by M. D. Cooper
“Why are you telling us this?” Faleena asked from behind Amy. “You are assuming we already know it, but what if we don’t?”
“Well, if you got Garza—damn, none of this makes sense.” Kent shook his head, and his expression became guarded. “By now, you would have surely gotten more out of him than you ever will from me. I just assumed that you had a clone, and it didn’t know what you needed to learn.”
Cary glanced at Saanvi and Faleena before continuing—noting as her gaze passed by Amy that the girl was watching events unfold with great interest.
The next instant, space snapped into place around them, heralding the end of their journey.
The starscape was wildly different than any Cary had seen before, though it wasn’t any less dense than looking galactic north or south when inside the Milky Way.
When inside the Milky Way…. Cary whispered the words to herself and brought up the local astrogation data, turning the pinnace to catch the view they’d all been waiting for.
And there it was, hanging in front of them like a massive pinwheel, tilting away like it was blowing in the wind.
“It has to be a sim,” Kent whispered, then held out his hand and pinched it with his other. “Ow! Dammit.”
“That doesn’t really work to exit a sim,” Saanvi chided.
“Yeah…but what else can I do?” Kent’s voice was still low and filled with wonder.
Even Lieutenant Mason sounded impressed. “Well I’ll be a shiprat’s tail. Hearing about this and then seeing it are two diiiiiiferent things.”
“STC is on the horn,” Saanvi announced, breaking the group’s reverie. “They need us to clear the jump zone. I have an approach to the station. Piping it through to you, Cary.”
“Right, right!” Cary nodded quickly as she brought the pinnace about and boosted for Aleutia Station.
“Even if I get an ulcer worrying about you girls,” Lieutenant Mason said with a note of raw wonderment in his voice, “it’ll totally be worth it to see this.” The burly Marine laughed. “And here my son Brennen was giving me a hard time because he got assigned to the I2, and I was stuck back on the Palisades. Stars, even if he does get onto Admiral Richards’ detail, this is still better.”
The thought of people vying to get on her mother’s guard detail didn’t seem anywhere near as impressive as looking on the Milky Way Galaxy from over a hundred thousand light years away, but she wasn’t about to diminish Mason’s—or his son’s—excitement about either.
“Funny that the father is protecting us daughters, while the son is protecting our mother,” Faleena mused. “I wonder…who is protecting our father. Do you have a brother that could take on the task, Lieutenant?”
Cary laughed as she initialized the burn that would bring the pinnace around to their assigned approach vector. “Dad doesn’t need anyone protecting him. He never gets into trouble.”
A snort slipped past Saanvi’s lips. “Well, not that he tells us about, anyway. But you’ve read his old record. Dad got up to shenanigans back in the TSF. It’s no wonder they let him join a colony mission.”
“Will we be able to get back?” Amy asked suddenly, her voice carrying an uncharacteristic urgency. “Can we go back now?”
Saanvi turned in her seat and placed a hand on Amy’s knee. “Yes, we’ll be able to get back without a problem. Tanis and Sera—you remember them, right?”
Amy nodded silently.
“Well,” Saanvi continued. “They were here just a few days ago. Jumped in and out without a problem. Look over there.”
Saanvi directed Amy to look through the window on Kent’s far side. “See? That’s the return gate. You can see a ship lining up to jump back right now.”
“Don’t worry,” Kent added, sparing a kindly look for the young girl. “I don’t think anyone here plans to stay in the LMC for long. This is all just to impress upon me how futile the Orion Guard’s goals are.”
“Is it working?” Amy asked, her tone of voice belying the fact that she wasn’t the innocent little girl many presumed her to be. Years of exposure to her father had given Amy an edge few eleven-year-olds had.
Still, Cary couldn’t help a laugh, and twisted in her seat to look at Kent. “Well? Is it?”
He looked out the window at the distant galaxy none of them ever expected to so much as travel across, let alone leave altogether.
“Yeah, a bit.”
Cary saw Saanvi and Amy lock eyes and knew the two were carrying out a conversation over the Link. Amy seemed to relax, and then Faleena spoke up once more.
“You were saying something about clones and the Britannica, Colonel Kent.”
He didn’t look away from the window as he spoke in soft tones. “I don’t think I should share any more. I’m not going to commit treason. I feel like this ride is enough of a betrayal.”
“We’re going to win this war,” Faleena pressed. “You must see that now. Orion may have numbers on their side, but our level of advancement nullifies all technological advance. You must, by now, realize our capabilities. Were we an immoral people, we could simply hide out here and manufacture pico payloads to destroy every Orion world. We could fire them through jump gates and end the war without losing a single one of our lives.”
Kent turned his head at that. “Just you raising that possibility is disconcerting.”
Faleena only shrugged and continued undeterred. “Surely your tacticians are planning for it, it is logical to assume that, should you back us into a corner, we will unleash our pico on you.”
“I suppose they must be considering that,” Kent allowed. “It was one of the reasons I was sent in with a strike team. To attempt to eliminate the threat before it became a war.”
