by Blaze Ward
Val nodded angrily, unwilling to fight them anymore, but unable to stop them. He sat in the station and keyed the audio line live again.
“Sorry about that,” Yan called, maybe a little louder than necessary. “Brief conversation over here.”
“Yes,” Carthage said. “I knew you had muted the line. The audio timbre changed. What is your decision?”
“I need to dig out a couple of bottles of red wine,” Yan said. “And then I and my wife would like to come over and spend an evening listening to old stories.”
“Very good,” Leviathan replied. “Your vessel uses a standard design for an airlock hatch. I will invest one of my avatars into a shuttle and send it over as a transport. Stand by, I will be moving closer, and establishing a parking orbit eight miles off your starboard bow.”
“Looking forward to it, Carthage,” Yan said, signaling Calkin to cut the line.
He sucked a breath deep, all the way to his toes, and turned to Ainsley.
“Thank you,” he said simply, compacting as much emotion as he could into the words.
“Together,” she repeated to his nod.
“You’re insane, Bedrov,” Val added. “But best of luck.”
Yes. Crazier than a shit-house rat.
But it might be the only way they were surviving this.
It might be the only way Yan could protect the entire galaxy.
EASC Carthage
Engineering status: optimal
Weapon status: live
Fuel supplies: 99.63% full with external hydrogen tanks at hand. 583 power years at current burn rate
Crew status: off-vessel, presumed dead of old age
Life Support status: activated and warming
Flight Deck status: Shuttle Libya no longer operational. Shuttle Cyrenaica deployed, optimal
Vessel status: 81%, peak of what can be accomplished without human assistance and a shipyard
Memory status: 84% full with old files decompressed for review. “Memories”
The flying, metal box identifying as Mendocino was 204.7 meters in length, with a 46 meter beam at the widest spot forward. It was 28 meters tall, with six decks inside configured for standard size.
Human biology had not changed significantly in three thousand years, except that the average for both genders appeared to be roughly 3% smaller, both in height and mass. However, a sample of twenty-nine, slightly tilted towards female, was too small against which to draw adequate conclusions, especially with the one known as Ainsley Barret representing a possible female high-end in comparative height.
Shuttle Cyrenaica looked like a greyhound standing next to a rhinoceros, docked against the side of the Republic of Aquitaine Freighter for the passengers to come aboard.
Yan Bedrov. Human male. Approximate biological age forty-five years standard. Mass approximately one hundred eighty pounds. Six feet, one inch tall.
Ainsley Barret. Human female. Approximate biological age forty years standard. Mass approximately one hundred fifty pounds. Five feet, eleven inches tall.
Carthage was amused that both wore deep space gear fulfilling the same basic role as the skinsuits his old crew had once worn. Adequate for simple EVA tasks, sealed against air, cold, and radiation. Not armored, nor powered by exoskeletal systems. Both included secondary radio units on an external belt, and beam pistols of a type he did not currently have in his data core. Rigid helmets were attached at the rear of the neck and could be deployed in an eyeblink.
Bedrov also carried a small satchel that contained two glass bottles of red wine, a combined fifty fluid ounces at fourteen percent alcohol by volume. He boarded Cyrenaica first followed by the female, both stopping dead in the middle of the corridor, at the hatch where it debauched into the lounge with exclamations of surprise at the interior fittings.
Carthage had chosen Libya first, but that Priority Transport had succumbed to the ravages of age finally. Cyrenaica was the only remaining Priority Transport his old commander, Robert Kuhlenschmidt, had left behind, having himself departed with the crew aboard all of the Cargo Transports.
“Please choose a seat and use the safety equipment to buckle yourself in,” Carthage said through the command avatar flying Cyrenaica.
He invested another avatar into his primary life support systems here, upgrading the current baseline watch to something capable of decision making on the fly. While he was happy that both Bedrov and Barret were protected against sudden failure of those systems, he wanted it to be an unneeded precaution, rather than a life-saving choice.
