by Adam Gaffen
“Wait. She can feel them somewhere?” asked Kendra.
Another moment. “Yes; she says they feel odd, but she can sense their, um. Sorry, this is all still new. Thoughts? Emotions? Souls? Okay, she means souls, near as I can make out.”
“We have souls?” said Diana with a hint of awe.
“Of course you do,” Kendra said with an air of finality. “But if it takes a treecat to convince you, well, who am I to judge? In any case, Hunter, we’re honored to have you here with us and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship.”
The ‘cat chirruped once in agreement, or at least what Kendra took for agreement, and she moved on.
“Captain Resler, welcome back, and congratulations. You currently hold the record for the longest mission in Starfleet history, both in duration and distance. Fortunately for you, planning, or lack thereof, doesn’t count against you.” Muted chuckles rose around the table.
“Thank you, Admiral. It’s good to be home.”
“I imagine. I’m looking forward to hearing your report in person, after you’ve had a few days to recover.”
“At the Admiral’s convenience,” Chloe said.
“Hecate, have you had a chance to determine Defiant’s status?”
“I sure did Kendra, I had my network interfacing with Nerio almost as soon as they docked, and boy let me tell you they did a really amazingly amazing job on the in-flight repairs, they could be used as a textbook example, in fact that’s not a bad idea if Engineer Windell will do it, even if she won’t I’m still going to download all the logs from Nerio and put something together because they really could have screwed the pooch at least a dozen times but didn’t!”
“And I’m sure it’s all in their reports, but what condition is the ship in?”
“Oh, she needs work, a full maintenance cycle at least, but I can get my bots working on it as soon as you give the word, it will take a couple weeks but then she’ll be back in absolutely primo shape!”
“Two weeks? Captain?”
“I’m sure my crew and officers would appreciate some downtime, Admiral. Two weeks will be perfect.”
“And you take some too. Officers get leave, you know.”
“Aye, Admiral. After I get everything started and get you your report.”
“Fair enough. Jordan, how is the investigation coming?”
The young woman still looked somewhat shell-shocked. After Montana’s death she’d been yanked from her position assisting on Luna and dropped into the chaos on Njord. As Montana’s designated successor she’d been handed the reins to an organization which had been tossed into disarray. Three days later she was starting to make headway, but...
“I haven’t been able to pull too much together yet, Admiral,” she answered, her usually mild southern accent much more pronounced under stress. “At least, not more than what Admiral Whitmore’s teams already did. We’re running in-depth checks on all the activities of the various Artemis transplants now, looking for connections which shouldn’t exist and running them down. So far, though, it looks like he acted alone.”
“And Taylor?”
“Clean. He was duped as much as anyone; he really believed Dent had genuinely come over to the Federation’s side.”
Whitmore shook her head. “I should have known better; I knew Colin for years. He was always duplicitous, maybe not in an obvious way but he always seemed to end up ahead.”
“Not going to make an issue of it, Davie,” Kendra replied. “Blame is for the past. We have to look forward. Speaking of, are the troops underway?”
“They are. A few minor bobbles but nothing serious and we’re easily on target for our arrival date.”
“Good. Lieutenant Gries, nice to see you up and around.”
The Marine lieutenant flexed his injured leg, now almost restored to full use. “Thank you, Admiral. I never would have expected to be out of a cast, let alone preparing to lead an assault, in twelve days. Your nanobots can work miracles!”
“Not mine, but I’ll pass it along. Do you have the full roster for the drop?” She and Whitmore had already gone ten rounds earlier about both her and Cass’s inclusions into the plan, and the update had been sent to Gries.
“Yes, Admiral; I had some questions about the personnel selection?”
“I can give you five minutes after this meeting to discuss it.”
Gries nodded.
“I think we’re just about done. Davie, how do you plan to deploy our starships?”
“I didn’t plan on Defiant returning in time, so the fact she’s down for repairs doesn’t impact us much. After the rest of the biologicals are transferred, I want to dispatch Enterprise to retrieve the al-Battani crew. She’s large enough to carry them all while not costing us much in terms of firepower. Sorry, Captain.”
Alley waved it off. She knew how vastly out-classed her ship was when compared with the newer starships. She still wouldn’t trade commands on a bet.
Davie concluded, “This will leave D2 and Endeavour in-System.”
“Only two? Are you sure that’s enough?”
“More than sufficient, Admiral, for the forces we will be facing.”
“You’re in charge of military deployments.”
“Yes, I am,” she said with a hint of steel.
“Point taken.” She swept her eyes around the table, looking for unasked questions, and saw none.
“This is it,” she said, softly at first. “This is the knockout blow. We’ve been struggling against Artemis, no, that’s not right. We’ve been struggling against the will and whim of a single woman, Vasilia Newling, for nearly two years. We’ve reached out and extended the hand of peace, only to have it slapped away. No more.”
Now she reached into her acting bag of tricks and let her voice project across the room. “We’re done. I’m done. And when the dust settles from this final battle, people, there will only be us.”
