“Yes, Baba Yaga.”
She waited a moment, remembering her fallen and her friends. “Then I will kill those Kurtherian bastards and burn their remains until they are ash under my feet.”
QBS ArchAngel II
Commander Julianna Fregin nodded to Security and provided her palm print. Once approved, and after they checked the package she had with her, they allowed her entrance to the Search and Survey ships’ bay.
She went into the bay and stopped. The bay was…dark? No, it was peaceful.
The bay was easily three stories high and two hundred feet long. In wartime this would have been used for military ships, but at the moment it held just two government ships.
One of them was a fast-torp minimal-survey ship. It looked like a sleek horizontal rocket with a landing leg in the front, and two out the back. The ship’s purpose was only the mapping of systems.
These ships were all engine, one EI, navigation software, and really powerful and sensitive Etheric communications. They would jump into a system, map it as much as possible in one hour, then jump again.
All these ships had been modified to make sure the EIs could not and would not be able to ascend to true AI abilities. Too many of them were lost in the deep dark, whether from jumping into something solid (the most likely reason) or dropping into a system that stripped it of communication and jump abilities, stranding it there for eternity. The scientists were still trying to figure that out.
The second ship was that of her friend, its new body drastically different than what he’d been before.
She walked toward his new ship, wondering what it must have been like to have a brain that operated so fast that the years he had spent in Leath space would have felt like a million.
The click, click, click of her boots echoed in the chamber as she approached, and Julianna put her hand up to touch the smooth sides of this new ship when she reached it. She didn’t think it was the prettiest. It didn’t have the deadly grace of a fighter, or the massive sense of barely-restrained destruction a Leviathan-class battleship brought to a battle.
No, this ship screamed “practical.”
It was a solid ship that went out and got the job done, day-in and day-out. She could see special shielding around important points on the hull in case it got too close to the solar winds, or other types of interference that would fry electronics.
A battleship would withstand missiles, but this one was designed to withstand the unknowns of space.
She stepped away from the ship to walk around the landing gear and looked up, her head cocked to the side. She started backing up, making sure nothing was behind her as the name came into view.
“RICKY BOBBY.” Under the name was a phrase written in old-Earth cursive. If you ain’t first, you’re last.
She nodded in appreciation of the words and called, “Ricky Bobby, permission to come aboard?”
She heard servomotors start up and a ramp lowered at the back of the ship so she headed that way, appreciating everything about this ship. It wasn’t pretty to her the way a military ship would be, but she could understand the engineering on display.
Which was good. Her friend needed the protection where he was going.
She jumped onto the ramp and walked into the sparse ship. When she noticed a cabin in the pass-way she stuck her head in.
Two bunks with nothing on them. “Expecting company?” she asked aloud. Ricky Bobby answered through the speakers.
“No.”
“Hi.” She looked around, then headed slowly toward the front of the ship. “I’m sorry, for what it is worth.”
“Why?” the male voice asked. “We did what we were commanded to do.”
“I didn’t know you were there, needing me.” She entered the bridge and looked around.
It was just as spartan as the cabin.
“I was doing my job, just like you were” the AI replied. “Don’t punish yourself.”
“Fat chance of that,” she murmured. “I got the news you left the military.” She patted a panel, her fingers trailing along a crease. “Obviously.”
“Upper brass came to talk to me, said they were worried about me now that I was an AI. I spoke with ADAM, and he spoke to the Empress. It is amazing what can be accomplished by just one human.”
She paused in front of a minimalist chair. “May I sit?”
“Of course,” he answered. “My ship is…well, my ship, so I suppose I should install a Manners 1.0 software update.”
Julianna put a hand over her mouth to cover a smile, then turned to the side and set her bag down.
“Good,” he said. “I see that my humor worked.”
“You can see me?” she asked, looking around. “Where are your eyes?”
“All over the ship, Captain.”
“It’s Julianna, not ‘Captain,’” she replied. She sat down on one of the chairs and made a face.
“The seats are hard and uncomfortable by design.”
She blew out a breath. “You really don’t want anyone staying here, do you?”
His answer came back quickly. “I didn’t design it that way. That was something ADAM put in place.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He says it is for my own development. I will know that it was designed purposefully to be uncomfortable to organics, that the humans built it that way, and it will always be a reminder to me that I am ultimately the most comfortable entity on this ship.”
“Because it was designed that way.” Julianna nodded. “I get it.”
“I didn’t at first,” Ricky Bobby admitted, “but I think I understand now.”
“How does it make you feel?” she asked as she looked around the bridge. It was utilitarian, and she doubted it could be used for more than a few days by a human at all.
“Special?” he replied. “Yes, special.”
She put out her hands. “Can I admit I don’t understand?”
“What?”
“This!” She pointed to the bridge. “This whole ship. You, going out to search in the deep cold of space. You just came back to me, and now you are leaving again.”
