Tau Ceti - The Phage

by M. D. Cooper

  The AI stepped forward, joining Terrance at the plas window. Nodding toward the ship, he asked, “Have you told the team about her, yet?”

  Terrance shook his head, a small smile playing about his face. “Calista and Shannon know, but not the rest. Everyone’s had their hands full these past few weeks, getting the Speedwell ready for its new owners. Plus, I admit, I selfishly wanted to have this one farther along before revealing her to them.” He checked his chrono. “If you want to hang around for the big reveal, they should be arriving soon.”

  Eric shook his head. “Already said my goodbyes, and anyway, things are still a bit too fresh between Jason and that trigger I pulled.”

  His gaze turned searching, and Terrance knew what the AI was about to say.

  “Don’t.” Terrance raised a hand. “You know, and so do I, that even though it may have technically violated the Phobos Accords to take over my motor control for the briefest of moments, it was the only way to be certain that Prime was taken down. I don’t fault you for it. To this day, I don’t know that I would have been capable of taking the shot. And it had to be done. I don’t blame you for it. Neither does Jason.”

  A long silence fell between the two of them, and Terrance saw something give in the commodore’s frame as the AI nodded.

  “Eric,” Terrance added in a quiet voice, “the AI Council exonerated you. Stars know they were much harder on you than the C-47 humans were—almost as hard as you were on yourself.”

  Eric paused, his expression inscrutable, and then nodded once.

  “Think you’ll ever embed inside another human?” The question was out before Terrance had a chance to stop it.

  Wincing inside, he hoped the AI wasn’t offended by his insensitivity to the situation, given that the Council had almost banned him from doing so ever again.

  The AI’s expression grew wry. “Think I’ll stick to a frame for a while yet. Who knows what will happen once I arrive at Lucida. But if you don’t mind a final bit of advice from an old space dog….”

  Eric paused until Terrance’s gaze met his, and then the AI’s expression became focused and intent. “You’re the new leader of Phantom Blade, Terrance. Having an AI partner—someone like Kodi, for instance—could prove to be a valuable asset. It’s an advantage that might mean the difference between the mission’s success or its failure.”

  Terrance hesitated, unwilling to think along those lines just yet, but he could hear the truth in the commodore’s voice.

  He nodded, and Eric clapped his shoulder with one of his humanoid hands. “Then I’ll take my leave. Safe travels, and I wish you success in Tau Ceti.” The AI smiled as Terrance murmured the same. He turned to leave, but paused before he exited the observation lounge. “Look me up if you ever bump into the FGT again, will you?” And with a wave, he was gone.

  Terrance stared bemusedly after the AI for a long moment, then shook himself and checked his chrono. The team should be arriving shortly, and he looked forward to their reaction when they saw their new ride.

  He signaled a servitor to deliver refreshments to the lounge he’d reserved from Chinquapin Construction for just this occasion, and then reached out to Calista to check on her ETA.

  Technically, Calista and Shannon were employees of Enfield Holdings, the shell corporation Terrance ran—established back in El Dorado at the request of the system’s prime minister. The company also functioned as a legitimate business, setting up satellite offices in whatever system the team was deployed. It was the perfect cover from which Phantom Blade could operate, and both Calista and Shannon had been read in to the team at the same time Terrance had.

  It helped that both had also been instrumental in developing some of the tech the company was in the business of selling. Most of what they sold, like the ship’s Elastene cladding, was targeted to a star system’s military and defense organizations. But their most recent tech innovation, stasis, promised to touch a much broader consumer base.

  True stasis was a technology many sought to attain; its realization by one of Enfield Holdings’ sister companies would make the Enfield conglomerate a tidy sum. The invention of stasis pods promised to revolutionize long-distance space travel for humans and other live cargo, and had applications in medical and scientific industries, as well—not to mention its potential military uses.

  About a third of the crew complement that had transited to Proxima with them on the Speedwell were Enfield employees; the rest were on loan from either the ESF or military intelligence, or were retired military who were brought in as support staff for Phantom Blade and its missions.

