“Willow,” he begins, smiling, “sorry. It’s…I was prepared, but now that I see you and you haven’t aged a day…it’s unreal.”
She composes herself and musters a smile. “You look good, too, Grant.”
He motions to the seat across from her. “May I join you?”
She nods, smiling. When he sits, she says, “How long will you be in port?”
“Two days. A little bit of station leave for the crew while we resupply.” He leans in. “You know we’ve been assigned to patrol Bernard’s Promise while she’s refitted?”
Willow sets her fingers back on the wine stem. “Really? It seems some things remained the same.” She meant it as small talk but realizes it sounded like a dig and retracts a bit.
Grant pauses a beat. “Promise took a beating. It’s hard to believe you fought with aliens on another world. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. “Amazing and terrifying and a bit wondrous. There was a time when I didn’t think we were going to make it back, but here we are.” She swirls her wine. “It’s still surreal that I was a part of it.”
Grant weighs her words and softens his tone. “How have you been doing with the time jump?”
A swell of emotions butterflies in her stomach and tightens her throat. “I…”
Just then, the waiter arrives with the wine bottle, offering to top off her glass, but she holds up a declining hand. The waiter turns to Grant. “Something from the bar, sir?”
An Old-Fashioned, Maker’s Mark, Willow thinks.
Grant glances up at him. “I’ll have an Old-Fashioned, Maker’s Mark if you have it.”
“Thank you, sir. That’ll be right out.” The waiter departs.
The tightness in Willow’s throat has eased. She smiles. “It’s taking some getting used to.” She sets her hand flat on the table. “How are you doing? I feel like we have quite a bit to get caught up on after nine years.”
Grant hesitates, choosing his thoughts. “Oh…uh, well, still a captain, in case the uniform didn’t give it away. To be honest, I don’t think I have the political savvy to ever get to rear admiral.”
As soon as he mentions politics, Willow eases up, waving her hand casually. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Is Hirano-san still around? He’s always liked you and has been pulling for your career.”
“Retired in ’88.”
“Oh.” She thinks a moment. “What about Thompson?”
Grant chuckles. “Yeah, Thompson’s still around. I think that guy’s immortal. I’ll probably retire before he does.”
“You know, I still have all my connections. I can probably get you two set up for lunch, maybe a couple of rounds of golf.”
Grant places both of his hands on the table, one over the other. “I appreciate it, but I didn’t come here looking for favors.”
Willow’s pulse ticks up a few beats. “Why did you come here?”
He leans in a little. Willow’s hand isn’t far from his on the table, and she imagines reaching out, setting her hand on his, and feeling the rough warmth of his skin against the soft flesh of her palm.
“I’m sorry,” Grant says.
The lump in her throat is back, and her eyes water. Grant reaches out with his right hand and sets it on top of hers, his touch electric, and she’s lost in a swirl of memories and sensations of his lips on hers, his fingers tracing the bare skin of her back, only six months ago for her, but a decade for him.
“I’m genuinely sorry,” Grant continues.
Neither of them notices the waiter when he arrives. The only evidence is the presence of the Old Fashioned materialized next to Grant’s hands.
Willow’s not sure what to say, so she comforts him. “It wasn’t realistic to expect you to wait nine years.”
“I should have been more upfront when you left. At the time, though, it seemed like we were forever.”
She nods. “Yes.”
“When you came back, I didn’t want to face you. I should have met you in person and told you that I’d gotten married. It was the coward’s way out, and you deserved better.”
She takes a deep breath and exhales silently. It was the words she wanted to hear, yet they weren’t really what she wanted. She wanted Grant not to be married and to be hers still, but that was a timeline that was lost in the time-dilated void of her interstellar adventure. She squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry, too, Grant. I’m the one who left. I put the mission over us, and now we have our own, separate lives.” She pauses. “I am happy that you found someone and that you’re doing well. It’s just going to take some time to adjust to all of this.”
