Victory on Terra

by Terry Mixon

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Jared responded. “Let’s do this.”

  He brought his controls out of standby and lifted the pinnace off the ground, pivoting it in place slowly to follow Kelsey out into the sunlight.

  Once again, they were taking a chance by leaving during the day, but the pinnaces were extremely hard to detect. Rather than wait for night, which wasn’t much of an impedance to the AIs, he’d decided that he’d rather be gone.

  It was time to end this chapter of their lives.

  35

  Kelsey took her pinnace northward with Jared close behind her, and Talbot sitting quietly beside her. As they traveled, the ruined cities and towns that they passed transitioned to an untamed wilderness. She crossed a small stretch of ocean and then onto the ice shelf beyond.

  She knew roughly where Terra’s axis was located, but she didn’t need to be over it for this to work. In fact, it might be better if she wasn’t so precise. That was the way machines thought.

  Once she reached a frozen, isolated area that suited their needs, she double-checked to verify that her stealth systems were fully operational. Then she called Jared to make certain that he’d done the same, even though she knew that he already had. It was far better to be sure.

  Only then did she lift the nose of her pinnace and begin rising from the surface of Terra.

  Rather than rushing up to orbit, she lifted as slowly as she could while still maintaining good headway. She wasn’t going to go fast enough to cause a disturbance in the atmosphere that might give them away.

  Long minutes later, they finally exited the atmosphere and were in space. Kelsey didn’t dare use active scanners, but her passives told the same story that Angela had passed on to them. The area around the equator, which held all of the orbitals around Terra and the AI, was packed with ships.

  Quite a few more than there had been here when they’d arrived, in fact. Though her detection ability was limited on passive scanners, she thought that many of them were bigger than destroyers.

  Thankfully, while the enemy had the planet encircled, their coverage at the poles only consisted of a few automated destroyers that were scattered fairly wide. They obviously didn’t consider the chances of someone coming out this way very high.

  Score one for her outguessing them. The AI was confident that it had destroyed their only means of transport. While it was covering its bases, it thought there was little chance unprotected humans could survive and escape from such an inhospitable place.

  In fact, this would’ve been an excellent place to hide facilities meant to survive the invasion. She wondered if they were traveling over lost habitats deep under the ice where the descendants of the survivors even now lived out their lives.

  The possibility couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Not for Terra or any other world. That was something to think about later.

  “It looks like we’ve got a couple of destroyers that could be in position to detect us if we get unlucky,” she told Jared over the short-range com. “I’ll maneuver to avoid them as best I can. Once we get away from Terra, we should be able to rendezvous with Persephone without any issues.”

  “What do you think our chances are?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  “Decent. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a run of bad luck, but I’m hopeful that we can pull this off. It would really suck to come this far only to have them spot us just as we’re getting away.”

  “Don’t jinx us. Positive thoughts only.”

  She took a deep breath and pushed her worries away. Slowly—ever so slowly—she edged between the destroyers that were farthest apart. The strength of the scanners searching for them rose toward the detection threshold with every second.

  When she and Jared were as close to the destroyers as they were going to get, the scanner strength hovered just a few notches below disaster, but the automated vessels didn’t react.

  She only started breathing easily again once they’d left the blockade around Terra behind them and were in open space and headed for Persephone. Their passive scanners wouldn’t be capable of picking the ship up as they approached, but she had no doubt Persephone would be right where she was supposed to be.

  “I see her,” Jared finally signaled. “Look off a bit to port and up.”

  She turned her eyes in the direction indicated. Persephone was only a dot at this range, but she was growing steadily larger.

  Once her former command had come close, Kelsey lined up with one of the docking cradles. Ten seconds later, the pinnace made contact, and Persephone latched on. Kelsey watched as the controls locked everything down and saw the airlock seal go green.

  Only then did she let out a ragged breath. “I can’t believe that we made it,” she muttered.

  Talbot reached over and took her hand. “I knew you’d make this work. You always come through.”

  She laughed a bit shakily. “I had my doubts this time. This mission was worse than anything we’ve ever been through.”

  “Come on. Let’s get out of this tin can.”

  Once everyone had exited both of the pinnaces, she headed straight for the bridge and found Angela seated in the command chair. The other woman rose and wrapped her arms around her.

  “It’s so good to have you back home,” the big woman said. “I’ve been worried sick.”

  Kelsey squeezed her back. “We’ve got a lot of stories to tell, but first, we need to get out of here before someone spots us. How long is it going to take us to get to the flip point you found?”

  “A while,” Angela said as she sat back down. “That’s why it’s called a far flip point. Thankfully, it looks like the outer system is only intermittently patrolled. There are a couple of destroyers that might become problematic, but we won’t know that’s the case until we get a little farther out.”

  Kelsey gestured at the main screen in front of the bridge. “All those ships in orbit around Terra. We didn’t see anything like them in the system when we arrived. Where did they come from?”

  Angela’s face scrunched into a frown. “The Alpha Centauri flip point was heavily guarded with both ships and stations. Almost all of them were shut down, and that’s why we didn’t spot them before you went to Terra.

