by M. D. Cooper
Except for the eyes. Katrina had always had an old woman’s eyes. Now they were ancient.
“True enough,” Tangel said. “But you did find him. I left him behind. One of our greatest heroes…abandoned.”
Katrina shrugged. “There’s no absolution I can offer you. You’ll have to seek that out for yourself.”
“And seek it I shall.” Tangel sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. “Sometimes it feels like there’s so much to regret, Katrina.”
A snort burst from the woman’s nose. “Oh believe me, I know that all too well. It’s so easy to let the past become an anchor—and not the sort you want, either. I’ve done a lot…a lot that I regret. But taken individually, I’m at peace with nearly all the decisions I've made.”
Tangel couldn’t help but notice the caveat. “ ‘Nearly all’.”
“You have them, I’m sure. The ones that will haunt you forever.”
A hundred regret-filled memories flashed before Tangel’s eyes as the gantry extended to meet the Voyager’s airlock. “Do I ever.”
“You never talked about them—even before you became half-AI,” Katrina observed, as a light came on signaling that the airlock was cycling.
Tangel shrugged. “It’s not really my way to dwell on the past. I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is look to the future and do my best when it comes. I’m a fast study—mostly—when it comes to the lessons of the past. One of those lessons was to not let memory and regret from days gone by rule the present. The ability to forget is one of the greatest gifts humanity has.”
Katrina cocked her head and caught Tanis’s gaze. “But you’re not human anymore, are you?”
Tangel shrugged. “Biologically I’m not, no. Sera even finally badgered me into adopting her preference in epidermis—though without the constant sensory stimulation.”
“I’ve done my time with artificial skin, I’ll pass on that,” Katrina grimaced, a look of far-off pain in her eyes.
“I fought it for a while,” Tangel replied. “But it was foolish. Having bulletproof, stealth-capable, chameleon skin is a considerable boon in our line of work. You can always get it changed back.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Katrina replied, her tone laced with a note of humor as she evaded Tangel’s suggestion. “You were about to tell me what new species you are.”
“Well, I’m not an AI, which we all know to be a misnomer anyway. I know some have categorized AIs—at least the ones with Weapon Born in their lineage—as Homo Quantus-Animo Sapiens. Perhaps I am a Homo Quantus-Penta-Animo Sapiens, or some such.”
“Sounds like a mouthful—also not what I was getting at,” Katrina said, her lips twisting into a smirk.
Tangel chuckled. “I know. I don’t really know what I am, or what I’m capable of—classifying myself seems foolish, given that. Stars, every time I push what I think are my boundaries, I just find new vistas.”
“What’s it like?” Katrina asked.
Tangel paused before replying, trying to find the right words. “It’s…complex. I can choose to see with only my two-dimensional vision, my eyes, should I choose. When I do that, I can perceive the three dimensions as I always have. However, my other senses keep trickling in. The three dimensions turn into four, then five. I’m…growing, for lack of a better word, new sensory organs. I believe I know how to grow five-dimensional ‘eyes’. Once I do that, I’ll be able to perceive the sixth dimension.”
“Shit,” Katrina whispered.
“Yeah, it’s nuts. I can see other types of light and energy. I can touch them, too.” As she spoke, Tangel reached out with her corporeal hand and touched a shimmering stream that was flowing off the Voyager—the fifth-dimensional manifestation of the magnetic field emanating from the fusion reactor’s tokamak coils. The stream flexed under her touch, and she watched that movement transfer into all the other magnetic fields around her, a luminescent web of electromagnetism that filled the docking bay.
The fields flowed through Katrina, bending the small ones within her body, altering it and her mind in subtle ways. Tangel followed the energy flows, noting one that appeared discordant. From experience, Tangel knew that it was the physical manifestation of an unpleasant memory, of some past pain.
She reached out and touched it.
Curious. It’s so embedded.
“Tangel! What the…!” Katrina cried out, jerking away.
