by C. Gockel
Alaric frowned, and his gaze went to the path of Volka’s ship.
“She won’t be back for a while,” Sinclair said. “But their current mission is far less dangerous.”
Alaric glared at the android. He shouldn’t be surprised it had guessed the reason for his unease … but he was.
Leaning against the door frame, the android said in a clipped tone, “You don’t have to stay a prisoner in this tower, princess.” There was a note of irritation in his voice, and it put into Alaric’s mind a memory of Solomon after an accidental dunking in a pig trough, fur plastered flat and ears pinched back.
Alaric’s lips quirked at the mental image. “How did they pick you to be my minder?” he asked, turning away from the window. Why give a Luddeccean an android minder? It was counterintuitive.
A muscle—or synth muscle—jumped in the android’s jaw. Its—his—eyes dropped to the floor. In a tone as underwhelmed as Alaric’s greeting, the android grumbled, “I’ve asked myself that. Several times.”
Alaric tilted his head. “Your enthusiasm shines through.”
“Would you be enthused by the assignment?” the android asked.
Would Alaric like babysitting a valuable Galactican? Because babysitting was what this assignment was, wasn’t it? Even if they were trying to encourage Alaric to defect. If there positions were reversed, Alaric wouldn’t enjoy it at all.
Sighing, Sinclair said, “The Diplomatic Corps wanted someone with Luddeccean experience.”
Sinclair’s “Luddeccean experience” had included murdering at least one innocent civilian, whatever his later heroics had been, and his marriage to Admiral Noa Sato, Luddeccean by birth. The admiral would have been the obvious choice, if she weren’t busy. However, Sinclair had other advantages. Alaric narrowed his eyes. “And unlike your wife, you can kill me.”
Sinclair grinned broadly. “Charming that you think my wife couldn’t kill you.”
Scowling, Alaric berated himself internally. Of course she could. She had to be cybernetically enhanced; she was over one-hundred-years-old and looked no more than fifty. She was probably stronger and faster than Alaric, possibly able to breathe underwater and other such gifts. He felt a stab of jealousy. For a moment he could not speak.
Shaking it off, he returned his focus to Sinclair. The android’s grin had morphed into a look of bemusement. Alaric’s shoulders fell. If they’d given him a minder that was a simpering sycophant, he would be annoyed. If they’d tried to seduce him with a cyborg or android with carefully crafted sexual appeal, he’d be insulted. But this creature—machine—was blunt and logical. Things he looked for in friends. Perhaps the Republic’s choice of minders had been more devious than he’d initially given them credit for.
Time Gate 1’s spin put a sliver of Earth—the cradle of humankind, their original home—in view. He didn’t really trust that Volka’s assignment wasn’t dangerous, but even if it was, what good could he do here that he couldn’t do anywhere with ether connectivity? “Where on Earth were you thinking?” Alaric found himself asking.
Sinclair gave an answer that was impossible to refuse. “Anywhere you’d like to go.”
19
Arrival
Galactic Republic: System 5 New Grande
The Osprey passed through a scant cloud, and 6T9 experienced the gear-wracking sensation of approaching systems failure. New Grande sat at the bottom of a canyon. Their target was at the north side of the city, and they were approaching from the southwest. In between the Osprey and their target, battles raged in the sky. Closer to the surface, whisking between skyscrapers were the hovers of the city’s local police, hopelessly engaged with ships that were obviously pirate vessels, but also with fighters that belonged to infected members of the Systems 5’s own Local Guard. What had to be uninfected members of the Guard, support Admiral Nillson must have sent from the other side of the planet, were also in the fray, sometimes shooting at pirate vessels, sometimes firing on what were presumably infected members of their ranks. His Q-comm sparked and unhappily informed him that it was impossible to tell friend from foe, and with the local police force being decimated in the sky, there was going to be less police on the ground. His mission to recruit an army was more critical than ever.
No sooner had that realization flashed through his processors when two fighters rose from the city to meet the Osprey, their phasers hot and ready to fire.
“I don’t suppose our time bands are going to be able to repel their phasers?” Michael asked.