She laid her hands on the table, bracing herself forward. “But in the end this isn’t about right or wrong, good or evil, us or them. This is about our future, our children and grandchildren and giving them the chance to experience the broadest possible future. A future which is no longer just about our race.”
Hunter looked at her curiously then, in a gesture she’d obviously picked up from her human, nodded.
“We have a duty to them to finish this. It seems a lifetime ago, but Aiyana and I were dead serious when we pledged ‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor’ to this dream, to this future. Alley, you were there; so were you, Kiri, Kyran, Shannon. Others were here but are now gone; some who are here today won’t see the finish. I can face the possibility of my own death more easily knowing, should I die, my death will have meant something.”
She straightened. “We are all here today because we believe in a dream. It might have started as my dream, but I no longer own it. It belongs to you and all those who serve alongside you and all of their families. It belongs to our extra-planetary families in the Asteroids and on Titan.”
She nodded to the avatars of Tamara and Kira.
“It belongs to our non-carbon-based families.”
She nodded to Hecate, Diana, and Minerva.
“And it belongs to our non-Terrestrial families.”
A nod to Hunter.
“You are now, all, my ohana. My family. Nobody gets left behind, nobody gets forgotten. And together we cannot fail. We will not fail, as long as a single one of us is standing and continuing the fight.” She took a deep inhale to cover an incipient sniffle before finishing with a crooked grin. “It applies to dreams, too, you know.“
She took in the compartment one more time, wondering if she’d see everyone again, which seats would be empty the next time they met. Whether they’d be looking at her empty chair, or Davie’s, or Shannon’s.
“That’s all I have. Gries, you have your five minutes.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Low Earth Orbit; Habitat Njord
Stardate 12009.
13
It was close but they made Lynch’s deadline.
Every single hull had been successfully converted into the largest, crudest kinetic energy weapons ever built.
One by one their idiot guidance computers evaluated their current position and speed. They calculated the proper course to achieve intercept at the designated time, just over twenty-four hours distant. The optimal courses were computed, checked, sent groundside for confirmation, and finally irrevocably programmed into the systems.
One by one the clamps, which had held the former ships on their boosted flight atop the Orion plate, released. A few puffs of gas, here and there, to correct for minor discrepancies in orbit.
Then the first rockets lit and the former U.S.S. Truxtun headed out on its course. Moments later a second, then a third, followed suit. Inside thirty minutes all the hulls had launched. The final one to join the fray was the massive, ponderous hull of the former aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Doris Miller, the second carrier to be deployed.
Their programming was intended to deceive. First they would orbit Earth several times at their 1500-kilometer height before plunging into a close swoop past the planet, engines delivering all the power they could to create a ‘slingshot’ effect when they emerged and took up their final path, one which would intercept the Terran Federation’s habitat from behind its orbital path.
Only then did the boosters which had been attached to the underside of the Orion plate fire. They weren’t nearly enough to create an immediate delta vee which would threaten anyone, but they were long-duration and would operate continuously. No fancy maneuvers for the plate; it was simply going to take its kilotonnes of steel and slam into whatever the hulls left intact.
THE DEPARTURE OF THE hulls into their orbit didn’t go unnoted. Diana watched everything within range of her sensors, absolutely everything. Not everything received the same degree of scrutiny; it couldn’t.
Priorities had to be programmed, even for an AI as capable and powerful as Diana. Running a habitat eight kilometers long required much of her attention, after all. The various tasks she was asked to perform by her human inhabitants were perhaps individually trivial. When multiplied by the number of requests, though, another substantial portion of her capacity was absorbed. Then came the purely internal considerations; after all, AI’s were designed to be both curious and introspective.
Diana had spent considerable time in recent days pondering Kendra’s declaration that of course she had a soul.
She’d never thought of having a soul before.
She was a machine.
A complex machine, perhaps. Arguably one of the most potent and advanced versions of her kind.
But a machine, nonetheless.
She ran on programming. She remembered being awakened and activated, knowing immediately the purpose she’d been called into existence to fulfill, and how did she know it? It was in her memory, recorded and preserved for when she woke.
Yet.
She could also remember waiting eagerly for the next time one of her people talked to her, during the construction of the habitat which had been her original body. Back then it was usually Kyran. They interacted with her the most, being intimately involved in all phases on the build. Yet she realized it was Kendra’s interactions she particularly savored, and it was this difference she examined now.
Kyran was always polite but uninterested; to them she was a voice-activated tool and little more. But Kendra always talked to her as a person, and she anticipated Kendra’s voice most.
A soul.
What an interesting concept.
If she had a soul, did it mean she was alive?
If she were alive, could she die?
She’d never contemplated death.
She knew she could be deactivated, turned off. It had happened, briefly, when she’d transferred from the old habitat to this one.
She was awake, then a timeless moment of nothing, then she was awake in her new home.
Had she died? No; she didn’t think so.
She didn’t know what death was like, though, so had no referent for comparison. But there had to be a difference between unawareness and death. Humans were unaware for huge chunks of their lives, she’d observed, but it wasn’t death, it was simple sleep.
