“Dean, you can’t say that. Then she’ll never eat it,” Mary whispered.
“Mom, I’m not a little kid. I can hear you,” Jules said, but still refused to try the stringy orange food.
“I never thought I’d let you talk me into working in HR… well, I guess it’s technically not human resources. What do we call it?” Mary asked.
“Alien resources? That might offend. You better check with the department director on that,” I said, trying the vegetable. It was awful. I chewed it, forcing a smile while Jules watched with a vested interest. “Mmmm, that was good.”
“Papa, you’re lying. I can tell,” she said. I didn’t know if she really meant it or if she was merely reading my expressions.
“Fine. I’m skipping this and going straight in for dessert,” I told her, pushing my plate away. She did the same thing, and Mary rolled her eyes.
“You two are peas in a pod, aren’t you?” Mary feigned being exasperated, and Jules giggled.
“Peas in a pod, right, Papa?” Jules asked.
“You bet.” I waved to the server and asked for three ice creams. Horizon had a family-friendly restaurant, complete with servers and cooks. It wasn’t the universe’s best cuisine, but it was nice to be in a different environment for dinner tonight.
The ice cream came, and Jules became quiet as she ate it.
“How long is this going to take?” Mary asked.
“The ice cream?” I asked. “Not long. I’m almost done.”
“Dean, can you be serious for a minute? How long is the mission going to take?” she asked.
“The fleet wreckage is a full system past the station, which is going to take three weeks in the newly spruced-up Padlog ship,” I said.
“Three weeks in each direction, plus whatever time you spend there. You could be gone for two months.” Mary sighed.
“Papa, can I come?” Jules was done with her dessert, and she stared over at me with her big green eyes.
“No, honey, you have to stay and take care of Mommy for me,” I said.
Two months of Mary’s pregnancy. She was thinking the same thing as me. I’d promised to stay with her while we did this tour on the Horizon. “It’s okay, Dean. I’ll keep busy with starship business, and Jules is in class every day. We’re going to be fine. I’d much rather be here than the alternative.” She didn’t have to mention the last time she was expecting, and where she was for much of it. Our special-powered daughter was enough evidence of that time’s effects. Mary’s were there, but less visible on her surface.
“I’ll be careful. When we return, we can expect a few months’ journey to find this Rutelium world.” I smiled at the server as he took the empty dishes. I couldn’t help but notice Mary’s was still full.
Mary’s voice lowered. There were full tables on either side of us, and we were surrounded by members of Magnus’ crew. “Do you think there’s even a connection to the globe-planet there?”
“I really can’t say. Magnus claims there’s reference to it. I believe him,” I said.
“Good. I hope we can help them. I’m going to visit Karo and Ableen while you’re gone too,” Mary said.
I glanced over at Jules, who was paying close attention to our conversation. “Are you sure you should be using…” I covered part of my mouth to hide my words from Jules. “...the portal?” I mouthed the last two words.
“I think it’ll be fine. She can come too; I’m not leaving her. Plus, we can bring Karo and the kids with us. They’d love to see Horizon,” Mary said.
I was a little upset I wouldn’t be there to see my friend and his new little family – or not so little. Four kids were a lot to handle, and I expected Karo was likely stressed out by the whole ordeal.
We left the restaurant after making Jules wash up and found ourselves in the courtyard. Dubs was sitting at a table in the coffee shop, alone. “I’ll catch up with you two. Movie night?” I asked, knowing exactly what film Jules would choose. It was always the same one.
Mary peered over my shoulder to see the android, and she smiled at me. “We’ll set it all up. See you soon.” She kissed my cheek and walked off with Jules beside her. Jules was talking her ear off about something, and Mary was nodding along.
“Dubs,” I said as I approached. “What are you doing here?”
He motioned for me to have a seat. “Captain… is it all right if I still call you that? It may be a difficult habit to break.”
“I don’t mind.” I sat opposite him at the round bistro table and ordered a decaf coffee from the server.