Osprey’s voice piped over the cockpit and cabin speakers. “Oh, yes! Do not fear, passengers! My time bands will resist multiple phaser blasts!”
6T9 winced. Michael looked out the window. Ribbons of plasma caused by their less than optimal entry to the atmosphere and the malfunctioning bands were rippling past. He gave 6T9 a worried look. Before he could ask 6T9 for verification of Osprey’s optimism, two more Local Guard fighters plunged from above behind them, their phasers ready. The world, for a millisecond, became a confusing veil of phaser fire and ribbons of plasma, and then the ships that had been in front of them became explosions of smoke and debris. The ether and the ship’s own comm began pinging madly.
Michael answered the comm. It crackled with a stranger’s voice. “We’re here to escort you to surface, Osprey, on order of Admiral Nillson.”
6T9’s shoulders loosened, and then the voice continued, “Gotta wonder how you’re transporting an army in that heap of junk.”
Time Gate 5 must have relayed that the Osprey and her crew were critical to the defense of New Grande, but evidently the gate hadn’t explained he was raising an army, not transporting one. That was probably for the best.
“Thank you,” 6T9 replied. “She’s bigger than she looks from the outside.”
“Oh, I am, I am,” Osprey confirmed. “More spacious than you would ever believe!”
Fresh resistors, it was a good thing the ship was crazy.
A burst of static came from the speaker. “What?”
One of Michael’s eyes got wide and the other narrowed comically.
6T9 grinned maniacally. The Dark had to be listening; let them worry. “Fleet Tech. Surely you’ve heard of the Machaqa Spacetime Pocket theory.”
A confused, “Errr …” buzzed from the speaker.
“Machaqa what?” whispered Michael.
6T9 put a finger to his lips.
Static erupted over the speaker. “We’ve got company! Two ships just appeared in the exosphere—”
“Just appeared?” another voice said.
The first speaker’s voice crackled over the ether. “They’re entering the thermosphere now. Will reach us in 4.2 minutes! Covering you, Osprey.”
The two ships arranged themselves above the stuttering Osprey.
“Errr …” Michael said. “Didn’t you say you can’t land this thing?”
Osprey’s voice piped cheerfully into the cockpit. “Never fear, if you can’t land, I am fully automated and will be happy to do it for you myself.”
6T9 gave the ship a slightly different set of coordinates than he had intended, and then yanked the cord out of his head. “Thank you, Osprey. I’ll take you up on that.”
Unfastening his safety straps, he said to Michael, “Let’s get ready to disembark.”
They hurried unsteadily through the rocking ship to the cabin.
The humans were belted in. Kurz was hopping back and forth, wagging his tail. “Where are ze cats? Are we going to ze cats?”
“Get the hover packs on and all the weapons you can carry,” 6T9 commanded. None of the humans hesitated.
Grabbing two packs, 6T9 slung one over his shoulder and attached one to the folding shopping trolley of cat food. He crammed three rifles on top—there was more room but … “Sir!” Davies said. 6T9 spun to find a loop of silver flying from the air in his direction. Catching it, he found himself holding a roll of duct tape. “Surprised to see you have that Luddeccean invention here!” Falade laughed, du
ct taping pistols to his armor.
6T9 wanted to protest that polyethylene coated tape like they were using was the brainchild of Johnson & Johnson and Ms. Vesta Stoudt, a mother from the WWII era worried about her sailor sons losing precious seconds in the time it took to open munitions seals on ordnance boxes. But he held back the data dump, took some tape for himself, and tossed the rest to Michael.
“Boogey in visual range!” the words were from one of the pilots and erupted from the same speaker that had been playing jazz a few minutes ago.
“Osprey,” 6T9 said. “You need to land this ship at the coordinates I provided—it’s very important to our mission. We need to attend to some reconnaissance and need to exit before then.”
“I’m going to deliver the army hidden in my Machaqa Spacetime Pocket! Yes, sir! It is an honor to serve, sir. I’ll miss you, sir. All of you. I look forward to serving you again!” the ship piped cheerfully.