“And we understand that logic.” Faleena’s tone was warm, filled with understanding. “And you would agree that our people face an existential threat, yet we have not unleashed our most powerful weapon.”
Kent gestured out the window. “Well, with a backup site in the LMC, that ‘existential threat’ is minimized.”
“But it still exists—in fact, bringing you here has increased it.”
“Oh, I know what bringing me here means,” Kent countered. “It means that if I don’t play ball, I get put in a hole for the rest of my life. This isn’t the sort of installation you let people know about and then risk them escaping.”
“It’s true,” Cary replied. “But we’re not going to imprison people forever. You’ll go into stasis, and then be set free when the war is over.”
“And what if you lose?” Kent asked. “Will we all remain in stasis for centuries until our pods lose power?”
“They’re on a hundred-year timer,” Saanvi told him. “Their location is such that it can sustain the entire prisoner population without trouble, should knowledge of the location be lost.”
“Seems you think of everything,” Kent muttered.
“Benefit of advanced technology.” Cary turned to look at him once more. “You have to see that. Yes, the Inner Stars is a shitshow, but it doesn’t have to be that way. All humans and AIs can be uplifted and live in peace if there is no want. We can turn our focus to building amazing things, exploring the universe, living forever. Your Kirkland thinks that one of our two species should be slaves, and the other should live short, meaningless lives. Do you really think that should be our destiny?”
Kent turned away, staring out the window once more at the distant galaxy.
Cary waited a minute for a response, and then twisted back around in her seat, facing forward as she adjusted their approach to match delta-v with Aleutia Station.
Faleena gave a half-smile and wink in response.
Cary nodded absently, knowing that it still wasn’t enough. Kent possessed knowledge that would help them, they just had to figure out how to prise it free.
ALEUTIA
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Aleutia Station
REGION: Cheshire System, Large Magellanic Cloud
“Welcome to the LMC,” Colonel Ophelia said as she approached the group disembarking from the pinnace. “I’m sorry that General Peabody isn’t here to greet you, but he’s out at Bolt Hole.”
“Are they managing to stabilize the system?” Saanvi asked, her voice dripping with enthusiastic curiosity.
A pained expression flashed across Ophelia’s face. “Well, it’s proving to be tricky. No one had ever considered—at least not seriously—dropping a black hole into the dark layer. Admiral Richards made a bit of a mess with that one.”
“I still want to know how Airtha managed to send a ship containing a black hole through a jump gate,” Cary added. “From what Finaeus said, that shouldn’t be possible. The mass of the singularity within the ship would bend the jump gate’s tunnel through spacetime unpredictably.”
Saanvi gave a mock gasp, and Cary shot her a dark look. “I may be the hotshot pilot on our team, but I still pay attention. The mechanics of spaceflight being of particular interest.”
Having turned to reply to Saanvi, Cary caught the look of utter amazement on Kent’s face at the subject. He caught her gaze, and quickly schooled his expression as Colonel Ophelia spoke up again.
“They’re combing through the wreckage of the EMG ship for clues, but so far, that’s a secret for Airtha alone. Erin and her team have made the trip out to Bolt Hole; she seemed confident that they could save the planet by some means…. The question is whether or not it’s worth the effort.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Faleena chimed in. “That world is an ark containing a variety of plants and animals not seen across a thousand star systems.”
“I believe that is something they’re weighing,” Ophelia said as she gestured for the group to follow her out of the docking bay. “Whether to save the ark, or save the contents.”
“I bet Erin really wants to figure out how to guide a black hole inside the dark layer,” Saanvi added.
“What about the Exdali?” Cary asked. “They must be swarming the thing.”
“Exdali?” Kent asked, speaking for the first time since they disembarked.
Cary fell back a step and gave the man a sidelong look. “Have you ever heard tall tales about things that live in the dark layer and devour ships?”
The Orion Guard colonel frowned. “Once or twice. Honestly, they’re just stories from shitty pilots who didn’t follow dark matter maps well enough and got creamed.”
Faleena held out her hand, and a holoprojection appeared above it. The view was of Carthage with tens of thousands of ships surrounding it. “See the Orion Guard fleet?” she asked.
Kent nodded silently as the AI initiated the playback. As he watched, a fleet of ISF ships jumped in close to the planet and moved into an unusual configuration. Then spacetime appeared to ripple directly in the Orion fleet’s path.
The ripple became a rift, and out of it poured the stuff of nightmares. Amorphous shapes with what appeared to be writhing masses of tentacles and gaping maws dove into the midst of the Orion ships, latching onto them and devouring the vessels.
Faleena halted the playback and gave Kent a serious look. “Those are Exdali. They live at the core of every star system, feeding on dark matter. Yes, many ships that make insystem jumps hit pockets of mass in the DL, but many also encounter Exdali.”
