by Jean Johnson
“Go right ahead. Just don’t take all shift,” she warned him. “Doobie, plot a hyperrift course for System Rau Niil 78. Line it up so we come in somewhere behind the second planet, close enough to duck behind it. There’s a sixty percent chance the star will flare up and cast out an ion storm about the time we arrive. Nelson, we have a weak stretch of FTL panels in the aft sector, starboard ventral.”
“Aft sector, five by seventeen, aye, sir,” Dubsnjiadeb agreed, as Fielle finished powering his station around and unclipped his harness. “I’m also keeping an eye on it. Engineering’s working up an internal fix in case that center panel fails. I’ve already told Sugartoo that we got the repair authorization. She’ll pass that along to Commander Harper when he comes on duty.”
Sugartoo was actually Xhuge, as in Private First Class Meyling Xhuge, wife and teammate of Corporal Yen Xhuge, one of the four crew members who served as a comm tech for the first duty watch, and one of Lieutenant Rico’s top code crackers. His nickname, “Sugar,” had been established early on as a play on his name, and when their first CO had granted them permission to wed, Meyling had sworn she was now “a Sugar, too,” or Sugartoo for short. Oddly enough, her nickname was the only one people used these days.
The Space Force didn’t mind it if soldiers married each other, so long as their relative ranks and positions weren’t in conflict with Fatality Forty-Nine: Fraternization. Since both were enlisted and close to each other in rank, there wasn’t enough conflict in their position as teammates to bother most commanding officers, including Ia. It helped that the two of them worked in different parts of the ship normally; while her husband served on the bridge, Sugartoo was an excellent mechanic and made a good engineering lead for those times when Commander Harper wasn’t around. Of course, she was just one of four on her duty watch, since everyone had to swap duties every hour or two to prevent boredom, work fatigue, and glazed-eye syndrome, but she was good at her job.
“Don’t anybody tell the Admiral-General,” Ia quipped, “but I actually wanted that carte blanche just so our first officer wouldn’t yell at me about what I’ve been doing to his ship while he slept.”
Her joke provoked a few chuckles. Rico snorted. “If he could sleep through that fight, I’ll have to ask the doctor what meds she’s been slipping into his hot cocoa. I could use ’em, too.”
“Careful, or she might try to slip them into my cocoa,” Ia retorted. “She thinks I’ve been stinting myself on sleep.”
“Technically, you have been, Captain,” Rico pointed out. “You’ve been running thirty-two-hour days lately instead of twenty-four.”
“I’ll survive, Lieutenant.” She held the helm steady with her left hand and used her right to access the workpad clipped to her console. Now that she had a few free moments, she had to go back to composing prophecies. Time wasn’t entirely on her side. Thankfully, the Admiral-General was. “The important thing is that by short-sheeting myself, many others will survive as well.”
MARCH 29, 2496 T.S.
CHIMERA V ORBIT
JORDAN TAU-CETI 28 SYSTEM
“How’s your shoulder?” Chaplain Benjamin asked Ia. She offered a cup of caf’ to the younger woman. Ia accepted it, and the redhead curled up in the stuffed chair across from her. “And how many times have I asked you that, anyway?”
“Three…four times now, and I’m under orders not to use it or stress it for two days,” Ia confided, cradling the mug in her right hand. Her left arm hung in a sling. “The mechanics tell me I won’t be able to use the suit arm for two weeks, it’s that badly mangled.”
“But you got the control node for the robots,” Bennie pointed out. “And you took them out before they could take out the dome defenses from underground. A task which you could’ve left to Lieutenant Spyder.”
“He’s good, but that one required precision shooting. You haven’t seen the vidlogs. I shot through a gap about this big.” She made a circle out of her thumb and forefinger with her left hand since her right one was busy, then winced at the pain the movement stirred. She relaxed her fingers. Sipping from the mug in her right hand, Ia shook her head. “Besides, it served a second purpose. Eighteen of my crew got to see me in ‘Bloody Mary’ mode, and that’s good for morale.”