6T9 didn’t feel a lump in his throat, but programming made him gulp as though he had one. “We’ll see you again soon,” 6T9 lied.
“Yes, sir! Opening the airlock; your ears may pop with the pressure change.” The door with the hole in it opened. Of course the pressure was the same on the other side. 6T9 let the visor of his helmet fall shut and went to the back of the ship. There were snips of helmets shutting, and 6T9 surveyed his troops. Stamping their feet, shaking out their legs, the Luddecceans looked determined. Michael looked like he was trying to look determined but managed to look more frightened than anything. “Don’t worry,” 6T9 said. “I landed on Luddeccea this way.”
“That was you!” Davies laughed.
“Are we going for walkies?” Kurz asked, wagging his tail. Someone had taped weapons to him.
Static flared through the speakers, and the voice of the human 6T9 had teased about Machaqa Spacetime Pockets shouted, “I’m hit!”
Any trace of the laughter that had been on Davies’s face vanished. 6T9 jammed a hand onto the manual release of the rear gangway. The ship opened up. Below was white, but 6T9 could see the slash of green that was the canyon in the distance. The snow was briefly painted with orange explosions. “Hold off on using your hovers until you see me engage mine—without a heat source, they may not notice we’ve abandoned ship.” A light went off in the periphery of his vision. “Now!” 6T9 shouted, rolling the little two-wheeled cart to the entrance way. He let himself and the cart fall, and then looked up. His troops were following his lead, behaving quite professionally, except Falade was holding Kurz like a teddy bear—a teddy bear with weapons taped to his body. It might have made 6T9’s circuits light, except for what he saw beyond them. There was smoke dissipating in the breeze, presumably from one of their defenders. More ships had joined the battle, and they were thankfully speeding away from them in the Osprey’s wake. Before his eyes, in the distance, another ship exploded in a flare of plasma and debris, and then another, and it was just the Osprey. The ship corkscrewed and turned. 6T9 almost laughed aloud. The crazy machine was escaping the phaser fire raining from overhead! Illogical optimism and irrationality were once again saving the day—just like it had on Reich when ColdSweeper had discovered the lost child. But then Osprey erupted into a streaking hulk of fire and plunged to ground like a meteorite.
6T9’s jaw dropped as though he was shocked by Osprey’s destruction, though it was exactly what he expected would happen. For a moment, he’d hoped that the ship would escape.
“Ah, damn,” said Davies. His voice now crackling over simple radio waves into 6T9’s helmet.
Lang, the technophobic weere, said, “It was a nice ship.”
It was a nice ship. 6T9 had mentally catalogued it as “crazy,” but it had been nice. In its final act of madness, it had distracted their enemies. He swallowed again. And so had the uninfected Local Guard forces that had defended them. Crazy Osprey, the pilots whose names he’d never even known, they had traded their lives for 6T9, his team, and their mission.
6T9 felt heat racing beneath his skin. He’d pushed himself to the frontlines for Volka, and he was worried about her, what he might have done to their relationship, but also he worried for her. She was somewhere off in uncharted space, facing dangers probably as yet unimagined. But suddenly the battle was about more than just her. It was about Osprey and unnamed pilots as well. His lips twisted, and he used the buttons on his straps to engage the hover pack. “Engage!”
20
Unimaginable
Uncharted Space
Volka was unimaginably bored. They were at their fourth drop-off. Or maybe it was their fifth. One drop-off was blending into another. Dark infested worlds tended to all look the same—watery and covered in blackish algae, or icy, with the blackish algae in frigid seas beneath the ice.
For this particular drop-off, they had swooped in behind a moon. Moons, Volka had learned recently, were important for habitable planets. They created tides that aided in heat transfer between equators and poles and helped maintain the magnetic field, the invisible barrier around a planet that shielded it from radiation. Depending on how the planet and moon were formed, they were sometimes responsible for a planet’s tilt, and therefore seasons, like on Earth and Luddeccea. All very interesting. But the dark sides of the moons they visited all looked the same in the pixelated glow projected on the holomat.