He was, he found himself, looking forward to this. To speaking with humans again, even if they constituted representation of a foreign, enemy power. The Earth Alliance had never declared war on the Republic of Aquitaine, and he could legitimately call himself the government now, so the choice was in his hands, as it were.
There would be peace.
He hoped.
Carthage uncoupled Cyrenaica from Mendocino and backed away carefully. The freighter might not be durable enough to survive the Priority Transport’s engines at this range, and he had no desire to eliminate everyone accidentally.
At first, care had kept him at a distance, that this not be another trap by Kinnison. How many times had they danced, over those last few decades?
But Mendocino was a simple pile of metal and energy. It had no soul.
Carthage hoped that he had one. That perhaps there was a place for him after dissolution, where he might see his old admiral again. Might know the truth of that last colony effort.
He had the coordinates, and the vector. It would be simplicity itself to lay in a course and make the first jump. More than once he had considered it, over the centuries.
But what would he find, once he emerged from this tower where he had hidden oh, so long ago? Would there even be anyone there?
And how would they remember him or his kind? Bedrov called him one of the destroyers. And there was truth to that.
How many trillions of humans had died by his hand, or at his command? How many thousands of Concord worlds had he and his fleets annihilated, just to keep the score even?
Happily, his kind had all failed, in the end.
Humans had returned to space, and not brought his kind with them. Had no place for the Sentient systems.
Carthage had never been programmed as a philosopher, but he had lived the human equivalent of more than one hundred and twenty million human years, given the speed of his processors and the elapsed millennia.
Fortunately, he had never fallen victim to the sort of God-Complex that had taken hold of Kinnison. Perhaps having a bad example had kept him sane?
Carthage often wondered if his cowardice was the only other response possible, when one could annihilate worlds.
Cyrenaica was landing. The flight deck avatar closed the landing bay’s shields and extended the docking tunnel. He could easily repressurize the bay, but depressurizing it later would take time, and he still planned to send his visitors home.
It was what he would do afterwards that left him empty.
What does the warrior do, when he has outlived the very people on whose behalf he destroyed the galaxy?
Carthage watched Bedrov and Barret enter the main body of the vessel by way of the primary lounge. The two kept up a friendly banter with the avatar, but he was monitoring their vital signs against emergency, and could spot the signs of underlying stress.
Daniel, walking boldly into the lion’s den, to cite an ancient, literary reference.
But they held hands as they walked, indicating a much closer social connection than merely fellow travelers. Bedrov had referred to her as his wife. They had even shared a kiss, just before debarking Cyrenaica.
“This way,” Carthage himself said, opening a set of hatches and activating the lights, once he had confirmed that the temperature was a pleasant seventy-two degrees at thirty inches atmospheric pressure.
“What’s down there?” Bedrov asked, pausing at the juncture to the main linear corridor to
look aft down a darkened space.
“Primary reactor spaces, first,” Carthage answered. “Aft of that are consumables storage, JumpDrives, engine spaces, and the rear weapons array. However, I have not brought it up to human compatibility, and without significant repair work, I am not sure how many of those sections would currently hold atmosphere.”
“Maybe later,” Bedrov said in a voice Carthage could only describe as wistful.
The two humans turned away from the tour and entered into the space Admiral Kuhlenschmidt had always called the Tiki Lounge, from the decorations an earlier crew had assembled, to remind them of the fabled South Seas of Earth.
Back before the war, when there was still such a place.
Before Kinnison and his fleet had pelted the planet with enough orbital material to measurably increase the surface gravity, showering deadly meteors the size of cities onto the helpless humans below to go with a variety of thermonuclear warheads. All Carthage had been able to do was visit the same terror onto Bryce and Merankorr.
Revenge was such a petty word, when billions died beneath your sword.
“This brings back memories,” the woman said, stepping into the bar first, while Bedrov loitered nearer the hatch.
