“I believe we are still on Mars, are we not?”
“Yes, but that isn’t the issue. Your health is far more problematic than our location,” Edison said. “It would be a twenty-four-day space flight, and the ship we have available is small and will be crowded.”
“For the sake of the Union and trying to maintain peace, I will endure whatever I must,” he said. “I am sure the threats to peace are far more dangerous than what I will face personally. I know Chancellor Drake and Chancellor Roja may not believe this, but the best interests of the Union have always been my priority, even if I have disagreed with them on what those interests may be.”
“Then I’ll pass the word, and we will do this as soon as Dr. Sokat says you’re well enough to travel,” he said.
“I am well enough now. Tell my doctor that I will be leaving immediately.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gateway Colony: L-4 Prime:
The new Gateway Colony was not the largest human occupied place in the solar system by far, but it was undeniably the most impressive. It stood on a barely visible domed island rising out of a receding ocean of cryofluids and surrounded by a sky of vibrant dancing fog. Three huge pillars supported the structure around a center tower with the Jakob Waltz itself encased inside.
The only part of the ship still exposed was the top two decks, the communications dishes, and the laser turrets. The rest of the structure was made of the same null-metal material as the Tacra Un itself and reflected light like a glazed layer of fused regolith.
Two platforms and an enclosed hangar deck capable of parking dozens of the Armstrong’s shuttlepods, or even a small freighter replaced the original landing structure that Rocky had fabricated. One of the permeable walls surrounded the hangar, making it possible, once a shuttle landed, for its passengers to open the door and walk out into an earth normal environment.
The thing that amazed Jeph, when they moved into the new colony, was that his administrative office and his adjacent residence had local gravity. That meant he had no need to wear his PSE except when he was in the common areas. Shona and Alyx had similar environments in their personal quarters and a private hall connected them with the interior of the ship and the light gravity workspaces inside it.
Anju had almost cried in gratitude for them.
After four years living in the bottle of the Jakob Waltz, it was incredibly spacious.
The three stacked structures that surrounded the central column, were each dedicated to specific functions and interconnected at several levels. The first was residential, the second was administrative and educational, and the third was life support and recreation. Together they could house over 500 residents and provide everything they needed to stay indefinitely.
Jeph stood in his new office, staring at the display that covered one entire wall. It showed a diagram of the new colony including where everyone was inside it. It also showed him where everyone was in the language matrix or even where his mapping team was in the larger Kanahto structure. He’d stared at the display for hours. He didn’t need to know how it worked to appreciate the power of the technology at his fingertips.
“The chancellor and her party are about to land,” Shona said. Since they no longer needed a navigator for the Waltz, she’d become their com officer. It was well below her training, but she never let her disappointment show in her tone. Her voice came over the same com system that functioned seamlessly through the entire colony and the Tacra Un.
“Bring them to my office if you will,” he said.
“I’ve got four more shuttles to land once they get inside,” she said.
“It’s alright I am in MedBay,” Anju said. “I’ll go up and meet them. Do you want them to get the tour first or should I just bring them to you?”
“Bring them here first,” he said. “And I’d like you and Danel to join us too.”
“I’m on my way,” Danel said.
“That will take some getting used to,” Jeph said. “How does the com know who to include in a conversation?”
“The Tacra Un has not explained that functionality,” Dutch said. “I can assume that the technology employed in the new colony facilities will be the subject of much conjecture.”
“Yah,” he said. “I am beginning to understand what a caveman would have felt like if he had suddenly landed in the modern world. Maybe Anju is right about how humanity would react. It’s rather overwhelming.”
“I understand,” Dutch said. “I am suffering with some of the same issues. The Tacra Un has granted me access to more of its systems than it previously allowed and I am making discoveries continuously.”
“Really?” he asked. “Like what?
“I have determined that we can adjust the local gravity across a portion of your office if you wish to be hospitable,” it said.
“We can?”
“Affirmative. I can divide the floor into sectors and provide ekahta-che cata nu,” it said.
“Less gravity below me?” As he watched a yellow line appeared on the floor beneath his desk and across to the area under one of the seats at his conference table. “Gravity on the side of the line you occupy is local. Gravity on the other side is artificial at 9.8 meters per second squared. As long as you remain on your side of the line you do not need your exosuit.”
“Can that be done everywhere inside?” he asked, shaking his head and laughing.
“I will endeavor to determine the granularity of the ekahta process. I do not know at this time as it was not a specified design objective.”
“It isn’t important, but I was thinking how dangerous it might be if I forgot and stepped over the line.”
“I understand,” Dutch said. “Until you have internalized that as part of your environment, it might be advisable to wear your PSE and leave it in standby mode. Its reaction time would be adequate to protect you from a full-gravity fall.”
“Agreed,” he said, toggling his suit to the right setting.