Volka stared at this moon’s projected scene. This moon, like so many others, had once been inhabited. She could make out cracked domes, and beneath those, what looked like hollowed-out buildings. It was very sad.
In the hallway and bridge, the Marines and Dr. Patrick were busy. She was not, and the hustle and bustle amplified her loneliness.
For the first time since she’d fled her homeworld, she wanted to go home … and home felt like Luddeccea. She didn’t want to go because of Alaric—she wanted to go home for Mr. Darmadi—Silas—and the weere at her church. She wanted to go home so she wouldn’t feel like a freak for not being augmented. Maybe she was a freak, occasionally eavesdropping on people’s thoughts and feelings, but she could hide that. On Luddeccea, she could pretend to be normal.
Sighing, she looked over at Carl, curled on a crate of emergency supplies. Carl was sleeping. Not because of his need for sixteen hours of sleep a day, but because, “This assignment is numbing my brain!” She considered waking him up. Last time she had, he’d threatened to bite, but would he really?
On her wrist, Bracelet made a throat-clearing sound. Volka blinked down at her.
“Miss Volka,” Bracelet whispered. “I have never apologized to you for my behavior in the mindscape.”
Volka’s ears sagged. Bracelet had been unusually quiet. She supposed she had been quiet, too.
Bracelet continued hurriedly, “It has come to my attention that I might have mistaken your inferior memory for deception. That was wrong.”
Volka’s jaw got tight. “I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that I don’t like my ‘inferior’ memory being brought to my attention on a regular basis?”
“No, it hadn’t,” said Bracelet, suddenly cheery. “How interesting that you wouldn’t appreciate the reminder—being as you, of all people, might need a reminder.”
“Would you like it if I regularly brought to your attention that you have the emotional maturity of a child?” Volka asked, struggling to keep her voice level.
Bracelet chirped happily, “Am I really as advanced as a child when I’m only a few days old? I am progressing faster than I thought!”
Ears flattening, Volka narrowed her eyes at the device. One of her nostrils flared.
“That is an expression of anger!” Bracelet said triumphantly. “I am getting good at this!”
Volka looked away, unable to answer. She felt like she had been hit with a load of bricks. Bracelet was a machine, and even if she was alive, she wasn’t human—or even an animal. Volka had always thought of the device as a friend, but to Bracelet, Volka might only be … data. Data that Bracelet couldn’t interpret very well. Her shoulders fell. Ma
ybe 6T9 couldn’t interpret her well enough, either. She bit her lip. James and Noa were in love, but Noa was part machine, Volka was part wolf. 6T9 didn’t even like that part of her.
At that thought, Dr. Patrick entered the compartment, Young and Jerome behind him. Young’s jaw was tight; Jerome’s shoulders tensed.
“Ready to launch!” Dr. Patrick declared cheerfully. The compartment was sealed before he’d finished the sentence. Touching his temple, the doctor blinked owlishly and said, “They’re away! Let’s go back to Earth to get more—”
Just before Sundancer turned to light, Volka saw Young wipe his eyes and Jerome stamp a foot.
They emerged solid, presumably in Earth space, and Dr. Patrick finished his sentence. “—drones!” He dragged his fingers over a bit of the wall and smiled again. “She understands me!”
Volka wasn’t sure if that was true, or if Sundancer knew the routine by now and was as bored as Volka and wanted this assignment to be over. Young yawned into his hand.
Echoing Young’s yawn, Carl grumbled, “I know I want it to be over.”
The comment must have been telepathic because no one acknowledged it. Jerome’s, the doctor’s, and the lieutenant’s eyes were vacant; they were probably coordinating with the resupply ship.
Stretching, Carl said, “Don’t glare at me. You could sleep, too.”
Volka gestured at the tiny space completely filled with crates, the holomat, the three men, and her.
Scratching his rump, Carl replied, “Not my fault your skeleton is too inflexible and calcified to be comfortable sleeping in tight quarters.” He blinked, and his whiskers twitched. “Volka, you’re becoming more and more telepathic. Maybe someday you’ll be able to body hop! You could be a werfle!”