They both sit there a long moment holding hands, the Earth spinning by like years ticking away, enjoying the brief reprieve from their respective nows.
The 1992 Piper Arrow is an anachronism buzzing along on a single-prop gasoline engine over the California coastline. Crystal blue skies with high cirrus clouds make it the perfect day for a VFR flight. James is in the left seat and Sarah the right, both wearing sunglasses and aviation headsets. To their right, the Pacific swirls with breaking waves on beaches.
James keys the mic on his yoke. “Hayden-Pratt Space Ops, November One Four Seven Charlie Papa, twelve miles north at three thousand five hundred, landing with tango.”
The voice in his headset is modulated with a bit of static, a quirk of the Piper’s old-fashioned radio. The controller says, “Mister Hayden, I hope you had a great flight. Piper Seven Charlie Papa, enter left downwind, runway three zero, report midfield.”
“Days don’t get much better than this, Josh. Left downwind, runway three zero, and we’ll report midfield, Seven Charlie Papa.” James looks over at Sarah. “Want the ball?”
She doesn’t hesitate and sets her right hand on her yoke. “My controls.”
James lets go of his yoke. “Your controls.” He relaxes and leans left, enjoying the view. “Thanks for keeping her spotless all of these years. I think she looks even better than when I left.”
Sarah scans the horizon, making minor adjustments with her yoke. “She’s a beauty. Got to treat her right. Next time we go up, we’ll have to go in my new toy. Picked up a 2027 Mooney 20WX while you were away.”
“Oh, sweet. What’s that got, two twenty kilowatt Continental?”
“Two thirty.”
James nods in appreciation. “Nice.”
Sarah chuckles. “I seriously missed chatting with you about vintage planes. With Will, it’s all about the cars.”
“He was always a tires-on-asphalt kind of guy.”
Up ahead, Hayden-Pratt’s Space Operations Center is a campus of buildings and intersecting runways. Sarah turns the yoke left, tilting the sky right. Another turn, and they’re flying parallel to the runway. She keys the mic as they pass the tower. “Seven Charlie Papa, midfield.”
“Cleared to land, runway three zero, Seven Charlie Papa,” Josh replies over coms.
James smiles as he watches her configure the Piper for landing. He’s flown with her in everything from Pintails in Saturn’s clouds to Riggs ships in the Oort Cloud, but seeing her fly a century-old ship using eyeballs, stick and rudder — the way he likes to fly — always makes him proud. Sarah could fly anything with her eyes closed — hell, in the nine years since he left, she can probably now out-fly him — but out of his close friends, she’s the most like him. It’s why he left her in charge of the Riggs program.
Sarah turns onto final and slips effortlessly onto the glide scope. Runway three zero’s white block letters rush up to meet them. Tower has them take the next right, and in a moment, they’re taxiing to James’s personal hangar. After completing the shutdown checklists, they secure the plane and walk together to the campus’s main entrance. The high-ceilinged lobby is like its own Air and Space Museum, with the first Hayden Aeronautics production model suspended from the roof.
Sarah glances at her watch. “We’ve got time before our four o’clock if you want to see it.”
“Perfect,” James says. “After hearing Lin sing its praises, I’m curious.”
Sarah leads them into the omnilift. When the doors close, she says, “Dev Bay Three.” Her security clearance pings acceptance, and the lift accelerates laterally. She watches the numbers tick by.
“Lin came up with the name, by the way,” Sarah says. “It’s some comic book thing from the nineteen-hundreds. She is so much like Hitoshi, it’s unreal. If you get the two of them together, it’s like a sci-fi marathon.”
“Good to know,” James says.
The lift slows to a stop, and the doors open to reveal a hallway with illuminated letters reading Development: Bays 1 - 3. They follow the arrow to the entrance. When Sarah sets her finger in the reader, the door opens to a hangar-sized room clustered with workstations, assembly robots, and crates. The room’s center is dominated by a sleek, black, clearly-military transorbital fighter. It’s chunky for a fighter and doesn’t seem like it would be terribly maneuverable in the atmosphere.