Tangel started, realizing that as she’d followed the thread, she’d touched Katrina’s face with her corporeal hand.
“Sorry, I was…ah…following the magnetic fields through the bay, looking at how they interact with you in other dimensions.”
Katrina was staring at Tangel with a look that was half fear, half worry. “I felt you…inside.”
Tangel felt a flush rise on her cheeks. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to. Sometimes, realities don’t line up the way I expect them to. I didn’t realize….”
“That you were probing inside my body?” Katrina’s ire and fear turned into a sardonic smirk.
“Uh…yeah.”
“I’ll admit, it felt…good,” Katrina allowed. “Like a tingle running through me.”
Tangel wondered if she should tell Katrina what she saw, but the sound of the airlock opening caught her attention, and she turned back to the ship, watching as the first figure stepped out, stooping to clear the low overhang.
“Kara,” Tangel said in greeting as she approached and took the black-winged woman’s hand. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
Tanis and Angela had only seen Kara and her brother briefly—aboard the Galadrial the day she stormed it with Usef and a team of Marines—but Adrienne’s children had made an impression. She noted that Kara had a face now; no longer was the woman’s head a black oval, devoid of features. The resemblance to her father was clear, which made sense, given what she’d learned of the man who had borne all his own children.
The fangs, however, made for a marked differentiation.
“Thank you, Tangel,” Kara said in a quiet voice. “I noticed that these caught your attention.” She pulled her lips back, further baring the long, sharp teeth. “I had them added in memory of him. He was the one who had always pushed for us to have fear-inspiring appearances. The fangs were one of the first alterations he’d suggested.”
“A fitting homage,” Katrina replied with a solemn nod.
Behind Kara came a tall man who also looked far younger than the last information Tangel had read on him.
“Carl,” she said, extending her hand. “I hear you’ve worked hard to keep the Voyager in working condition.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Been a pleasure. Spent far and away most of my life on this ship, now.”
A flash of red in the airlock caught Tangel’s attention, and she gave a warm smile, gesturing for the occupant to exit.
“Katrina told me all about you, Malorie. You’re welcome here.”
A head with eight eyes peered around the top edge of the airlock. A moment later, the rest of the mechanical spider dropped to the deck. Katrina had explained to Tangel that Malorie still possessed a human brain inside her arachnid body, but over the years, she’d taken her altered form to heart, reveling in the thing she’d become.
“Admiral Tangel. After hearing Katrina speak of you for so many years…I thought you’d be taller.”
Tangel considered that to be an amusing statement from a woman whose disturbingly spider-like head—complete with large, fanged chelicerae—was only a meter off the ground.
“I’m sure she’s told a tall tale or two in her day,” Tangel replied with a shrug. “I’m just a woman trying to get by in this crazy universe.”
A chittering laugh slipped out of Malorie’s mouth. “From someone who is more ‘just a woman’ than you, I sincerely doubt that.”
Tangel shrugged and looked back up at the ship looming overhead, her trepidation returning. “Troy? May I come aboard?”
“Nonsense,” Katrina said, her brow lowering. “Just because Tanis left this ship to me doesn’t mean the last five hundred years count for nothing.”
“Time to pay the piper,” Tangel said to the group around her with a slight nod as she slipped past. “Once I’ve chatted with Troy, we’ll see if the Seras are ready, and we can all talk about the mission.”
Katrina folded her arms. “You’d better have a hell of a plan. It was a suicide run just to rescue Kara when she left High Airtha.”
Tangel winked at her long-time friend. “We’ll put our heads together. I’m sure we can come up with something.”
“Very encouraging,” Malorie rasped as Tangel walked toward the Voyager.
Tangel ran her hands along the hull for a moment before stepping through the airlock and into the corridor that ran to the central shaft.
“It’s weird, Troy,” Tangel said as she reached the ladder and began to climb.
“That this ship is so old. For me, Kapteyn’s star was just a quarter-century ago. This ship should look no older than, say, the Dresden.”