“The space has been kept at near vacuum for a very long time, Ainsley Barret,” Carthage said. “There are vac-sealed bags of cloth you could use to wipe down some of the surfaces so you can be more comfortable.”
Carthage was alerted to a bio-signal imbalance in Bedrov: heartrate suddenly accelerated, pupils dilating, skin tone fading rapidly, breathe shallow, skin temperature falling.
The human was experiencing the symptoms of shock.
“Bedrov, are you well?” he asked.
“Babe?” Barret asked as well, turning. “Yan?”
She moved quickly to the man, wrapping her arms around him.
That seemed to break whatever had taken hold of Bedrov’s mind. His arms came up mechanically to return the embrace, and he began to breathe normally again.
Vital signs were less extreme, but maintaining a plateau. Adrenaline, dumped heavily into the system, where it would often take several minutes to oxidize and regulate.
Flight or Fight.
“I’m okay,” Bedrov finally muttered.
“What’s wrong, babe?” Barret probed.
“Took me back,” he said. “Twenty-five years were nothing, and I’m back in that corner bar with that old man. Except this time I’m the old man. The old nightmare where you’re suddenly in school, and have to take a final exam you haven’t studied for in decades. You know the one?”
“Been there,” she said, still holding the man close. “Except I’m naked when I walk into the lecture hall, and they’ve already started without me.”
“Trade you,” he offered weakly.
“You just want to get me naked,” she retorted, sticking her tongue out.
“Guilty as charged.”
Apparently, the banter helped. Carthage watched Bedrov’s vital signs step closer to the baseline recorded on Cyrenaica, probably already then exhibiting signs of stress then, but not debilitating.
Bedrov produced the two bottles, standing them on the bar, and two short-stemmed drinking bulbs as well. They appeared to the eye as glass, but the chemical signature contained far too much aluminium and carbon fibers. Presumably unbreakable under any normal circumstances, which made sense as vehicles for alcoholic beverage.
The bottles were not sealed with corks, but flip-tops on a compact wire frame that swung over and closed the neck. Starkly primitive, but also exceptionally durable, and easy to maintain.
“I did not bring a third glass, Carthage,” Bedrov said as he poured the first and handed it to the woman.
Carthage invested a full avatar into the bar’s systems, activated the being Admiral Kuhlenschmidt had dubbed the Lord of Tiki, and sat back to watch through a lesser god’s eyes.
The avatar came fully online quickly, reviewed the logs, and projected himself as a big, happy Irishman to the visual senses. Audio would still be Carthage for now, with a bit of an accent thrown in, and there would be neither smell nor touch of the hologram, but he had done this well enough in the old days, for the people who had been his crew.
His last friends in the galaxy.
“I’ve got you covered, mate,” the Avatar-that-was-Carthage smiled.
A hologram bottle appeared in one hand, and a glass in the other. Carthage poured himself a glass of Malbec as the two humans watched in utter fascination.
Bedrov reached out a hand tentatively.
Carthage held up an arm and let Bedrov’s finger pass harmlessly through it.
“Just a hologram, Bedrov,” the Avatar said smugly. “No ghosts on this ship. Got rid of them all a long time ago. Maybe they left to haunt the humans.”
“Wow,” Bedrov managed. “I’ve never seen a hologram so life-like.”
“This room was always a special place for my crew,” Carthage admitted. “There are eighteen different projection systems available, with a full Avatar invested just for this room. It was always one of the most popular on the ship.”
“I could see that,” Bedrov said, carefully pouring his glass and taking in the room again. “Because of the place, and the age, I would like to propose a toast. To absent friends.”
They all three drank to that. Carthage had an emotional subroutine programmed into the Avatar for the express purpose of experiencing the human emotions that came with alcoholic consumption. Humans experienced every emotion at twenty to forty percent greater effectiveness while intoxicated, but that included the maudlin turns as well as the ecstasy.