  Calista’s answering ping told Terrance that she had rounded up the team and they were on their way; the pin she dropped showed them in transit from the Speedwell. As the servitor trundled in with the refreshments he’d ordered, Terrance estimated that the unit would have just enough time to set everything out and then depart before they arrived.

  One person he was still a bit apprehensive about being around was the man accompanying Calista. Tobias had assured Terrance that Jason harbored no ill feelings toward him, but he’d been friends with Jason long enough to tell that the pilot was holding a slight distance between them.

  If someone lined up the reticle of a sniper rifle on my sister, I’d be more than a bit distant. Maybe I wasn’t the one who took the shot— Terrance closed his eyes in an attempt to banish the memory. But there’s no getting around the fact that the weapon was in my hands. And Jason was just meters away from her at the time….

  It helped that Judith had survived, and that Jason understood there had been no other choice. The pilot hadn’t quite returned to the easy and comfortable relationship the two men had enjoyed prior to the encounter, but Terrance held out hope that time would solve that issue.

  The servitor pinged, and a charge appeared over Terrance’s Link, informing him of the delivery fee as the bot floated past him and out of the lounge. The doors had barely slid shut behind it before they opened again to admit the task force.

  Calista led the procession, followed by Jason and the three AI frames of Logan, Landon, and Tobias. The captain stopped next to Terrance and shot him an anticipatory grin as she turned to watch Jason. Terrance was sure the pilot’s reaction wouldn’t disappoint.

  Sure enough, Jason came to an abrupt halt as he spied the ship, which was framed by the lounge’s bank of plas windows.

  “Holy—!” Jason emitted a low whistle as he walked forward to examine the ship on display. “Tobe! Do you see—?”

  The Weapon Born joined Jason at the window after shooting Terrance a measuring look. “Aye, boyo. It’s the Avon Vale.”

  Terrance stepped up next to them and glanced over at Jason. “I owe your dad one for recommending this ship. She’s a solid vessel.”

  The pilot wrenched his gaze from the window long enough to acknowledge Terrance’s comment with a brief nod that, while not up to his usual ebullient standards, was at least cordial.

  “Yeah, the old man might be a physicist, but he knows his ships.” At Terrance’s quirked brow, Jason smirked. “Dude. Who do you think taught me to fly?”

  Calista looked startled at that. “I didn’t know Rhys was a pilot, Jason.”

  “Ah, the stories I could tell, lass,” the Weapon Born interjected, a smile in his voice as he turned his head back toward Calista. “Remind me to share with you the tale of how Lysander and I first met Rhys—and how he and Jane Sykes ended up together.”

  Terrance smothered a laugh when he saw Jason shoot Tobias a startled look. “You played matchmaker, Tobe? This, I gotta hear.”

  Shannon’s avatar coalesced in the lounge as she accessed the room’s emitters. “Knowing him, he probably stranded the two of them somewhere,” she shot sardonically, sending a wink toward Jason, who strangled a laugh as he shook his head.

  “Sounds about right,” he agreed, then turned reluctantly away from the bank of windows as Calista tugged on his arm.

  “Food first,” she said. “While we e
at, I can tell you all about what we’re doing to her.”

  The humans grabbed plates and piled them with morsels from the various dishes Terrance had ordered, before pulling seats up to the windows. They munched in comfortable silence for a few moments, and then Terrance turned to Calista, a question in his eyes.

  Smiling, she accessed the lounge’s nearest holowall and brought up the ship’s schematics. “Work on the Avon Vale is right on schedule,” she announced, highlighting the aft end of the vessel. “They’ve almost completed their install of the matchbox fusion reactors and will begin on-frame engine testing soon.”

  “Nice,” Terrance complimented. He had a pretty good grasp of what was required to outfit a vessel for an interstellar voyage, courtesy of his stint as CEO of Enfield Aerospace. That meant he could appreciate the scope of work that the former ESF pilot had just described.

  “Okay, wait,” Jason interrupted. “Before we go on, I just have to ask—how did you get the habitat to part with a piece of history like the Avon Vale?”

