Serendipity stared at them for one frozen moment. Then she turned to Porsche.
“Fifteen months,” Serendipity said.
“Now wait a minute,” Leonid said. “Sirius is right. There’s no need—”
“Fifteen months,” Serendipity repeated. “You come back. Right here—”
“Seren, you’ll be stranded,” Porsche warned. “Between the pressure and the risk of aftershocks, no ship with a conventional drive will risk coming here. Until that hole is leaving the system, you will be on your own. Besides, Sirius is right. This is not your fight—”
“I’m making it my fight,” Serendipity said. “I’m staying so that these children don’t die.”
“We’re not children,” Leonid growled.
“Staying, Leonid, so that Toren won’t build a world where four thousand generations of women grow up under a man’s thumb,” she said. “Tell me Toren won’t do that. Tell me you can stop him. Tell me that leaving doesn’t mean that I’m leaving this world to be designed by a bunch of babies who don’t know anything!”
Leonid didn’t meet her glare. After a moment, Porsche spoke.
“Honorable intentions, but your diplomacy could be refined.”
“You didn’t raise a diplomat,” Serendipity said. “I’m a warrior.”
Porsche stared at her, a smile growing on her face. Then she shot out her hand.
“Your memories,” she said. Serendipity pulled her hand back, but her grandmother pressed forward, glowering. “If you die here I have to be able to rebuild you, or your mother will kill me. Give me your recent memories or I’m taking you home. End of discussion.”
Serendipity stared at Porsche’s hand, then took it. She held it briefly, feeling the tingle as electrotensor fields interpenetrated and data flowed; then, when her metaconscience let her, she drew her hand back, feeling oddly like she’d gotten more from the exchange than Porsche had.
“Don’t you go make some ghastly copy of me,” she said. “I’m not going to die here.”
“That’s my girl,” Porsche said. “Right enough, step back. It’s time.”
—————
Serendipity watched her grandmother unsling her saddlebags and withdraw a tough metal prong, a military farstaff. Wordlessly, she roped out a resonator coil upon the deck, set the prong in the center of it, and released a ball of light, which quickly expanded to encompass her.
“Well,” Serendipity said. “Good-bye, Gramama.”
“Till we meet again,” Porsche said, voice echoing inside the shimmering bubble. Then the armored demigod that Serendipity had run nine thousand light years from smiled at her. “I’d say make me proud, but you already have. Always have. Good luck, Seren—and God bless.”
With a flash of light, Porsche was gone.
The seven of them stood there, staring, at the pattern of frost upon the deck.
“You could have gone with her,” Andromeda said. “Really, why didn’t you, Seren?”
Serendipity took a deep breath. She thought she’d been committed before. Now she felt like she should be committed. But she had what she wanted: a world to build, people to help, work to do, her own mark to make—without her grandmother looking over her shoulder.
She saw a bruise on Andromeda’s cheek. “Let’s have a look at that,” she said, stepping over to the saddlebags Porsche had left for them and motioning for Andromeda to join her. Surely her grandmother had packed a medical blade. “And it’s Serendipity.”
“I don’t know,” Leonid said, stepping up beside her. “Seren. I like that.”
“What did she leave us?” Sirius said, joining them in rooting through the supplies.
“Our own world,” Serendipity said, raising a medical blade. “Let’s make the best of it.”
About The Author
By day, Anthony Francis programs search engines and emotional robots; by night, he writes science fiction and draws comic books. He received his PhD in artificial intelligence from Georgia Tech and currently works in research at the ‘Search Engine That Starts With A G’. He’s the author of the award-winning urban fantasy novel FROST MOON starring magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost, as well as its sequels BLOOD ROCK and the forthcoming LIQUID FIRE. He lives in San Jose with his wife and cats but his heart will always belong in Atlanta.
You can follow Dakota Frost online:
http://www.dakotafrost.com/
http://www.facebook.com/dakotafrost.
You can follow Serendipity online:
http://www.facebook.com/serendipitythecentaur
Or on Anthony’s blog at
http://www.dresan.com/
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