Bennie snorted, almost choking on her caf’. She lowered her mug, rubbing at her nose. A few sniffs cleared it. “Ow…Your sense of humor is terrible…Not to mention, I’d think that seeing their CO’s arm getting crunched by an oversized, motorized monkey wrench would be bad for morale.”
“Nope. It shows them I’m willing to take the same risks that they do. Besides, that’s what Spyder was good for. He’s the one who cut through the tensor cables, freeing my arm before it could be pulverized.”
“Instead of dislocated. Again,” Bennie stated dryly. “So…how are you sleeping at night?”
Ia lifted her brows, mouth busy with her cup. She swallowed, and asked, “What, no cracks about how little I’ve been sleeping?”
Bennie shook her head. Her hair had grown long enough that the auburn plait barely moved across her shoulders. “I figured if Jesselle didn’t drug you insensate, then she thinks you’re doing alright, medically.”
“Well, we did get into a little argument over that while she was patching me up,” Ia admitted. “But I convinced her I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours after seeing you.”
At that, the chaplain lifted a brow. She gave Ia’s cup a pointed look. “Oh, really?”
Ia grinned. “I will. In about four more hours, when I’ve finished filling out the paperwork on the battle and written twenty more prophecies.”
Bennie kept her brow arched.
“I promise!” Ia protested. Then added honestly, “Unless an emergency happens, and I’m needed on the bridge.”
Her truthfulness earned her a gimlet stare from her friend. “And will there be one?”
“Fifteen percent probability,” she admitted, leaning back in the padded chair. “This is a very comfy chair…Is this the chair I saw on Grizzle’s requisitions manifest? Nice chair…Anyway, that fifteen percent is only if the TUPSF Zizka leaves the system early, and I’ve asked them to stay. I told their captain if they do extend their stay by an hour or so, they’ll be better placed to scare off the Salik scoutship headed our way, looking for weakness in the local defenses. You know, I think I need to get one of these seats for my own office.”
“Nonsense, you’d fall asleep and never get any work done,” Bennie scoffed.
This time it was Ia who arched her brow. “First you want me to sleep, but now you don’t want me to sleep?”
“Consistency, you cannot have,” the older woman quipped, hiding her grin in a sip from her mug.
Chuckling, Ia sat up and fitted her cup into the clip on the edge of the coffee table, then sighed and leaned back again. “I could use some decent sleep, yes. But every clunk and thump from the repair teams is going to keep me awake, worrying that something will break on the wrong side of the probability curve during their work, making us further delayed. We replaced five pods at Rau Niil, but we lost too many sensor arrays this fight. If nothing bad happens, Harper’s teams will be done in about four hours, which means third watch will be free to get the ship under way. If anything does, I can be on top of it with exactly what’s wrong, and we’ll be under way in five. Then I can sleep.
“If not, if I go to sleep now, and something happens…more damage, more delays. More problems for me to fix.” She eyed her cup of caf’, debating whether or not to drink more of it. Sighing, she sat forward and unclipped it, choosing caffeine over common sense. “I can’t wait until my arm gets out of this sling. It’s throwing off my balance, and I’m not allowed to exercise in high gravity like this. Every day I lose while I wait for my body to heal is five extra days of struggling to recover the strength I’ve lost.”
“At least your suit’s safety cage held, and you didn’t lose the arm. So how are you sleeping these days?” Bennie pressed, not deterred
by the change in subject. “No avoiding the question, Captain. Any nightmares?”
A slight but genuine smile tugged at Ia’s lips. “Pretty well, and very few, Commander. Especially after the carte-blanche extension.”
Bennie smiled. “Good. Now, since you’re more or less mentally stable…for you…let’s chat about the rest of your crew. Private Davies is coming along slowly in her misandry therapy, but she is making progress. I’ve been watching her spar with her teammate, and she’s not quite so conflicted about hitting him—and when she does, she’s not wasting her blows in anger.”
“Mm…I’ve only seen them spar a few times, but that’s good,” Ia agreed, sipping at the cooling brew. “What about Private Kim? Ah, Kimberly Kim. Has she mentioned Sergeant Maxwell?”
Bennie narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to pry past the sacred seal of both the therapy session and the confessional?”
