by M. D. Cooper
Cheeky laughed softly.
Cheeky considered what had made her say those words, and then decided that they were true. She did think Sabrina was wise.
Cheeky locked her eyes on Sabrina’s and nodded.
The next second, the nebula and starscape were gone…but they weren’t. The visuals had disappeared, but the expression of them was still present. It was organized in matrices of data, multidimensional arrays of information. It was more than facts and figures, it was poetry, emotion, concepts and beliefs.
Some of it was familiar to Cheeky; she often perused the underlying data structures of the information she used to fly the ship. But never it had contained anything more than uninspiring raw information before now.
Cheeky said, her voice a faint whisper.
Cheeky looked at Sabrina, her form overlaid with so much information about who she was, what she thought about a million subjects—the very essence of her being.
THE BRIEFING
STELLAR DATE: 10.07.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: River Station, Styx Baby-9
REGION: STX-B17 Black Hole, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
Sera walked into the briefing room and settled into a seat next to Cheeky and Sabrina, unable to miss that the two were holding hands.
She glanced at Finaeus, who was standing on the raised platform next to Earnest, their heads bent together as they flipped through a series of holoimages that she imagined must be notes and information for their presentation. He seemed focused on his work and entirely unperturbed by the display of affection between his wife and Sabrina.
“Stars, Sera,” Cheeky muttered. “Put your eyes back in your head, already.”
“But what about Finaeus?” she blurted, glancing at the man who was now stabbing his finger at the holodisplay and shaking his head.
“We’ve talked with him,” Sabrina said. “Everything’s fine.”
“It’s something that’s been coming for a while,” Cheeky added. “He and I still love each other, but our situations don’t really allow for spending a lot of time together. We had a good run—and we’re going to stay married—I’m just exploring AI stuff with Sabrina.”
“AI stuff?” Sera cocked an eyebrow.
Sera knew the basics of what that entailed, mainly that it was one of the steps in making new AIs. She wondered if that was what Sabrina and Cheeky were planning on doing, but decided not to pry.
She only replied with, “Ah.”
At that moment, she was distracted by the arrival of Krissy and several members of her command team, as they settled into the row behind Sera. They would not be directly involved in the mission, but everyone knew that there was a strong chance that things could go belly-up and the cavalry would need to be called to save the day.
Even if we succeed, we’ll probably still need to call them in, Sera mused.
She’d given a lot of consideration to what would happen after they defeated Airtha. It was her hope that the majority of people under the AI’s thrall would realize that they’d been on the wrong side and rejoin the rest of the Transcend without a fight.
But Sera knew that was little more than a dream. It was very likely that the Transcend would never reform as a single entity again.
Over the next five minutes, the rest of the strike team entered the room, and the low murmur of conversation filled the space as they waited for the briefing to begin.
Seraphina and Fina settled into seats on the far side of Cheeky and Sabrina, while Misha, Nance, and Flaherty all sat in the back row—rather, Flaherty stood behind the back row.
Katrina entered with her crew shortly afterward, a team consisting of Kirb, Carl, and Camille, all of whom had been with her since the beginning of her misadventures in Bollam’s World five centuries prior. They were joined by one of Katrina’s newer crewmembers—if a century aboard the Voyager made him ‘new’—a rather bulky, four-armed man named Elmer.
A grey pillar of light appeared to one side of the room, and Sera noted that it represented the Voyager’s AI, a rather staid individual named Troy. Tangel had informed Sera that despite his propensity to see the cup as half-full, he was one of the most reliable individuals she knew.
And tenacious as well, given what he’s been through.
Her attention was drawn by Kara’s entrance. The black-winged woman looked uncertainly around the room before shrugging and settling on Sera’s left.
Sera had rarely spoken with Kara prior to the events at New Canaan two years ago, but in the last few weeks, they’d found a common bond. Both of them had a lot of issues with their parents—or, parent, in Kara’s case—and had spent several late nights discussing their respective fathers.
Sera had to admit that she was also jealous of Kara’s wings. Now that she was no longer president, and Seraphina was expressing keen interest in running the Hand, she wondered if it was time to try a mod like Kara’s. The memory of the costume she wore at the Scipian gala she’d attended with Tangel came to mind, and she felt a smile grace her lips at the thought.