  Terrance sent the pilot a wry grin. “Proxima’s Habitat Marines are getting our entire first run of Matchbox Fusion Reactors to refit their system defense ships. In exchange, we get the Avon Vale, free and clear.”

  Jason whistled. “The Avon Vale might be ancient, but it’s one of a very few ships in Proxima that’s a whopping three kilometers long. Exactly how many MFRs did you promise them for that?”

  Terrance glowered at the pilot. “Don’t ask. And don’t tell my grandmother.”

  He heard Tobias chuckle lightly at that; the AI had met Sophia Enfield, the head of the Enfield conglomerate, the year before, back in El Dorado.

  “Something tells me that Prime Minister Lysander will make sure it’s worth her while,” the AI said, and Terrance quirked him a half-grin. He knew Tobias was correct.

  “At any rate,” Terrance continued, “relic of Proxima’s past notwithstanding, the Vale’s ours now. Private sector’s already lining up to see who gets first dibs on the second run of MFRs. They tried to start a bidding war for the eight I was holding back for install in the Avon Vale,” he nodded to the holo of the ship Calista had pulled up, “but I figured we might need those for our journey.”

  Jason snorted at that, and Calista grinned. “Yep. As I was saying earlier, they’ve already replaced the original fusion engines with Enfield MFRs,” she said. “Four to a side, each cluster housed inside the casings where the original two larger and less efficient ones once were. But as nice as those are to have, this sweet little baby right here—” she tapped on a rectangular protrusion centered between the two engines, and fanned her fingers out to widen the display, “is going to give us a nice little boost, too.”

  Terrance heard Jason emit another low whistle. “An antimatter-pion drive? Sweet,” the pilot said, sending Terrance a wide smile. “What bank did you have to rob to get the antimatter for it? Wait, I forgot—” and Terrance ignored the slight edge in Jason’s voice that wouldn’t have been there a month ago, “you’re an Enfield.”

  He caught Calista squeezing Jason’s arm with a warning hand, and the pilot shot Terrance what might have been an apologetic look as she launched into the next part of her update.

  “We’re riding Chinquapin’s S&Ps pretty hard with the refit,” she said, “since we’re doing quite a bit more to her than engine upgrades.”

  Terrance knew the S&Ps she referred to were the ‘spaceframe and powerplant’ engineering teams that typically worked on insystem and interstellar vessels. Contrary to what some believed, ships did not come with expiration dates. For more than a thousand years, humanity’s ships had been carving their way through sky and space with meticulous and rigorous maintenance routines. Regular inspections were historically performed by Airframe and Powerplant specialists—A&Ps. Later, they came to be known as Spaceframe and Powerplant, or S&Ps. These were the teams that kept ships at peak performance, often for centuries at a time.

  It was also why the Avon Vale, though a relic by conventional standards, given its almost centenarian status, was a well-maintained and supremely functional ship. When they were done with her, she would once more be state-of-the-art.

  As Calista wound down her itemization of the myriad alterations being made to the three-kilometer-long ship, Terrance turned from the holowall to pin her with a questioning glance.

  “Estimate on completion?”

  She cocked her head, and Terrance knew the woman was pulling up the file on the crew’s backoff schedule.

  “Six more weeks, and then we should be good to go,” she confirmed.

  “Nice,” Tobias said. “What about the other preparations? Jason, boyo, weren’t you working on mapping the route?”

  Jason grinned and shrugged. “Pretty straightforward, Tobe. We’re here—” he drew an invisible line in the air from one point to another, “and Tau Ceti’s there. Just a bunch of interstellar medium in between. Nothing the ship’s new Elastene surfaces can’t handle.”

  Terrance allowed his gaze to sweep across those present. “Anything else?” His eyes lit upon Logan. “Didn’t Eric say you were putting together a report on Tau Ceti?”

  The moment Terrance uttered Eric’s name, he winced mentally. Dammit, Enfield. Way to bring up the name of the one person you know Jason would rather forget about….

  Jason’s expression didn’t change, but Calista shifted, her shoulder coming in contact with the pilot’s in what Terrance suspected was a deliberate yet subtle gesture of support.