“The Nightcrawler,” Sarah says, setting her hands on her hips.
Like all military designs, it looks lethal, with hardpoints on the wings for missiles and multiple gun ports. James takes a deep breath that comes across as a disappointed sigh.
Sarah reads him correctly. “I know, but when Riggs went commercial in ’87, it went commercial for everyone, including the military. And, you know, you can’t just plop a drive into a ship. You have to design the ship around it, so we had a whole branch of designers for military applications.” She walks forward towards the Nightcrawler, and James follows. “After the Cassini attack, everyone freaked out and pulled Riggs out of everything.”
They arrive at the cockpit entrance, and James squares off with Sarah. “I’m surprised they didn’t keep it for the military. That’s usually what happens with regulated tech.”
Sarah nods. “Well, that was Larson. He never trusted Riggs and was still worried about moles in military ships. The only way to be sure was for no one to have it. We track every drive ever sold and verified they were either removed or, for the couple in our possession…” She points at the Nightcrawler. “…encrypted.”
“Okay,” James says. “Well, I’m glad we didn’t end up with only the military having Riggs tech. That would’ve been the worst outcome.”
“Yeah, I agree. So, now that you’re back, Holden’s got a push to reinstate a more heavily regulated Riggs program, and it’s turned development back on for things like the Nightcrawler.”
James glances at the bulky aft of the craft. “Who’s got the access code to decrypt the drive?”
“Just me, and now that Ananke’s back, her.” She watches him a moment, and when he doesn’t ask anything else, she touches her thumb to the cockpit door. The door extends and slides back. “So, want to see what’s so special about the Nightcrawler?”
When he peers inside, the panel is like nothing he’s seen before, and he realizes it’s future tech for him because he’s nine years in its past. Despite his moral misgivings, he’s curious. “All right.” He grabs onto the entry handle and swings himself into the co-pilot’s seat. Sarah follows. Having just come from a Piper Arrow, the jump to the Nightcrawler is like time-traveling.
Sarah flicks a few switches on her armrest, and the panel screens illuminate. Overhead, lights and indicators blink as different systems come online. “So,” she begins, “all the usual transorbital components…Mach-Lorentz thrusters, R.F. drive. You probably noticed she’s a real goose to fly in the atmosphere, but that’s not her venue. I mean, she’ll pull five gees on climb out and plop you into low Earth orbit in about a minute, but don’t plan on any dogfighting along the way.”
The screens finish their sequence, and all of the ship’s systems come online. James eyes the Riggs display and quirks his head as he reads the reactor’s output. “How are you powering the Riggs drive with that reactor? It’d take hours to get enough juice for a jump.”
Sarah laughs. “Ah, I knew you’d pick right up on that. So that’s what’s special about the Nightcrawler. It has a standard fusion reactor for the R.F. drive, and a depletive sonoluminescent power array for the Riggs jumps.”
James raises an eyebrow and smiles. “I’ll bet you had to practice saying that one.”
“DISPAR for short. They’re like expendable fusion cartridges that immediately ignite and burn out, giving you a huge burst of power for a second. Still not enough to create a ninety-nine percent light-speed Riggs wave, but we don’t have to shoot for light speed. If we dial it down to twenty percent light speed, then each cartridge powers one jump. Six cartridges, six jumps.”
“Huh. Think that would scale for Promise?”
“You wouldn’t get very far. Twenty-percent light speed, one second at a time, six times. That’s one point two light seconds. Get you to the moon, I guess.”
James nods. “But I could see how it works as a fast strike fighter.” He eyes the weapon’s systems. “Is any of this live?”
Sarah shakes her head. “In real life, it’d be loaded up with missiles and rail gun slugs. I guess technically, I could blow a hole through the hangar doors with the pulse cannons and nose emitter, so let’s be careful not to take the safeties off.”