Her reverie was interrupted by the skittering sound of Malorie entering the room. The spider-woman moved to the back, where she climbed the bulkhead and settled in an upper corner.
Sera couldn’t help but notice Flaherty give the red arachnid a disapproving glare.
The last to enter were Jane and Roxy—and Carmen, who had agreed to her ‘sentence
’ and was now embedded in Jane. The two women shyly walked past the others and settled into the second-to-last row.
At the front of the room, Finaeus and Earnest looked up and surveyed the nineteen members of the strike force, along with Krissy and the five members of her command team.
“OK, now that we’re all gathered,” Finaeus said, sounding more tired than Sera had expected. “Let’s get started, because this is probably going to take all day.”
“You going to serve lunch?” Cheeky asked with a grin, and Finaeus shook his head. “When have you known me to skip a meal when it could be at all helped?”
“Skip meals all you want, but don’t start without us!” a voice said from the entrance, and Sera turned to see Iris stride into the briefing room, closely followed by Amavia.
Cheeky was on her feet in an instant, embracing the two women. “Stars! I had no idea you were coming!”
“Neither did we,” Iris replied with a laugh. “We were helping with the Aldebaran mess when Bob contacted us and told us to join this mission. He didn’t say why—you know how he is.”
“But when Bob says ‘Go’, you don’t ask questions,” Amavia added, her lips twisting as she spoke. “Or at least, I don’t—I’m still used to just being one of his appendages, I guess.”
Sera noticed the hint of longing in Amavia’s voice. She’d wondered how much the woman—at least the Amanda part—missed being one of Bob’s avatars, and it seemed that the draw was still there.
“OK, OK. Sit, sit, sit,” Finaeus said, making a shooing motion with his hands. “You’ve spent all of a week or so apart from your crew. The reunion needn’t be any great thing.”
Cheeky shot Finaeus a mock-scowl, but returned to her seat without further protest, while Iris and Amavia moved to the back of the room and settled next to Nance and Misha.
“Damn,” Earnest muttered as he looked out over the crowd. “Twenty-two. I’ll adjust the teams.”
Sera had gone over the plan with the two men the night before, but she suspected they’d made some tweaks in the interim. If there was one thing she knew about her uncle, it was that he liked to put his own stamp on everything.
Earnest was the more easy-going of the two, which she suspected was from centuries of being married to his rather demanding wife, Abby.
However it worked out, the two men were thick as thieves whenever fate brought them together. Though Sera knew that Earnest’s work building the Styx base—a feat completed so quickly via the use of his picotech—was nearly done, and that he was slated to go back to New Canaan in just a few days’ time.
Finaeus would be coming along to Airtha. He had insisted on it, and Sera hadn’t fought him. He had as much stake in seeing this through as any of them.
Her father—or rather the man who was in some way the donor of her genetic material—had also wanted to come on the mission, but the demands of taking over the reins of the Transcend didn’t allow for such an indulgence, and his request was really just something made for appearances.
At least that was how Sera felt about it.
She supposed that her attitude wasn’t terribly charitable. Though she’d tried to make a connection to Jeffrey Tomlinson, somehow she just couldn’t see him as anyone other than the cold, distant father who had raised her.
In many respects, Sera thought of Finaeus as her true father. He had been the most constant male authority figure in her formative years—and also one who had genuinely liked having her around.
As she watched her uncle square his shoulders in preparation for his presentation, she was sincerely glad that it was he and not Jeffrey who was coming to Airtha. Finaeus had made the ring, it was only fitting that he would be there to secure its future.
“OK, now that we’re all here,” he turned to gaze out the doorway, as though looking for any last-minute additions, “we’ll get started. Some of you may not know the full scope of what we’re trying to do, so I’ll give you the quick and dirty version, and then you can review the datum after the meeting.”
As he spoke, an image of the star and ring that both bore the name ‘Airtha’ appeared behind him.
“For those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with Airtha, the star is roughly one third a solar mass, and the ring has a radius of four million kilometers. I used to think it was the largest construct in the galaxy, but after all but stumbling upon Star City, I’ll reduce my hyperbole to simply say that it is one of the largest constructs in the galaxy. We built it from carbon we harvested from the star, and it’s a bit of a crowning achievement for me in beauty as well as size.”