  He shot the two an apologetic look before returning his gaze to Logan.

  As the team profiler, no one was better at extracting information on a topic than this AI. Logan was almost prescient in his ability to marry apparent unrelated bits of intel into a detailed précis on any subject. Terrance had seen it give Phantom Blade the edge they needed to defeat their enemies during each of their past engagements; he was counting on it for this mission as well.

  Logan shifted, and Terrance got the impression the AI was gathering his thoughts.

  “The organization that purchased our victims—the Matsu-kai,” he began, “They’re a people you do not want to cross. Not without significant backing.”

  Terrance exchanged a look with Tobias at those words. The Weapon Born nodded slowly in confirmation as Logan continued.

  “However, their numbers aren’t nearly as substantial in Tau Ceti as they are in Alpha Centauri, and that will make our retrieval easier.” The profiler cast a warning look toward the rest of the team. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train hard before we arrive, in the event we have to engage them in order to free our people.”

  Terrance found himself nodding in agreement and saw the others doing the same.

  Jason leant forward, hands clasped, forearms braced on his knees, and face intent. “What kind of training are we talking about here, Logan?”

  Logan tilted his head, and Terrance could have sworn a faint light of amusement crossed the AI’s features before they settled into his usual mask.

  “Not physical, if that’s what you’re asking,” the profiler countered. “Not entirely physical, at least,” he amended, drawing a puzzled look from those around him.

  Logan sat back, regarding the group as they waited for him to expound on his veiled comment. “The Matsu-kai is an ancient order, steeped in ritual and culture. You can, quite literally, mortally offend one of them and forfeit your life as a result. So I’ve drawn up a paper that will help you understand them better.” His tone took on a mordant edge. “It would be nice if we could manage to avoid insulting one of them while we are there.”

  Jason coughed as Tobias shot him a pointed look, and Terrance fought a smirk at the pilot’s pained innocence. “What? I’ll read it, I swear.” Then, under his breath, he added, “Bet it doesn’t have any pictures, though.”

  Calista swatted Jason’s thigh as Terrance lost his battle with the smirk. Determined to act like the leader Eric had elected him to be, he returned his gaze to Logan.

>   “What else?” Terrance prompted.

  Logan swiveled to the holowall that now sat blank, following Calista’s use of it. It sprang to life, showing various headlines from Galene and Eione, the two planets in Tau Ceti that had been colonized. The imagery indicated that the news was almost twenty years out of date and certainly not the most recent feed from the system.

  Logan zoomed in and highlighted the word ‘nanophage’ before turning back to regard the team. “I know that more recent news from Tau Ceti says that the Imbesi scare was unfounded, but there is often a kernel of truth to be found in such reports.” The AI’s expression was grave. “I want us to take steps to ensure that we’re prepared, in case we arrive to discover that rumor was, in fact, truth.”

  Landon stirred, and Terrance saw the AI glance at his brother before returning his gaze to him. “The only sure way to kill nano is with a triple-pulse EMP.” Landon paused, and Terrance nodded for him to continue. “One of the best methods to deliver that is through a tactical nuclear device.”

  A tactical nuke? How the hell am I supposed to get my hands on military weaponry?

  Terrance was sure Landon saw the consternation on his face. The AI lifted one hand to forestall any protests. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure the Avon Vale has plenty on hand before we depart.”

  EXPANSE

  STELLAR DATE: 05.01.3192 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: ESS Avon Vale

  REGION: C-47 Habitat, Proxima Centauri System

  Shannon watched Landon’s progress as he prowled through the Avon Vale’s stacked ship's decks one by one, before catching one of the maglev cars that would take him to the topmost dock, three kilometers away. From there, he began again, pacing off every corner of the bare metal decking, checking that the bay doors were secure, then touching each access panel that led to point defense weaponry. His obsessive behavior continued as he moved aft to the cargo pods, first on the port side, and then starboard. She switched her feeds so that she could follow him as he moved through the shuttle bay and into the habitat ring of the ship.