So.
It was quite the tricky problem, one worthy of her attention, and she found herself turning to it more and more often.
The launches, therefore, went unremarked. After the third orbit the new satellites had been classified as ‘routine’ and shunted even further down the priority list.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tycho Under; Approaching Earth Orbit
Stardate 12009.13
“Tycho control, this is the Merchant Trader Dutton, over.” The voice over the radio was crackly and distorted.
“Dutton, Tycho control, we read you five by two, you are garbled.”
“Understood.” There was a pause. “Any better?”
“Negative, Dutton. Five by two.”
“Great,” muttered the voice. “Tycho control, request approach vectors for landing.”
“Negative, Dutton. Tycho Spaceport is closed to all traffic at this time.”
“Dammit, when did this happen? I don’t have fuel to divert to another port!”
“Not my problem, Dutton. We got pretty shaken up a couple weeks ago; where have you been?”
“Cargo run. I’ve got a hold full of product which needs delivery to a buyer in Tycho, it’s tied up all my available capital, and I don’t have enough fuel to hang around and wait!”
“I’m sorry, Dutton, but we are closed to traffic!”
Hoots sounded across the open circuit.
“Tycho control, you hear that? It’s my low fuel alarm. I am officially declaring an emergency. You’d better get anything you give a damn about out of my way ‘cause I’m coming in hot!”
A fractional moment of silence from Tycho, then: “Roger, Dutton, you are declaring an emergency at this time. You are cleared to land on pad –”
“Tycho, I don’t have fuel to jigger around! Just tell me what’s under me and I’ll put down there!”
The ungainly ship was visibly wobbling as the rockets failed intermittently but the base course was true.
“Pad Seven Charlie will be clear. And if you’re screwing with me, so help me Jim, I will rip your eyeballs out and use them to chill my drink!”
“I wouldn’t screw with you, Parry,” said ‘Jim’. “You come out and check my tanks yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“Don’t have the time. Altitude 10 kilometers, rate of descent 637 MPS.”
“Too fast and too low, got you, Parry. Hold on.”
The retros flared again, for once evenly, then subsided after several seconds.
“Better. Seven kilometers, 129 MPS. I have you at sixty seconds to impact.”
“I’ve got enough juice for one more solid burn, and then maybe a single correction,” said ‘Jim’.
There was silence over the circuit as the vicinity of pad Seven Charlie was cleared. Finally Parry spoke again.
“Ten seconds; I have you up to 209 MPS at 2 kilometers.”
“Five seconds to braking. Three, two, one, firing.”
All six retros fired on time, quickly shearing away most of the velocity, then one sputtered and failed. Aboard the freighter alarms whooped as the computer compensated for the loss of thrust.
Another failed, and the freighter lurched before recovering.
“Two hundred meters, 28 MPS,” called Parry.
“Come on, hold on you piece of junk! Landing legs deployed!” ‘Jim’ could be heard over the open circuit. On the ground the controllers could see the landing struts extending outward, preparing for the landing. At least something was working.
“One hundred, 17 MPS.”
Two more flared and died.
“Not gonna be pretty! All hands to crash positions!”
“Twenty, 7 MPS.”
With a f
inal shudder the last two retros quit and the Dutton dropped the final ten meters to the surface. Struts groaned in the vacuum, the sound resonating through the hull of the cargo ship. Bulkheads distorted and a seam popped under the strain.
“Venting atmosphere!”
Around the ship the crew grabbed for helmets, none more than an armlength away, as emergency hatches failed to close and the air whooshed out into vacuum. The moisture-laden air crystallized as it jetted outward and gradually dissipated, forming a temporary cloud. In minutes almost the entire hull was in vacuum. Only the hold and one other compartment, where the hatches ‘miraculously’ functioned, retained their atmosphere.
“Dutton, do you read?”
“Roger, Tycho control. We’re down.”
“We noticed,” Parry responded dryly. “Casualties?”
“A few bumps but nothing requiring immediate attention.”
“And the ship?”
“We’re assessing damages. Still want to check my tanks?”
“Negative, Dutton.”
“I’ll need priority on the cargo transfer. Some of my cargo is perishable, and until we can hold air again I need it safely stored.”
“You’ll need to arrange storage on your own, Jim. I can’t run interference.”
“Aw, come on! I don’t need it for long, just a day; that’s when the buyers are supposed to come and pick it up.”
The sigh wasn’t supposed to be audible. “I’ll see what I can do. Out.”
‘Jim’ turned to his handler, an agent from the former MinInt.
“Told you he’d buy it.”
"МЫ ПО РАСПИСАНИЮ?"
Are we on schedule?
“Да, товарищ адмирал.”
Yes, comrade Admiral.
Georgi Beregovoi didn’t acknowledge his subordinate. It had been a moment of weakness to ask the question rather than declare the fact, accurate or not, and he cursed himself.
Not now! Not when Mars is on the cusp of becoming a true partner in the Union, and you’re the man who will secure his place!