“Roger that.”
Sarah flicks a few switches and powers down the craft. “Lin did most of the work on this design. She’s really impressive.”
“Good job on the recruiting.”
As Sarah slides out of the cockpit, she looks back, extending a hand to James. “You upset about this?”
James takes her hand as she helps him out. “No, the tech is out there. I guess I have to look at it from the angle that Holden’s easing restrictions, and we’re getting back in the game.” He stands outside the Nightcrawler and taps the door button, watching it close. “The real question is what our next move is going to be.”
3
Piggyback
The file is in the slate as Cajetan slides open the door and steps out onto his balcony, the twilight Miami skyline shimmering like jewels. Far beneath him, the sounds of the city are a low rumble of traffic, drones, and music with red car lights spidering the streets in organic patterns. He crosses over to a squat Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope that has several accessories piggybacked onto its optical tube. When he lifts his slate and punches in the coordinates, the scope whirls to life and aligns to its target. In the eyepiece image, a black drone hovers silhouetted against the orange city-lit clouds. Cajetan touches a switch on one of the scope’s accessories. Tightbeam connection established. Encryption active. Waiting.
Ever since Cassini, they’ve been rigorous with coms protocol. Tightbeam or person-to-person handoff only with hard breaks in the chain to firewall the originator. Homeland Security snoops too much for anything else. He inserts an earbud into his right ear.
“Ready?” Cajetan says.
The voice on the other end is Birk’s. “Ready.”
Cajetan queues up the file and swipes it over to the comlink. A progress circle spins up as the file zips up along the laser, relays through the drone, and rides the tightbeam to Birk’s slate ten clicks away.
“Done,” Birk says, hitting the terminate connection icon and removing his earbud. Only three words were spoken tonight between him and Cajetan. Efficient.
A box the size of a book rests on the table next to Birk. Within the book are handwritten letters to Miyu, a tube of their favorite chocolates, a photo wafer filled with personal media, and a silly pair of socks with penguins on them. It’s the type of package one long-distance lover might send to another. If anyone had bothered to read the letters or peruse the photos during a security screening, they would seem sincere. After all, when he and Miyu started their roles, this was a cover, but after pretend sleeping together turned into real sleeping together, their front just became all that more convincing.
Birk pairs the photo wafer and embeds the file in one of the personal videos. He seals the wafer in the box, then swipes ove
r to the FedEx site and orders a pickup. It takes less than five minutes for the courier drone to arrive.
The file rides in the belly of the courier drone as it buzzes over skyscrapers. When it arrives at Miami’s Transorbital Port, the package is sorted, security scanned, and loaded onto a FedEx skipper. Everything is like clockwork — indeed, it was designed to be so — and the file is just in time for the midnight flight. The skipper blasts off and leaves the wash of Miami’s colorful grid far beneath it, climbing higher and higher into the night sky until the light-washed oasis of Serenity Station welcomes it in the void.
The parcel is offloaded on Serenity and whisked away to the mailroom. It waits there just a few minutes until Miyu picks it up. Sitting on her bed, she opens the parcel and grins at the socks — she does love penguins — then pops open the tube of chocolates and munches on a truffle while retrieving the wafer. She locates the filename of the one video that doesn’t belong and copies it over to a new wafer. She then wipes it from the original and closes the parcel. She retrieves her bartender’s apron, pockets the wafer and heads to work.
The file lives in the wafer in her hip pocket for the next fifteen minutes as she starts her shift at Apogee 060. Her first order is for a buzz-cut brown-haired man sitting at the bar finishing a lager. He orders a second. As she reaches into her apron to fetch her credit pad, she palms the wafer.
Like sleight-of-hand, when the man presses his thumb to the pad, the wafer moves invisibly from Miyu to Ryder. He slips the wafer into his pocket. After finishing his second beer, he heads back to his cabin. The door four cabins down opens, and Emani emerges. She gives him a big smile.
Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8) Page 2