The door to his office disappeared open and Anju stepped in, followed by the Chancellor, Admiral Nakamiru, and Captain Jeffers. A second later Danel and Dr. Jameson brought up the rear. The three visitor’s eyes all showed the same overwhelmed reaction that he still struggled to hide in his own face. Jameson had already toured most of the new colony structure, so he grinned as he watched the others’ reactions.
“Welcome to wonderland,” Jeph said, stepping forward and stopping just his side of the gravity change. “The first thing I want to warn you about is the line on the floor.” He pulled a thinpad out of his pocket and let it go. It drifted toward the floor. Snagging it before it had dropped more than a few centimeters, he then pitched it to the table between them. It slammed down hard once it crossed the line.
“This is unbelievable,” the chancellor said.
“Not really,” he said. “I think we need to get used to it. This is what our future looks like.”
Tsiolkovskiy FleetCom Center: FleetCom Headquarters: Luna:
“The party is about to begin,” Ylva Visser said as she walked into the officers’ lounge and up to the admiral.
He nodded and pointed toward the table. He was looking at the main screen images on his thinpad. “I know.”
“The latest trajectory solution puts fifty-two ships within 10,000 klicks of here,” she said. “The first ones will be at zero relative in about an hour.”
“If they keep braking,” he said. “That’s going to make for a serious blockade if they just park there.”
“Ja,” she said, sitting down. “That’s enough ships to pinch our multicruisers hard, if they want to get ugly about it.”
“Where are the rest of them heading?” he asked, finishing the last bite of his meal and washing it down with a swallow of gojuice.
“Galileo or lunar orbit. Most of them are still a little hot to drop to orbit. Approach tracking says they look to be bending Earthward and then finishing their braking on the other side,” she said.
“What about that bru
iser?” He said tapping his screen and zooming in on one ship close to the back edge of the second battle group. “What is that anyway?”
“The Clown Car,” she said, leaning forward to look at it over his shoulder. “In its previous life, it was a traveling amusement center. I had Boss scrub the recycled ship records and all it came up with that even vaguely resembled that superstructure was a ship called the Baileyville.”
“A circus ship?” he said. He’d never seen one in person, but he’d seen pictures. “They don’t look like that normally.”
“It’s pretty heavily modified,” she said, nodding. “It’s likely to have a lot of reactor power and more than a small amount of living space. They’re designed to keep a huge audience in comfort for hours at a time. The main auditorium on the Baileyville seated over 20,000 people.”
“That could be converted into any number of things,” he said. “I wonder if it’s a troop carrier?”
She nodded. “It’ll have lots of hard points for lasers too, and they could have converted all the space that used to be animal kennels and performer quarters, to hangar decks. It could carry squadrons of interceptors.”
“Or dropships,” he said.
“It’s got twenty escorts and it’s falling behind the main group. It might be braking for lunar orbit,” she said.
“We might need to consider whether we can keep the multicruisers in place once they get here,” he said.
“I’d advise we pull them back to the Lagrange transfer stations now and see what they’re thinking, before we decide if we can push back into position.”
“Damn,” he said, looking up at her and sighing. “There’s no way this won’t get messy.”
Katana: Outbound, En Route to L-4 Trojan Cluster:
They ate in shifts, they slept in shifts, they showered together. Sixteen bodies crammed into a ship designed for six. Saf had pulled together a crew roster of augments based on potential skill requirements for a contact. She would have included several more in her mission plan but after they reached the normal crew capacity of the ship, Tana had added resistance at every extra body Saf had wanted to recruit.
Ultimately, it was Joe that drew the line at the upward limit of the life support equipment. As Edison climbed up onto the CrewDeck, he was again reminded that the life support gear was not designed to fight back against the thick pheromone fogbank kicked out by the genetically engineered members of the overstuffed ship. It didn’t help that none of them were even the least bit shy as they went about their morning routines oblivious to the need for clothing or the impact of their hormones on his merely mortal physiology.
Staring at the deck plating with a conscious effort, he made his way over to the galley and hoped to find a cup of suitable stimulant to help him get a grip on the morning. As he approached, the porcelain cup and saucer full of what looked to be real coffee, slid into his line of sight. He glanced up to see Kylla, her cheek aperture sporting what looked distractingly like a jewel-encrusted eyeball. He blinked several times before his brain also absorbed that she was wearing a flesh colored thinskin and not standing there naked with three eyes smiling at him.
“Morning is hard,” she said, winking.
“Not yet,” he said, realizing he should keep his mouth shut until he’d absorbed enough caffeine to think before he said actual words.
“Is fixable,” she said, winking in a way that left him wondering if she was serious.
He shook his head and pointed a finger at his chest. “Dustpile, remember?”
She laughed and handed him the cup. “Boss lady wants to yak at us. Sent me to get you up.”
“It’s working,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee and realizing he needed to drink more of it before it would work to keep his mouth behind his brain. He turned away to hide that he’d embarrassed himself again and scanned the crowded room. “Where is she?”
“Topdeck,” she said, bouncing past him and launching herself toward the ladder. She waited for him to catch up before she reached out and took the cup from him so he could concentrate on using both hands to climb. He sighed as she started up in front of him, leaving him no choice but to notice that her backside was as distracting as her front.