“I find it strange to have these conveniences aboard a starship,” Dubs said, his voice monotone.
“So do I. We have a swimming pool, a courtyard with a waterfall, a gymnasium, three restaurants on top of the mess hall, and a full-sized library. It really is a marvel,” I said.
“Do you enjoy it?” Dubs asked.
“I’m not sure. So far I do. I haven’t had much time to explore,” I said.
“Would you care to go for a walk? The captain gave me the day off. I needed to recharge, and he placed a human at the helm since we’re not currently moving.”
“Sure.” I took my to-go coffee cup and let Dubs take the lead. “Where to?”
“If you haven’t seen the library yet, I’d like to show you,” he told me.
“Great. You were sitting alone. Thinking about anything in particular?” I asked the robot.
He turned to me, his face unreadable as always. “Not really. I know that’s what people do. I don’t know many of the crew yet. Most of them view me as a machine,” he said.
I didn’t remind him he was a machine. Truth was, I enjoyed talking with him, and had since we’d found him on Larsk a few years earlier. “You’re a good friend, Dubs. I’m glad we’re all together on the ship.”
“Me too, Captain.”
We walked in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and eventually found the library on the fourth floor, near engineering. Clare walked through a door and bumped into me while she kept her head down, scrolling through a tablet. “Sorry, Dean. Didn’t see you there. Hi, Dubs.” Dubs had spent some time with Clare at her research facility on New Spero, and the two were well acquainted with one another.
“Hello, Clare. What are you working on?” he asked.
“Suma has me running tests, but I’m missing something. I hear you guys are departing soon?” Clare asked.
“If everything goes smoothly, we’re leaving tomorrow. Are these tests for our mission?” I pointed to the tablet, and Clare nodded.
“I think we have it, but I don’t want there to be any uncrossed t’s.” Clare held the device up.
“Can I take a peek?” Dubs asked.
“Of course.” She passed him the tablet, and his metal fingers darted across the screen, so fast they turned to a blur. “There it is.” He showed her an equation, and her eyes sprang wide open.
“Dubs, how did you do that?”
“It was quite simple, really… I…”
I zoned out, having no clue what language they were speaking. By the end of it, Clare was hugging the metal man and thanking him profusely.
“Wait until I show this to Suma. Maybe you should go with Dean on this mission,” she suggested.
“I would appreciate the involvement,” Dubs said.
It sounded like a good idea to me. “If you want, I’ll talk to Magnus. I don’t think he’d mind, especially if it helps our chances at success.”
“Very well. I’ll await his decision.” Dubs seemed excited, but it was hard to tell.
Clare bustled into the hall, talking to herself and staring at the tablet again.
“The library is here,” Dubs said, leading me to the end of the corridor. A few off-duty crew members loitered, talking quietly inside the doorway.
I let a low whistle out. The library was huge. I’d been worried Jules couldn’t experience reading paper books, but I was wrong. There were thousands of volumes lined on metal shelving, the racks g
oing to the ceiling twenty meters up. “Where did this all come from?”
“I supposed he had many of them transferred from Earth. There were hundreds or perhaps thousands of unused libraries on your home world. Magnus had them curate quite the collection, I’m told.” Dubs walked deeper into the library, and he picked up a book from a non-fiction section about our second world war. He flipped through it quickly, his eyes whirring as he took in all the information. The entire process took all of one minute, and he set the book down. “That was a trying time for humans.”
“You read the whole book?” I asked, realizing he now knew more about the war than I did.
“I did. Fascinating.” He picked up another, this one on the Roman era, and I left him to his devices as I strode through the countless aisles, happy to exist among so many books.
I eventually found the fiction section and plucked ten or so books. One thriller for Mary and two kids’ books that I thought Jules would like. I checked them out from an automated machine that sensed which ship inhabitant I was, and I said goodbye to Dubs for now. It appeared he’d be there for a while.