  “Once things started happening, the AI reactivated a bunch of the ships and brought them in. It also increased patrols in the system. It looks like you made them very nervous.”

  “Why would they have that flip point guarded?” Kelsey asked, feeling her brows knit. “Alpha Centauri is a cul-de-sac and not one with any habitable worlds. Why guard it?”

  Angela shrugged. “It may be that’s where the AI parked the inactive ships that it used during the rebellion. They won the fight, and they probably still had a lot of ships when they were done. They might’ve taken a lot of them to Alpha Centauri to make certain that no one could get to them, like the wrecks they put around Boxer Station. We don’t really have a way to be sure.”

  “And we’ve got more pressing matters to attend to,” Kelsey agreed. “That mystery is going to have to wait for another time. Right now, we need to get out of here and rendezvous with Jared’s fleet.”

  Angela nodded. “We’re already on our way. The nightmare is just about over. Why don’t you and the rest go take a hot shower, get something to eat, and relax for a bit. Let me do the driving.”

  Kelsey was more than willing to do that, but she was worried that something could still go wrong. She wouldn’t relax entirely until they’d left the Terra system behind.

  An hour after they’d arrived aboard Persephone, Talbot was standing in the cramped medical center. Jake Peters was about to undergo the surgery to install Marine Raider–grade artificial limbs. He figured that he owed it to the man to be there.

  He also needed to get Kelsey down here at some point to get her thigh regenerated, but figured that wouldn’t happen until they’d made their escape from the Terra system.

  Lily quickly had Peters on the table and had applied the somatic stim
ulator. With him fully asleep, her professional face quickly transitioned to one that looked concerned to Talbot.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Unlike replacing Julia’s burned-out artificial eye—which went off without a hitch—this surgery is going to be difficult. These injuries have been scarred for a very long time. Longer than I would’ve imagined possible. They’re going to be extremely resistant to regeneration, I suspect.

  “I ran him through the regenerator back at the Imperial Palace, but I didn’t have the time and equipment that I needed to go through and remove the worst of the scar tissue. Once that’s done, I’m going to have to attach the artificial limbs in such a way that they’re permanently bonded into place.

  “I wasn’t lying when I told Major Peters that I can do it, but I’ll admit that it’s going to be one of the more difficult surgeries that I’ve attempted. Success is not guaranteed.”

  She took a deep breath and stretched her back. “His recovery is going to be painful and difficult, too. He’s going to have to go through retraining on a similar scale to what Kelsey needed after she was augmented.

  “He’s going to get frustrated and depressed, but he’s still going to have to work his butt off if he expects to make a full recovery. That’s where I’m hoping you’ll come in. You know how hard it’s going to be, and you can help him.”

  “I’ll be there for him,” Talbot assured her. “Better yet, Kelsey will be there. She’ll shame him into doing the very best he can. After all, can you imagine a big, tough guy like this failing to perform when she’s watching?”

  Lily chuckled. “No, I suppose that’s a pretty good motivator. It’s worked for the entirety of human existence, so it’ll probably work this time, too.”

  She took a deep breath and got to work.

  As a marine, Talbot had seen more than his fair share of blood and injuries, but the process of opening a man up to get at badly scarred tissue had a kind of gruesome feel to it.

  For whatever reason, the work she did on the man’s ruined eye socket was the worst. Yes, Peters had had the eye removed after the injury, and a civilian-grade model installed. It had burned out when the AI had used the EMP weapons on Terra a hundred years ago.

  That didn’t mean that whoever had done the work had done the best job possible. It also didn’t mean that someone that had lived as long as Peters had hadn’t developed scar tissue where another person might not during an average—or even long—lifetime.

  It felt like an hour had passed by the time she finished cleaning up the wound where his eye had once been. A check of his internal chronometer showed Talbot that it was less than half that.

  No matter how uncertain Lily said she’d felt, that didn’t slow her sure, quick motions as she did the work. Once she’d regenerated the tissue around his eye socket as much as she could, she carefully fitted an artificial replacement into the eye socket and began building the flesh back around it.

  Talbot was always amazed at how well Imperial prosthetics could be made to replace something. They looked completely normal to the naked eye. He knew that based on the eye that Julia had. It had all the same abilities as her original Marine Raider augmentation. From what he understood, it even had a few extras.

  The man’s arm and legs took hours more for Lily to prepare the stumps and fit the prosthetics. Attaching the nerves was kind of gruesome, but Talbot accepted that was just part of doing business.

  Then came the man’s mangled hand. She cleaned the stumps of the missing fingers and attached prosthetic ones to replace what was lost. Then she opened the hand itself and reconstructed it to mitigate the damage done during the original injury.

  Once that was complete, she began working on the other injuries he’d suffered. Some of that involved rebreaking bones that hadn’t healed correctly and excising more scar tissue that had formed inside his torso.

  It was a grueling, ugly task, but she eventually had him wheel Peters to the big regenerator next to the bulkhead and started it up.