Ia snorted. “For one, I’m a fellow priestess, duly ordained, blah blah blah. For another, I already know where those two are headed, more or less. As far as I’m concerned, since they’re not posted to the same Platoon and so long as they’re still fit for work when their watch comes up, they can bounce on the bedsheets all night long whenever they’re off duty. Just not on my bedsheets.”
That made the chaplain choke on her drink. She coughed a bit, laughing. “Shakk! God bless you, Ia, but you’re not supposed to be trying to kill me with laughter, here. And you made me swear! Bad girl!”
Smirking, Ia shrugged, unrepentant in the face of her chaplain’s finger-waggling. “Hey, I’ll take my humor wherever I can get it. It’s also nice to know you’re Human, too.”
“I’ll save my prayers of repentance for later, just in case you make me do it again,” Bennie dismissed. She rose, asking, “More caf’? If you’re going to stay up four more hours, that is?”
“Please,” Ia agreed, holding out her cup. “Back to the crew, and Kim versus Maxwell.”
“Careful, Ia,” the chaplain cautioned as she retreated toward the dispenser, “or I’ll think you’re secretly a romantic at heart.”
Ia didn’t deny it. “Why shouldn’t I be? I love this galaxy so much, I’m willing to marry my life to it.”
“That’s a hero/martyr complex,” Bennie dismissed. “I’m talking romantic love.”
“A girl has to amuse herself somehow, and I am still female deep down inside. Besides, all this chastity sucks like a black hole,” she muttered. “Might as well hear about it secondhand.”
“You haven’t renewed anything with Meyun yet?” Bennie asked Ia, glancing her way. She came back and returned Ia’s cup to her. “Considering how he looks at you…”
“He can look all he wants.” She sighed, accepting the mug. Slouching back, she sagged in the seat in an uncaptainly way. “Nothing can happen between us until the whole crew is on our side. The Command Staff’s spies are still watching for that sort of thing, and they won’t convert to the Church of Ia for a couple more years, in most scenarios.”
Curling one leg under her, Bennie resettled in her seat. “Church of Ia? Careful, there. Delusions of godhood don’t look good in a military personnel file.”
“You know what I meant,” Ia dismissed. “Even the Space Force calls the procedural manual the ‘Company Bible.’ No pretensions of religious aspirations were intended. At least, not on board this ship. I’m still the Prophet foretold by the Sh’nai faith, no matter what I do.”
Benjamin stayed silent for a moment, thinking, then shrugged. “Okay, so what scenarios would convert the crew more quickly? It’s not healthy for either of you to suppress your urges.”
Ia snorted. “That sort of conversion will only come at a terrible price, usually by me predicting some terrible fate, like a series of deaths. Things I’d rather avoid having come true or making people suffer through. Slow and steady will still win the race, and will do so less painfully. It just sucks like a black hole in the interim.”
“So the two of you get to suffer from sexual frustration?” Bennie said. “That’s the less painful solution?”
Ia slanted her a look. “Aren’t we supposed to be discussing my crew?”
The chaplain smirked. “Aren’t we?”
Dropping her head against the padded back of the chair, Ia sighed. “Not until I know for sure my people won’t go running to the Admiral-General. I need Meyun far more as a brilliant off-the-cuff engineer than I need him as a lover. And that’s enough on that subject for today. Official Captain’s policy. Now, let’s get back to Private Kim. I’m also concerned about her mental health after her jaunt onto the timeplains, and not just her emotional health.”
Thankfully, the chaplain let the other subject drop, though Ia knew her friend would eventually bring it back up again.
APRIL 5, 2496 T.S.
SIC TRANSIT
Like hers, Harper’s quarters were located next to his primary workspace, the main engineering compartment in the aft sector of the ship. Not that far from hers, either, if offset by a deck and a section bulkhead. However, his front room was large compared to hers. Ia had given up some of that space to ensure a galley for the bridge since she didn’t have a need for any privacy bigger than a small living area separate from her bed.