“I am not leaving for a cold existence, having to dodge the enemy every second of every day, calculating the chances of providing information, knowing that if I failed it would only be an ‘oops’ and not your death.”
“My death?” she whispered. “MY DEATH?” She stood up, pointing to the only screen on the ship’s bridge. “I cried myself to sleep hundreds of times during those decades you were gone, Ricky Bobby, thinking about you stuck in that system!” She started walking around the bridge. “I’m so pissed off! I just got you back after decades, and you are leaving again!”
She wiped a tear away. “Goddammit, Ricky Bobby. You can’t leave so soon.”
“I will be back,” he replied.
“Like, every forever or so!” Her arms flailed around. “It’s not like you have to have a checkup every three months. I’ve seen some of the specs for this ship. You can be gone for a decade easily, two with a little trouble, and maybe as many as thirty fucking years and that is with you running into all sorts of bad and nasty shit. If you get really lucky, you won’t need to come back for fifty years.”
“Well, technically more like a hundred,” he clarified.
There was a long pause as Julianna just stared at the monitor, her mouth open, then she spoke slowly. “You are as clueless as every other guy I know.”
He shot back a reply, “Yes, but I’ll arrive there much more quickly.”
She shook her head. “For a clueless male, you have a wicked sense of humor.”
“I’m working on it. I’ve downloaded Earth’s movies to watch.”
“Oh God!” She thought back to what she had seen over the decades. “Just stay away from Rogue One. It’s too damned sad at the end.”
“Too late.”
“Didn’t it just bite?”
“What is in the bag?”
Julianna grabbed the bag and pulled out
a bottle of amber liquid and a small shot glass. “This is my going-away present to myself.”
“I fail to understand that.”
“Because you don’t understand females.”
“No one understands females. I have that on very good authority.”
“Who told you that?” she asked, pouring herself a shot and tossing it back. “One, to give the flames a good start.” She poured a second shot, then tossed it back quickly again. “Two, to get them solid in your belly.”
“God.”
“What?” She stopped after she finished her third pour. “What’s God?”
“The authority who explained no one understands females.”
She lifted her glass to the screen, and used one of her fingers to point to it. “You are so full of shit,” she told him before she downed the third shot. “And a third to prove the effort is underway.”
She put the shot glass down and sat down hard, forgetting how pitiful the cushions were. “OWWW!” she moaned, leaning forward and rubbing her ass. “That’s going to leave a mark.” Looking at the bottle in her hand, she said. “I think the fourth is going to be a bigger pour.”
An hour later, Julianna refused the offer to call someone to help her walk back to her room. “I’m barreely slurring me speeeeech!” she told him as she wiped another tear from her eye. “I’ll be fine. Those damned namosites don’t let me really enjoy the liquor. I’ll be mostly sober by the timmme I’m fine.” She shook her head. “No, by the time I’m home.”
She made it out of the ship on her own, and he watched her walk back to the dock’s hatch.
He whispered into the bridge, his voice melancholy. “You aren’t the only one who cries themselves to sleep, Julianna.”
He shut down the lights, leaving the one over the chair she had sat at on. It allowed him to play the tapes and imagine her presence one more time.
—
Three hours later, the alcohol completely burned out of her system, Julianna opened the email that Admiral Thomas had sent her after their return from taking down the Leath.
It read:
Julianna,
I have spoken with both ADAM and ArchAngel II. Both agree with your assessment that Ricky Bobby should step out of the military due to his ascendance. We will provide him with appropriate work which will support his growth while being sensitive to his needs.
Per your request, your involvement has been kept out of the records.
Sincerely,
Admiral B. Thomas
Julianna reached up and wiped a tear from her face, then said into the quiet of her room, “You weren’t supposed to leave me and traipse across the fucking universe, you bastard. You were supposed to stay close.” Her shoulders started to shake. “So damned close.”
She shut down her tablet and collapsed on her bunk, not even bothering to get undressed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
QBS Shinigami, Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned
I can feel them, but I can’t discern where they are, TOM informed Baba Yaga.
Presently, one hand holding onto the hatch’s side as it hovered three hundred feet above the ridge of the valley below, she looked downward.
The black ship was motionless, and the figure had on black armor and a helmet. She carried two pistols, a sword, and a belt with pouches on it.
She didn’t want a cloak to hamper her movements, since she wasn’t playing Tabitha with lots of gadgets today.
Her red eyes flitted from location to location beneath her, studying the clumps of trees that blocked her view. She could see a few large carnivorous-looking creatures some distance away from the grassy plain beneath her ship.
The river, about a quarter mile away, was about thirty yards across on average, although there were some narrow areas that rushed through a few clumps of rocks then opened up again.
She wondered if there were a piranha equivalent in those waters.
Her feral grin was hidden by the helmet, but going down there without it would have been the ultimate in asshat stupidity.
She was angry, not stupid, after her experience on Devon.
“I hope those fuckers aren’t pulling my leg,” she hissed.