“Ah good you’re up,” Tana said as he pulled himself into the crowded upper deck.
“Not completely,” he said. “Oh god, stop me before I sin again,” he added with a groan as he bent himself into one of the open seats.
“I see it’s been a hard morning,” Saf said with a giggle.
“Please, just stop,” Edison said. “In all seriousness, don’t any of you have an off switch or something? How the frag can you get anything done with this much potential for distraction.”
“You get used to it,” Tana said, “Eventually. After we discovered what was going on, we looked for a way to reduce the pheromone production in the augments. It turned out to be a useful survival tool, so we left it alone.”
“Seems to me it would make things worse,” he said. “Doesn’t it start wars or something?”
“Actually, the opposite is true,” she said. “There used to be a species of baboon that used its sexuality to reduce stress and de-escalate fighting in their social organization.”
“You should try it, Eddy,” Saf said. “Stress will kill you.”
“At my age, sex might kill me,” he said.
“We could always experiment with that hypothesis … ” Kylla said before Edison shook his finger at her.
Changing the subject by sheer force of will, he said, “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
Saf swiveled her chair around and opened a display on one of the forward windows. A cluster of small rings appeared superimposed on space ahead of them.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The ghost fleet,” Tana said.
“Shit,” he swore under his breath.
“That was my thinking,” Saf said. “They’re above the ecliptic by several million klick so it’s possible they won’t see us as we go by. Even if they do, they won’t be able to catch us.”
“How many of them are there?” Edison asked.
“At least 600 ships. Maybe more,” she said. “They’re spread out over a million klick so we can’t tell if we’re seeing all of them. They are at the extreme range of our whiskers.”
“We should get a message to Quintana,” Edison said. “He needs to know they’re coming for him.”
“They aren’t,” Tana said. “They’re headed the same direction we are.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Inside the Kanahto: Tacra Un: L-4 Prime:
“The Shan Takhu were apparently firm believers in hands-on learning,” Chei said as he walked down a long aisle that ran between glass chambers of some indeterminate purpose.
“Why do you assume this is true?” Rocky asked.
“This looks like a lab of some sort,” he said, stopping in front of a pedestal similar to the ones in the language matrix amphitheater. He laid his hand on the flat surface and the display activated.
“Could be manufacturing facility,” she said. “Is similar to additive printing chamber.”
Ian stepped up beside Chei and ran a finger up the side of the display and nodded his head. Kanahto trana shanak-che, ahn shanak-Un.” The display changed, and he smiled. “Is not primer teaching, is advanced teaching. I have ahn wath. Here.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yah,” he said, pointing to a door at the far end of the chamber. “We are cata Hector. It is oola ahn.”
“Really?” Chei asked. “We’re below the Hector?”
“Then you know the function of this equipment?”
He shrugged. “It is only one I was allowed wath,” he said. “It ahn mostly medical.” He walked toward the far door and stopped at another chamber. Putting his hand on the pedestal control panel caused it to activate and the lights in the corresponding chamber flashed on. Chei and Rocky both stepped forward and stared. The object floating lifelessly
inside was Ian. Or at least it looked like him.
“What the frag is that?” Chei asked.
“Is me,” he said. “Not me as in me, really, but it ahn a tool of me.”
“A tool of you?”
“Yes it is my … proxy … is maybe the word,” he said, shrugging. “The crash knocked me out and I woke up here.” He slipped his hand along the edge of the screen and a table like thing materialized out of the floor beside the chamber. “I don’t know how long I was there, but when I could move, the proxy was inside there.”
“Must be hologram,” Rocky said. She had a hand-held scanner pointed at it, but was shaking her head.
“No. It ahn real,” Ian said. “But da-ahn alive.”
“So what does it do?”
“It heals for us,” Ian said, wrinkling his face like he did when he struggled with words.
“Heals for us?”
“Yah. When I am hurt, it absorbs hurt.” he said.
Chei shrugged and looked at Rocky. She looked as confused as he was. “It’s like spare parts, maybe?” he asked, looking back at Ian. “Cloned organs and such?”
Ian shook his head and pulled a multitool out of his pocket. He flipped it open and selected a cutting blade. “Watch the proxy,” he said as he pulled a slice across one of his fingertips with the knife. As they stared, the cut appeared on the proxy’s finger and Ian held his hand out to show them that it had disappeared on his own.
“What the frag?” Chei said.
“It absorbs my injury and heals for me,” he said. “It heals better, so the cut will be gone in a few hours.”
“You can’t die as long as this proxy is functioning?” Chei asked.
“I don’t know. I think it would have limits.” He shrugged.
“How does wound transfer to proxy?” Rocky asked, scanning his finger at close range.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But can transfer both directions.”
“What?”
“Proxy can do major … changes,” he said. “The chamber does the work on the proxy and then it … uploads… to the real person.”
“How do you know this?”
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