Her free time was spent with a workstation in hand, transcribing future directives; at most, all she needed was a comfortable chair. Knowing he would need to experiment in his free time, she had ordered Meyun’s quarters enlarged by a bit, so there would be room for workbenches and storage facilities for projects like this one.
“So. That’s the gun?” Ia asked, eyeing the collection of tubes, crystals, trigger, and handgrips resting on the workbench table in Meyun’s personal quarters.
“The originals were sort of…of Jules Verne–ish, so I thought I’d carry on with that theme. Wait—doesn’t it look like it should?” Harper asked her. “Am I doing something wrong temporally?”
“Well…no. Sort of. Maybe? I’m used to seeing it while it’s being held and pointed at me,” she amended, staring at the odd thing. “Maybe that’s it?”
Shrugging and spreading his hands, he hefted it. Despite its bulk, Harper lifted the weapon fairly easily. He wasn’t from as heavy a world as hers, but his homeworld, Dabin, was still above the point-break. Stepping back, he aimed it at her. A glance at the table reassured Ia that the e-clips were still secured to the table in holders. He also kept his finger off the trigger, further reassurance he wouldn’t fire it. She didn’t think she’d enjoy being hit by the wrong sort of energy beam.
“How does it look now?” he asked her, trying to squint along one of the upper enclosed tubes. “There’s no real sighting mechanism since I figured it’s meant to be used at close range.”
Ia peered at the gun for several long seconds, comparing it to the timestreams, then shook her head. “This bit up here should be over here…and this node thingy is on the other side, toward the back. And there was a sort of oblong, bowling-pin-shaped bit…or maybe kind of brandy snifter–ish…Sorry, Meyun, but it’s the wrong configuration. There also should only be one focusing crystal visible. The rest should be inside the housing.”
Harper lowered the weapon. Giving her a sardonic look, he said, “This is my first try. I designed it on basic principles of physics. And I’m not sure how these crystals are supposed to resonate, since every experiment I could find listed in the Nets said they just absorb whatever is thrown at them. Electricity, thermal energy, light from within and without the visible EM spectrum…”
“They can be easily seen, come in several pastel shades, and do emit their own light, so they don’t absorb all wavelengths of visible light,” Ia pointed out dryly.
“Nah, that’s just a trick,” he teased, setting the gun-thing on the table. “A dangly thing on a fish to lure their prey in close to their jaws—I can see some of myself building this thing in the timestream memories I have, but only in little snatches. Why don’t we just go into the streams and let me look at what I eventually do to co
rrect it, so that it functions as you saw it?”
Ia shook her head. “You can’t do that without reading your own thoughts, but your other self’s thoughts while submerged within the timestream’s life get blocked out by your actual thoughts.”
“Ha! So paradox does exist within precognitive-based time manipulation,” Meyun said, pointing a finger at her.
She blinked at him. “Harper…first of all, it’s only a paradox because you’re too close to your own life, and your current thoughts will always be louder than your past or future thoughts. And secondly, that argument was over and done with months ago.”
“I know, but it still applies.” He tapped the side of his head. “Eidetic memory. I remember almost everything you’ve ever said to me.”
For a moment, his brown eyes darkened, gazing at her. Ia remembered that look. It was a path neither of them could afford to retake. “And we’re getting offtrack. Just accept the fact that you cannot peer into your own timestream to read your thoughts. I could do it with your alternate-life self, but I cannot do it with myself…and I’m not enough of an engineer to transcribe whatever I could learn from you. Not at the level of understanding you’ll need to succeed. I can’t do it all, you know.”
Thankfully, he accepted the return to the correct subject.
“Well, then maybe I could display a series of schematics for myself…though without actually understanding the principles behind the design, it’d only be halfway useful for building the real thing,” Meyun reminded himself.
“There is that,” she agreed. “You’re a great engineer because you understand the theories deep down in your bones.”
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. It was now long enough that he had to knot it up when on duty, but this wasn’t his duty watch. A moment later, he frowned, black brows pinching together. “Wait. Didn’t you tell me once that…well, not you you, but a timestream you…didn’t you tell me once that you see all possibilities? Including alternate realities where I’m not a Human but rather a blue-furred rock ape or something?”