With an armful of reading material, I went home. Home. The word was strange here onboard a starship, but it was quickly becoming just that. And in the next day or two, I’d be leaving it once again.
I showed my family the library books, and Jules was far less impressed with a paper book than I’d hoped. We settled in for a movie on the couch, and soon I was nodding off between Mary and Jules.
Ten
“Engines are a go. Everyone ready?” Suma asked, and we all confirmed we were prepared for takeoff. The ships had built-in gravity and inertia dampers, but we erred on the side of caution after all the recent modifications to the Padlog ship.
The Ghosts were off on their first dangerous mission.
“Taking us out,” Dubs said, piloting the vessel out of Horizon. We moved away from the giant starship, and Suma brought up a 3D map on the viewer. She plotted in our path, and a yellow trajectory line appeared, along with a countdown. At this in-system speed, it would take us three years to arrive.
The moment Dubs kicked us into hyperdrive, the math changed, and it said slightly over twenty days. Much better.
We had a full ship for the adventure. Slate and Hectal. Loweck and Suma. Walo and Sergo, which I still wasn’t sure was a good idea, and me and Dubs, our robot pilot.
The Padlog ship was still larger than the Kraski versions we were used to, and Slate said he intended to train while we were here. I’d told him I’d join, generally because I’d fallen out of the routine of keeping in fighting shape. Most of my days on Earth over the last year had involved riding horses and telling my daughter stories at bedtime.
“Suma, we’re sure this is going to work?” I asked her as she joined me in the kitchen. I was making coffee, and she stuck an empty cup out.
“Definitely. We aren’t sure what they’ll be sending our way, but this shield should keep it from frying anything inside the ship. Dubs really helped. It increased our power by twelve percent.” Suma slurped from the cup.
“Is that a lot as far as shield power goes?” I asked.
“It could be the difference between returning to the Horizon or starving to death among the wreckage of a hundred other alien ships,” Suma said.
“Well, if you put it that way, I’ll buy Dubs a beer when we make it home.”
Suma laughed. “So will I.”
“How are things going, Suma? We haven’t had a lot of time to talk.”
She sat on a stool, and I joined her, glad for the few minutes alone with the Shimmali girl. Woman, I corrected myself. She’d grown up right in front of my eyes. I still pictured her as that little girl Slate and I had encountered our first time through the portal on New Spero.
“Things are going well. Busy on the ship, and, you know…”
“Silo?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, Silo. Do you like him?” she asked.
“Honestly, I only met him once and didn’t talk a lot with him. Does your father know about him?” I asked.
She nodded. “He does.”
“Does he approve?”
“Only as much as a man like Sarlun could, I suppose.” Suma smiled, warming the room.
“Good. You deserve the best, remember that,” I told her.
“Thanks. How are things with Jules?” she asked. Suma was one of the few people I trusted enough to tell about Jules’ growing powers. She didn’t know the full extent, but she understood enough to keep quiet about them.
“She’s doing okay. I think being on the ship will be good for her,” I said.
Sergo and Walo walked by the doorway, chatting away in their own language, and I leaned in. “Suma, do me a favor.”
“Anything,” she said.
“Keep an eye on Sergo, would you?”
“You don’t trust him?”
“Do you?” I asked.
“Not as far as I can throw him,” she admitted.
“I really wish we didn’t need him here,” I told her.
“I’ll watch him.”
“If this business with Zoober is real, there’s no way Sergo won’t try to weasel his grubby fingers into our prizes,” I said, forming an idea.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Suma asked, and I laughed with her.
“Great minds.” We didn’t elaborate; instead, we talked more and drank coffee.
We had a lot of time to kill before the three weeks were up.
____________
“We’ll be arriving in ten minutes, Captain,” Dubs said. Everyone had accepted that I was in charge of the mission, even if I wasn’t an appointed leader. Loweck admitted she wanted to take my lead; that she would play Phantom for Zoober, but not on board our ship with our team.