  She stretched her back before facing him. “I suspect I’m going to have to do some fine-tuning on just about everything, but I think I’ve made a good start. I’ve never dealt with long-term injuries like this before, so I’m going to reserve judgment until I have a better idea of what I’m dealing with, but his prognosis is good.

  “I’ve also taken some tissue samples so that I can try to understand how his body is adapting to such an extended life span. It would be a lot better for us going forward if we really understood the process a lot better. I’m going to have to go over everything with the Imperial Physician, and I want to have the answers.”

  Talbot clapped a hand on her shoulder. “You did one hell of a job, Lily. I didn’t think it was possible to put someone back together that way again. You’re amazing.”

  “I just wish I was back aboard Caduceus,” she said glumly. “I’d feel a lot better with more facilities and extra hands to help keep an eye on his recovery. If we can rendezvous with the fleet soon, I might take him over there to finish his recovery.”

  He watched her washing her hands, suspecting that she wasn’t done talking. She confirmed that when she turned toward him, her face a mask of worry.

  “Do you think we really have a chance at this? I know we’ve got the override, but defeating the AI in its lair seems so… daunting.”

  “We’re going to beat this thing,” he said. “We’re going to take back the Empire. Don’t doubt that for a second.”

  She nodded, likely not convinced by his projected confidence. “You should probably go check on your wife and Julia. You know, to make sure that they aren’t getting into trouble.”

  “I’m not sure anybody could do that,” he said with a chuckle. “But, I’ll try.”

  With that, Talbot left the medical center and went in search of his wife. She’d want a report on what had happened with Peters, and he was finally ready to see this damned mission end.

  36

  Julia wandered the corridors of Persephone after Doctor Stone replaced her burned-out eye. This was a tiny ship. Significantly smaller than a destroyer. It also had a number of features that she didn’t understand.

  In particular, there was a room that had a series of large tubes going from floor to ceiling that had openings for large pods to be loaded in. She supposed they were escape pods, but why were they gathered in one place like this? She made a note to ask Kelsey about them once they were safely clear of danger.

  At that point, she decided that she’d put off the inevitable for as long as she could and made her way to the bridge. Like the rest of the vessel, it was laid out differently than most Fleet ships. It was a much closer affair, with fewer seats, and it was arranged in such a way that everyone could see everyone else. It felt communal.

  Angela was sitting in the center seat. Julia had to stop herself from rushing up to the woman and giving her a big hug because this wasn’t her Angela. This was the Angela from Kelsey’s universe.

  While that woman was probably good friends with Kelsey, the two probably weren’t as close as she and her Angela were. Though the relationship between her and her Angela had never been romantic, it was as close as Kelsey’s relationship with Talbot otherwise.

  Angela looked up at Julia and smiled as she rose to her feet. “You must be Julia. I’ve heard a lot about you, and I feel like I’ve known you forever. Of course, I feel the same way about Kelsey. Welcome aboard Persephone.”

  “It’s good to meet you as well,” Julia said. “In my universe, I’ve known you for years. You were the marine assigned to keep me safe, just like Talbot did for Kelsey, minus the kissing. We’re friends, and it feels that way deep in my heart, so if I seem a bit too familiar, I apologize.”

  That brought a high-amperage smile to the tall woman’s face, a grin that Julia remembered very fondly.

  “You’re not going to bother me with anything like that. Honestly, I hope that one of these days, I’ll have an opportunity to visit your universe
and meet myself. I think that would be an extraordinary sort of thing. If I might ask, why didn’t your version of me come with you?”

  “It’s complicated, but you were needed there. Honestly, we really didn’t expect this to be a long-term sort of thing, and I’d already brought Scott Roche with me.”

  Her face fell at the memory. “He didn’t make it, and you’re probably going to be very angry with me when I get back home, but the situation is what it is. Do you mind if we talk in a less public setting?”

  Angela gestured toward the corridor that Julia had just come up through. “The wardroom is just this way. They’ll call me if anything comes up that needs my attention.”

  Once they’d made their way to the small room, Angela closed the door and raised an eyebrow. “What can I help you with, Highness?”

  Unsure of exactly what the best way to start was, Julia decided to just lay out the entire situation. “I’ve spent a good amount of time with your husband, and I’ve made the decision to pursue his doppelgänger in my universe and convince him to become my consort. If he’s anything like your husband, he’s just the kind of man that I need at my side to help save the Empire.”

  Angela blinked. “Of all the things you could’ve said, that’s something I’d never have expected to hear. It doesn’t surprise me, because Carl is a terrific man and a brilliant scientist, but I’ve never really pegged him as your type. Isn’t he a little… geeky for you?”

  “Kelsey and I aren’t completely in sync,” Julia said with a small shake of her head. “I’m a lot less prone to break things than she is. I think that she found the perfect man for her when she found Talbot, but somebody like that isn’t for me. I believe that Carl might be.

  “And with that in mind, I’d like to get your advice on how best to pursue him. Plus, I owe you an apology. Circumstances being what they were down on the surface, he had to help me get into my powered armor, and I think that as his wife, you probably should know that I was naked in front of him.”