He could know great happiness, but Bedrov had invoked a sadder place. The loneliness that haunted all spacers, where friends might die suddenly and their bodies could never be recovered.
Or they might simply outlive the ones they loved.
Ainsley Barret had grown solemn, as well.
Perhaps they all had ghosts that they missed.
“Better?” she asked Bedrov.
“Yeah,” he said in a tired tone. “I owe you a story. Both of you, Carthage. When you asked if I had known loneliness, you took me back to something like this Tiki bar on my homeworld, and an old man I met. Knew him for all of an afternoon, and then forgot him completely for twenty-five years. This place brings him back.”
“Are you sure, Bedrov?” Carthage asked. “I do not wish to cause you pain. You had offered to share a bottle of wine with me, and tell me lies.”
“And so I did,” he replied. “You are that old man that I should have taken the time to get to know. Could have learned so much from, but we’re all blind at that age. Things slip away and you can never get them back.”
The Avatar leaned against the bar, glass of wine in one hand and a somber smile on his face.
“Tell me.”
Bedrov
Seeing the old Tiki theme had brought it all back. Yan was just glad he hadn’t brought any rum with him. Mai Tai’s right now, instead of a soft Malbec, would have pushed him over the edge.
As it was, he wasn’t sure who was crying more right now, him or Ainsley. He’d never told her this story. Hell, he’d completely forgotten the old man until today.
Most of his history was that way. There was very little of the things Before Jessica that he wanted to even remember, let alone tell someone else.
Yan Bedrov would relive those days in his nightmares. He didn’t like that man that he used to be all that much. Better to put it all away in a hall closet and forget about it.
At least until somebody accidentally pulls that box down, looking for something else, and it all comes back.
“And do you remember his name, Yan?” Carthage asked.
That was the first time the ship had used his first name alone. It had taken them half of the first bottle of wine to get that far.
“He didn’t have a name, Carthage,” Yan replied. “Only a callsign. Whippet. At his age, it had become a badge of derisi
on for most of the folks in the bar.”
“Why is that?” the machine seemed surprised.
“Whippets are a breed of dog that are lean and fast,” Yan explained. “But he was an old man then. Probably sixty. Fat and tired and long-since past being a dangerous knife fighter. At least he had been smart enough to quit, rather than having to be challenged out of his slot. Or maybe his last captain had simply grounded him. Either way, he’d stopped being a pirate about the time I was born, if I had to guess. It had left him broken. Before Jessica, there wasn’t much of a support network for people like that.”
“Jessica?” Carthage’s voice perked up.
“My sovereign lord Jessica Keller,” Yan felt his chin come up unconsciously. “Queen of the Pirates. First ever queen, too. Aquitaine Command Centurion who wasn’t going to take any shit from any man. Ended up taking the throne herself, when my old captain killed Arnulf and tried to break the old kingdom down. She changed everything.”
“By being a queen?” Carthage asked, confused.
“By being tougher than any of them,” Yan corrected. “Meaner. Harder. Better. She killed the dead-enders, broke the rest, and then has spent most of a decade trying to turn us into a better place. I used to be the Tactical Officer on her flagship, by accident the first time. Eventually turned into the second-best naval architect in the kingdom.”
“Second best?”
“Let me tell you about Pops Nakamura, Carthage.”
He did, ranging back and forth across that famous man’s crazy life, a place even more amazing than Yan’s.
They were well into the second bottle now. Yan felt like he had talked more today than he had in the last month. Ainsley had said almost nothing, except to reply to direct questions, letting him to all the heavy lifting.
And listening to his stories.
Weren’t many lies in there. Not like he had promised the death machine earlier.
Just the little deceits a man tells himself as he grows old, and eventually forgets which parts are fanciful and which aren’t.
“So tell me about Kinnison and the war,” Yan prodded. “Not the fighting, but the aftermath. What do robot navies do after they have destroyed everything? Then I’ll tell you about that desert that is his last resting place.”