Earnest coughed and gave Finaeus a sidelong look before taking over. “The salient point is that the ring’s surface area is over two hundred and fifty billion square kilometers, and with an average thickness of fourteen kilometers…well, as you can imagine, this is a hell of a target.”
“I prefer not to think of my magnum opus as a ‘target’,” Finaeus said bitterly.
“We all get that,” Earnest replied as he turned to look up at the ring. “Destroying the ring, as it turns out, wouldn’t be that hard. We’d just need to trigger an overrun in six of the Cri-En power plants.”
“Which would destroy the entire Huygens Star System,” Finaeus added. “And possibly damage spacetime in a rather unpredictable fashion.”
Earnest nodded. “I was just making a note, partially because we need to consider that Airtha herself may have a failsafe that will cause an overrun if she believes her death to be imminent.”
Finaeus opened his mouth like he was going to deliver a rejoinder, but then pursed his lips and nodded.
Jen commented privately to Sera.
Jen’s tone was nonchalant.
Sera nodded absently and turned her attention back to Finaeus as he described the locations of the Cri-En power generation facilities.
“The ring also draws power from the four pillars.” Finaeus highlighted four spires that stretched from the ring toward the star. “These hold the ring in place, and additionally draw considerable radiant energy, given their proximity to the Airthan Star. They also facilitate the magneto effect that gives the ring an extra level of protection from extra-solar energies for its impending departure from the Huygens System.
“Hitting Airtha’s nodes will be tricky, assuming she hasn’t moved them. When last I was on the ring, she had twenty-eight nodes. One at the base of each tower, one near each of the twelve major Cri-En facilities, and then another twelve spread around the ring. Because of the necessity of managing the ring’s position and power, I think she’ll not have moved the nodes at the Cri-En facilities, and probably not the ones at the towers, either.”
As he spoke, the node positions lit up on the holodisplay behind him, noting those that were unlikely to be moved and those that may not be in the same place as Finaeus originally put them.
“So what do we do when we hit her nodes?” Sera asked. “And which are better targets?”
Finaeus gave her a look that clearly said, ‘Don’t try to rush me’, before shrugging and glancing back at the holo. “Honestly, we just need to hit four. Doesn’t matter which—but we have to do it simultaneously, and without her knowing. If she sees you coming, she’ll just sunder those nodes, and you’ll waste your time.”
“So we should try to h
it more than four,” Krissy said from behind Sera. “As many as eight, if we can manage it.”
Sera shook her head. “That’s going to put most of the teams at only two people, and it also means we’ll need more AIs, since we won’t have enough if we split into eight groups.”
“We can increase the size of the strike force,” Krissy offered. “I’m sure you have Hand agents that would be more than capable of pulling off this operation.”
That had occurred to Sera as well, but she was more worried about Airtha discovering the operation than anything else.
“We could bump our numbers up a bit if we have to, but I’d rather not. The ring may be big, but Airtha will have eyes everywhere. We can put together five teams, with everyone having an AI in the group. Sabrina and Troy will remain on their ships and provide overwatch and coordination.”
“Seriously?” Sabrina said, looking around Cheeky to lock eyes on Sera. “I’ve been practicing a lot. I only got my frame’s head shot off that one time.”
“It’s the signal, Sabs,” Sera said with an apologetic look. “We can use data drops for messages, but if you maintain a solid connection between the ship and a frame, that’ll be like a big red arrow pointing at your team.”
“I guess…” Sabrina said and sat back. “I bet I could route the data stream well enough to hide it.”
“I’m sorry, Sabs,” Finaeus shook his head. “On some Joe Schmoe station out in the backend of nowhere, sure. But this is Airtha. We stand a fifty-fifty chance of her detecting a team already.”
“Let’s talk about how we’re going to destroy Airtha before we get deeper into deployments and teams,” Earnest suggested.
“Right,” Finaeus nodded. “You roll with it, you made the breakthrough.”
Earnest stepped forward. “After careful, and I do mean careful, examination of the shard of Airtha that Katrina procured, we managed to figure out a way to plumb the depths of her mind without fully waking her.”
The scientist turned and pushed the holo of the ring aside, and a new image sprang into its place. “This is an AI’s neural network—the sort we’d see in the Inner Stars, once the AI was properly liberated.”