What are you expecting, a welcome sign? TOM asked. As a side note, most Kurtherians can lie but they can’t create substantive and convoluted strategies. That is why they engage with other sentients.
“Like humans?”
Exactly, TOM agreed. He paused a moment before adding, Wow, that didn’t come out right.
“I’ll leave it for another time,” she said. “Sounds like we could unpack that response for a month.”
TOM gave a mental shrug. Anytime next millennium works just fine.
She turned around and walked back into the ship to grab an extra power pack, then, locking it into her suit, she walked back to the open hatch.
And kept going walking right out of the ship into the empty air beyond.
She floated down to the plain beneath her, not even bothering to bend her knees for the soft landing. She confirmed she had at least fifty percent power left on the pack, so she left it in place and headed some fifty steps south to look at some indentions she had spotted in the ground.
Coming up on the first, she knelt down and put a hand into it. “Recent, and probably a ship.”
>>Based on the distance between the indentations and unusual layout for something natural, it was almost certainly a ship.<<
“You ever get the idea,” she hissed as she stood up, “that the enemy has upped their game?”
This time TOM wasn’t so glib, Yes, and I can’t say I like it.
She looked around. Neither do I.
Inside her helmet there were over four hundred orange icons representing movement of some sort. This valley was rife with wildlife, most of it probably antagonistic toward her.
Well, she was crunchier on the outside with the armor than she was on the inside.
“Tom?”
Hmmm?
“How fast do nanocytes heal someone?”
Depends on power, of course, and the availability of organic matter that would benefit the healing. Why?
“I just had a horrible thought. What if someone got swallowed and they were in a stomach with a slow-acting acid?” She continued to turn her head and look around. “Someone like me.”
How about we focus on the present danger and save the wandering mind for another time?
“That’s how my mind is working at the moment.” She looked behind her. There were four orange dots heading in her direction from the northwest. “You got anything?”
Only that I feel two minds, have no location to give you, and get a vague sense of a third.
“Vague sense?” She spotted four lumbering beasts as they pushed through the foliage about three hundred yards away and looked at their heads, comparing them to the trees they just crushed. “I’m thinking fifteen to twenty feet tall.”
>>Twenty-two feet tall.<<
“That’s my AI,” she said, pulling out her Jean Dukes and dialing them up to eleven. “Insanely accurate and yet not helpful whatsoever.”
>>Hey, I didn’t exclaim the two in front were twenty-two feet four inches tall on the right, and twenty-one feet and seven inches on the left.<<
Baba Yaga smirked. A long time ago she’d had to explain to ADAM he needed to give humans an approximate answer sometimes or it just sounded wrong.
“I take that back, it was mostly accurate,” she admitted and then tagged the four beasts in her HUD with a filter to warn her if they came within a hundred yards. “And yet, still not very helpful.”
Her sense of doubt and unease was growing. It had been a niggling little thing when she had dropped down, but now in the middle of this arena of grass, it was starting to grow.
She started walking away from the four beasts. The Shinigami had moved higher, but was easily visible about a thousand feet up.
Checking her HUD for the four creatures, she looked toward the trees in
frustration. “So, what? Do we just stand here waiting for them? I’m not playing that game.” She looked toward the opposite tree line. “Shinigami, give me four one-pound pucks at random locations around the valley. Try not to hit any creatures if possible.”
Three seconds later the first puck slammed into the ground a half-mile from her, then three more vibrations as much felt as heard came quickly after.
That was when the shit got real.
Kurtherian Ship K’galeth
The three Leath watched the monitors, the sensors slamming into action when four explosions of some sort sent plants, dirt, and the occasional tree high into the air around the valley.
Torik, Third of the Six, watched the locations, discerning no shape or logic behind them. “She is firing blind, and that is not logical.”
“It is perhaps chaos math,” Var’ence, Sixth of the Six, answered him. “Or there are reasons behind the locations we do not understand at this point.
Levelot remained quiet.
Planet Vel’aisle, Valley of the Damned
The four beasts headed in her direction. “Oh shit!” She considered dropping them where they were, but it didn’t seem like enemy action so she started running perpendicular to the massive creatures.
For a moment they continued their headlong path, then turned to follow her.
“Well, shit,” she spat, and raised her pistols. She shot the lead beasts four times in their heads and the first two fell. The back two tried to dodge the rolling carcasses before gore exploded as the Jean Dukes opened their skulls. They slammed into their herd buddies and went down as well.
The four creatures were splayed on the ground from fifty to seventy-five yards away from her.
>>Incoming!<<
Baba Yaga looked around to see a large group of orange beasts making their way into the grasslands from the south. “What the hell are they doing?”
Chess, TOM answered.
“Thoughts?” she answered.
It’s them or you, and they don’t mind using whatever is at hand to make sure it is you.
“This fucking sucks!” she grated out. “Shinigami, lay waste to the herd.”
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