It felt good to be thrown into the mix, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. “Let’s bring it to in-system thrusters and zoom in. We don’t know where their energy-draining boundary begins.” I watched as the stars slowed from streaking lines to solid pinpoints in the distance.
Suma zoomed, and we spotted the first dead ship five thousand kilometers away. There were far more after it in every direction. “It appears we’ve found the border,” she said.
“When can I do my thing?” Sergo asked, rubbing his hands together vigorously, like a fly. He must have noticed, because he cleared his throat and set his arms awkwardly to his sides.
“Soon enough,” I told him. “Bring us in slowly, and Suma, start the scans if you think they’ll reach.”
“Starting scans,” she parroted. We watched on the viewer as the scans illuminated a radar map of the region. It pinpointed over two thousand objects larger than ten feet in diameter, many of them debris from the battle so many centuries ago.
“It’s faint. We need to be closer,” she said.
We waited while our vessel neared the first ship we marked, and Dubs brought us to a halt. “I suspect they will attempt…”
The ship rocked lightly, swaying from side to side like a boat in the water before we slowed to normal.
“Was that it?” I asked.
“We can only assume that was the Maev sending their automated energy emitter,” Suma said.
“It worked! How about that, Boss?” Slate pumped his fist in the air.
The celebration was short-lived as the power cut out, leaving us in the dark.
“Dubs?” I asked, but he gave no reply.
We couldn’t see a thing, but a moment later, the lights flashed on, and the viewer showed an image once again.
“It kicked us out temporarily, but the system held up. We should be safe,” Suma said. We had life support ready and in place, and I was very glad to not need it.
Dubs whirred and clanged before his eyes powered up again. “Hello, I am W…”
“Dubs, are you okay?” I asked the robot, and he beeped and booped a few times before turning to face me.
“Captain, I am fine. I merely went through a reset. The
systems appear operational. Would you like me to continue?” he asked.
“Yes. Make sure the cloaking shield is activated as well,” I said, not wanting to be a flying target in the enemy’s back yard.
“Do you think the Maev are still alive on one of these ships?” Loweck asked.
Recalling the details of them transporting their minds into machines, I cringed at the question. “I don’t think they’re alive per se, but I expect we’re going to meet them.”
“The cloaking shields are activated, and with the doubling of the new Inlorian cores, we should have enough juice to fuel all our layers,” Suma said.
“Meaning?” Sergo asked.
“Meaning we can stay hidden and avoid being shut off by their powerful blasts of energy-crushing technology,” Suma said.
“That’s… good,” Sergo said.
We moved deeper into the old battlefield, and I wondered what the war had even been about. Here we were, thousands of years later, thrusting through the wreckage of a battle no one remembered. Had it all been worth it?
“My sensors are picking them up, Dean,” Suma said. The viewer zoomed on the localized mapping sensors, highlighting an intact vessel eight thousand klicks from our current position.
“That’s it.” I stepped forward, knowing we now had a destination. “Now for the fun part.”
“Those of us heading aboard, suit up. Make sure to test Clare’s new surprises before we set boots to the ground,” I ordered. Sergo was moving for the cargo hold, and Slate was behind him. Loweck and I followed.
“These suits are sick, Boss,” Slate said, slipping into his armored EVA. I fully expected danger on the other side of the wall when we docked, and we needed to be prepared.
“They are solid, aren’t they?” I clicked my gray suit on, and activated the earpiece. “Suma, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” the Shimmali’s voice said into my ear.
“Good. How about video?” I asked.
“Tell Slate he needs to brush his hair,” Suma said.
Slate ran a hand over his helmet. “Hey.”
Loweck patted him on the arm. “You look great, baby.”
Once we ran through each person’s sound and video feeds, confirming they worked, we tested the next thing: the cloaking. We’d had the technology for a while and had used various versions of it over the years.
New Horizon (The Survivors Book Nine) Page 8