Colonel Kent sucked in a sharp breath. “They…you…all those ships, those people…”
“There were many survivors,” Colonel Ophelia said as they swung into the corridor leading to the main observation lounge at the top of Aleutia Station. “Your people were lucky.”
“Lucky?” He choked out the word, eyes still staring at the projection above Faleena’s outstretched hand.
“Yes,” Ophelia’s voice shifted, dripping with ice. “We should have used our picobombs. Wiped out the filth entirely. Instead, my son died so that some of your interstellar marauders could live. So yeah, you were lucky. Lucky I wasn’t in command, because I would have told parliament to go fuck themselves and used pico anyway.”
Ophelia’s vehement outburst killed any further conversation, and made for a rather awkward lift ride to the observation deck.
Once they arrived, Cary directed the Marines to take Kent across the broad space to a seating area, while she and her sisters stayed back with Ophelia. Amy hung by Saanvi’s side, but the girl seemed more curious than alarmed by the ISF colonel’s outburst.
“I’m sorry,” Faleena said quietly. “I didn’t think we would open old wounds.”
“Not that old,” Ophelia muttered. “That battle wasn’t even two years ago…” The colonel’s voice faded, and she sucked in a deep breath. “But I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re trying to turn him to our side, and I may have just screwed that up.”
Cary shrugged. “You never know. It may be just what we need. Nothing you said was wrong. His people did launch an unprovoked attack against ours.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ophelia said with a vehement shake of her head. “My behavior was inexcusable. It’s probably best that I go.”
“I believe you’re right,” Saanvi replied. “We do need to make sure he feels safe.”
Ophelia smiled at the three sisters. “You’re a good set of women. I imagine you do your parents proud—when you’re not stealing starships, that is.”
“You take a ship one time…” Cary replied with a wink.
The ISF colonel gave a soft laugh, and turned to walk away, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, I was going to say before, there’s something interesting about the LMC and the dark layer.”
“Oh?” Saanvi asked.
“We’ve not yet searched extensively—no one really wants to, overmuch—but as best we can tell, there are no Exdali in the LMC.”
Cary felt her mouth drop open and saw Saanvi’s eyes widen.
“None?” they asked in unison.
Ophelia shook her head. “Not in this neck of the woods, at least. Hard to say if there are any elsewhere, though.”
Saanvi whistled. “I bet Earnest will be very interested in that.”
“Why’s that?” Faleena asked.
“Just a theory of his, one he asked me not to share until he has more data.”
Cary rolled her eyes as she turned back to where Lieutenant Mason had taken Kent. “Earnest always has a new theory, doesn’t he?”
* * * * *
Once the group had settled in the circular seating area where the Marines had taken Kent—and a round of drinks had been ordered from a servitor—the Orion colonel let out a long sigh.
“I have to admit, Cary Richards, this is a damn sight better than walks in the Palisades’ lower parks.” As he spoke, his gaze was fixed on the view of the Milky Way galaxy, hanging several meters above the rim of the observation lounge.
“Pun intended?” Cary asked with a wink.
Kent nodded. “Of course.”
“Pun?” Amy asked, sounding puzzled. “Ohhh! ‘Sight’. I get it.”
A pair of servitors arrived and began to hand each person their desired beverage, and the group sat in silence for a few minutes before Kent spoke up.
“Your father must really
trust you three to send you here alone with me.”
Cary glanced over her shoulder to where Lieutenant Mason stood, then looked around the lounge at the thirty Marines spread throughout the area.
“Not exactly what I would call ‘alone’.”
“Well—no offense to you, Lieutenant—” Colonel Kent paused to nod in Mason’s direction. “The grunts here aren’t trying to wring intel from me, that’s your job.”
“Four,” Amy piped up, giving Kent a narrow-eyed look.
“Pardon?” the Orion colonel asked.
“Their father sent the four of us,” Amy said as she folded her arms. “They had to get special permission to bring me along, which means he trusts me too.”
Kent chuckled softly. “I suppose he does, Amy. I’m glad you came along. It means that your sisters will be nicer to me—they wouldn’t want to upset you.”
Amy snorted and rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease, Mister Kent. My father raped and murdered people right in front of me. Even Cary at her meanest is like my father was on his very best day.”
Kent let out a low whistle and his eyes darted to Cary, who nodded slowly.
“Amy’s father was a man named Stavros. He ran a rather nasty little empire on the edge of the Praesepe Cluster,” she supplied.
“But my best friend Rika saved me and my mom,” Amy said with a beatific smile. “And then Barne, my new big brother, blew my dad’s brains out the back of his skull.”
Amy said the words without emotion, but Cary could tell that it cost the girl a lot to give voice to those memories.
“You think that the people from New Canaan are bad, Mister Kent, but you have no idea what bad is until you’ve watched your father torture Silver for years, and then…and then she’s your mother!” Suddenly Amy was on her feet, yelling at Kent, her face reddening while tears glistened in her eyes. “So maybe you should think about who the bad guys really are before you try to kill off the good ones!”
