and down the hall to an empty office. Once inside, he closed the door and deployed privacy measures.
“OK, Katrina, spill it.”
Katrina didn’t speak for a moment, her eyes boring into his as though she were trying to determine if he was worthy.
“Katrina…”
“The AIs made Tanis.” She dropped the words into the space between them like a bomb, and Joe took an involuntary step back.
“I can tell by the expression on your face that it makes some sense to you. Do you remember how Bob kept questioning Tanis’s ‘luck’ as he called it? She told me about it one night, out of frustration.”
Joe nodded. “She hated it, said that if her life was lucky, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be cursed.”
“Well, the ascended AIs had a hand in that.”
“Fuck, Katrina, just spit it out, already. Don’t make me drag every word out of you.”
Katrina clenched her jaw, and a look of frustration filled her eyes. “This isn’t easy for me, you know. I had to sit on this knowledge for centuries. Then I miss you by days at Bollam’s World, and Tanis goes off and starts a galactic war!”
“She didn’t start it,” Joe replied. “But she’s going to finish it.”
Katrina opened her mouth to reply, then closed it and shook her head. “OK, fine. Here’s what I know. Some of it I’ve been told, some of it, I’ve guessed at. You ready?”
“Hell yes.”
“Back when the Sentience Wars ended, everyone thought the ascended AIs had been destroyed. Some thought they might have escaped, but no one had the resources to go hunting for them.”
Joe nodded. “Right.”
“Don’t interrupt, Joe. You want me to tell this, let me tell it.”
Joe drew in a deep breath and gestured for her to continue.
“OK, well, sounds like you already know they didn’t all die. They also didn’t all agree on what to do with humanity. Some of them just buggered off for the galactic core, getting a head start on their post-stellar civilization, or whatever they get up to out there. Others decided that guiding and managing humanity was their calling. Like children caring for aging parents.
“Anyway, most of the Ascended AIs want to keep humanity mostly as it is. Sure, they’ll allow some advancement, L2s like Tanis and the like, but they’re not keen on humans transcending their mortal coils, so to speak. Stars, most of the ascended AIs aren’t even interested in any other AIs joining their ranks, let alone humans.
“From what I’ve managed to gather, there were a lot of ideas tossed around as to how to keep humanity in check, while still allowing them to expand through the stars. I don’t know why the AIs want us to expand. They could have stopped us, yet they facilitated a faster expansion by helping us develop dark layer FTL.”
Joe wanted to ask more about that, but nodded silently instead.
“And so we have ended up with this mess. The Inner Stars in constant turmoil, the Transcend trying to keep them in check. Then the core AIs send Justina back as Airtha to drive a wedge in the existing divide between Tomlin
son and Kirkland—which fractures the Transcend, just when it was close to bringing real peace to the Inner Stars.
“I still don’t know if the AIs anticipated jump gates or not. That one may have come as a surprise to even them. It’s why they clued Finaeus in on Airtha—I think. He may have figured that one out on his own. From what I can tell, Finaeus is a real pain in the ascended AIs’ ass.”
“Seems like a general trait for him,” Joe said with a laugh, though it faded quickly. “Get on to the part where they made Tanis.”
“Easy, now. OK, I don’t know if the AIs have a crystal ball, or if they just have a lot of contingencies. Maybe both. Either way, they deliberately sent you through the Streamer to disrupt things before the Transcend and Orion Guard ironed out their differences—or maybe just wiped one another out.”
Joe nodded. This aligned with what Tanis had discerned as well, after her discoveries in Silstrand.
“OK, about Tanis. You know that she was one of the first L2 humans to get an AI, right?”
Joe nodded. “Right, her AI, Darla.”
“That was all orchestrated by the Caretaker. He wanted her to be on the ship when he sent it forward in time through the Streamer. Only, things didn’t work out the way he wanted.”
Joe cocked his head. This is what he wanted to know more about.
“Remember what I said about the ascended AIs not wanting new kids on the block? Well, they weren’t keen on Bob. Still aren’t. They tried to take the Intrepid out, but then Tanis got on that ship, where she ended up thwarting them at every turn. See, they wanted to make her into a military commander that would kick off the next major dark age when she jumped forward—a role she’s diving right into, so far as I can tell.”
Joe clenched his jaw, and Katrina saw him do it.
“Look, Joe, it’ll make sense. Bear with me.”
“OK, I’m bearing.”
“Good. The fly in the ointment is Bob—well, Airtha too. They didn’t expect her to ascend; at least, I doubt they did. Anyway, about Bob. He started to figure things out. A lot of things. The ascended AIs fed him misinformation a few times, but by and large, he ferreted his way through it all and probably has a pretty good picture about what’s going on by now.”