by M. D. Cooper
From what she could see, there were two fleets forming up: one coming from within a cluster of dwarf worlds only two AU from the Intrepid, and another from a world seven AU away. Even at max burn, the closest ships were over a day away—unless they knew the positions of dark matter in this system well enough to skip through the dark layer insystem.
It was risky, a system like this would be rife with matter in the dark layer, but she had to consider the possibility.
Tanis considered the information. If Sera’s brother, Serge, was telling the truth, then not everyone in the Transcend was hell-bent on killing her—which was a small victory, at least.
Tanis nodded to herself and quickly reviewed division statuses across the ship to ensure everything was ready for whatever may come their way. Once she had sent a few orders to various sections, she poked her head into the room where Mark and Andrea sat, looking much more agitated than when she left.
“How much longer are you going to hold us here?” Mark shot at her the moment she opened the door. “Your goon here won’t give us any news.”
Lieutenant Smith flashed a malignant smile at the pair but didn’t say a word in response.
“Sorry,” Tanis replied. “Your little attempt on my life caused quite a stir and gave me an ever-loving mess to clean up.”
“Our attempt?” Andrea asked with narrowed eyes. “We had nothing to do with it. This was all Sera’s doing! She’s not known to be especially stable, as you can now attest.”
“Well,” Tanis smiled sweetly, “she’s awake and back to herself again, so I’m going to have a chat with her and get the skinny on what’s really going on. I’m going to have Serge join us to see what he thinks of all this.”
Andrea’s expression did not waver for an instant, but Mark’s eyes widened for just a moment. If anyone on their mission was expendable, it was him. The fact that Sera ever saw anything in this slime-ball of a man would forever baffle Tanis.
“Lieutenant,” she turned to Smith, “I want them secured and ready to move. Full lockdown, full physical restraint. Also, get a Mark-9 drone on them. One false move, turn them to puddles.”
She gave her own predatory smile to the pair behind the table. “You want our picotech, I know you do. Test Lieutenant Smith in any way, and he has my full authorization to introduce you to it, personally.”
Her statement finally elicited a reaction from Andrea—a noticeable whitening of her skin. Though the Intrepid’s nano-technology was, in aggregate, more advanced than the Transcend’s, this pair had defenses enough to keep it from entering their minds and bodies.
Picobots, on the other hand, would not face any opposition infiltrating their bodies—nor was there any way they could stop the picoscale machines from tearing them apart atom by atom.
Tanis didn’t wait any longer and left the room, but not before holding the door wide for a squad of Marines to enter with weapons leveled.
REUNION
STELLAR DATE: 12.30.8929 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Ascella System, Galactic North of the Corona Australis star forming region
Tanis rushed through the ship’s corridors at a pace that had her secondary heart working overtime. A fireteam of Marines in full armor followed her, eyeing every nook and cranny of the ship that had been their home for centuries as though it were enemy territory.
Tanis gave a mental shake of her head. Terrance was so close to reaching his life-long goal that she could forgive him for thinking that she valued it any less than he. Even though his motivations for wanting to build a colony world were entirely different now than when they left Sol nearly five-thousand years ago, he remained single-minded in his drive to reach their new home.
Tanis replied.
Terrance did not respond for almost a minute, and Tanis wondered if their conversation had come to an end.
Tanis said as she boarded a maglev train.
Angela didn’t respond.
Tanis rode the train in silence past two stops before disembarking at the ship’s forward hospital. The section spanned over a square kilometer across seven decks, and though she knew it well, it still took her some minutes to navigate its warren of corridors.
When the Intrepid departed from Sol long ago, the hospital had been much smaller, but during the Victoria years, when over a hundred-thousand crew and colonists roamed the ship, it had been expanded considerably—if for no other reason than to handle all the births.
Upon arrival at the door to Sera’s room, she paused to allow two of the Marines to enter first. She trusted Bob’s assessment that Sera was no longer a threat, but she wasn’t about to behave as though a threat could not re-emerge—especially with Elena, another unknown quantity, in the mix.
She heard Terry greet the Marines, and a moment later, the corporal called out that all was clear. Tanis checked Serge’s location before entering and saw that Sera’s brother was still five minutes out.
Tanis appreciated the gesture. There were a lot of requests hitting her queue, though with the notification that Joe was now aboard the Andromeda, one of her concerns had diminished.
“Sera,” she said as she entered the room and approached her friend, still restrained to the bed.
“Tanis,” Sera’s eyes were wide and filled with apology. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am—and how glad I am that you never told me about your little heart modification.”
She noticed Flaherty in the corner and nodded to him. He grunted in response and returned to eyeing the Marines.
“I’ve got to have some secrets,” Tanis replied with a smile. “We can do away with the restraints,” she said, and the room’s monitoring systems deactivated the clamps around Sera’s arms and legs.
The Marines didn’t move a muscle, but they somehow seemed even more alert.
Sera’s gaze darted to the soldiers before she closed her eyes and slowly lifted her arms—an expressio
n of both pain and release crossed her face.
“Oh, thank you,” Sera moaned. “I was getting the worst cramp you could ever imagine.”
“I’ll bet,” Tanis said as she took a seat beside the bed. “I’m glad you’re yourself again. I didn’t want to think that we wouldn’t be able to get you back.”
she said privately.
Tanis added the comment to an extensive list of observations Sera had made about Bob over the prior months. She made a note to finally confront Sera over what bothered her so much about AI. However, for now, she opted to ignore the statement.
Tanis was carrying on an audible conversation with Sera, Elena, and Terry. Sera responded aloud to a question before replying to Tanis over the Link.
Sera said.
Tanis replied.
Sera sounded morose, and Tanis gave her an understanding look. Not knowing if you could trust your friends was never easy. The simplest route was to never trust anyone—though that would slowly eat a person’s soul.
Tanis turned and looked to the door.
Serge entered, and she saw a strong resemblance between him and Sera—far more apparent than with Andrea—they could have passed for fraternal twins. His eyes swept across the room and landed on Sera, his clouded visage cleared and a smile spread across his lips.
“Core, Sera, you’re OK. When they told me we were going to the hospital to see you…” he stopped himself, apparently remembering that he was in unknown company.
Tanis rose and extended her hand. “I’m Tanis Richards, governor of the New Canaan colony mission.”
A look of concern crossed Serge’s face before he took her hand and shook it firmly.
“Serge Tomlinson,” he replied.
“Nice to meet you, Serge,” Tanis said aloud. “I hope you can help us make sense of everything that has happened today.”
“Yes, sure, of course,” Serge said absently as he peered at Sera. “Are you OK, Sis? It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” Sera said and held out an arm. Serge stepped forward and leaned in to embrace his sister.
“Gently,” Sera cautioned. “I took a bit of a beating from some pulse blasts earlier.”
Serge shot an eye at the Marines before pausing on Elena.
“Wait…Elena? Is that you?”
“Took you long enough,” Elena grinned. “I was beginning to think that the diplomatic corps would need to work on your powers of observation.”
Serge smiled wanly. “Sorry, I was a bit distracted.”
“That’s just the time you need to be the most observant,” Sera said. “But enough of that. Our little reunion can wait. How is it that you were on the ship while Mark came aboard the Intrepid?”
Serge sighed. “Mark took me out with a rather clever cocktail of drugs that I ingested over the last few meals. Individually what he fed me didn’t amount to anything particularly malicious, but with one last bite of a cookie, I was laid out on the galley floor. By the time I came to, they were both gone.”
“You sure it was Mark?” Elena asked. “Drugging someone is just the sort of thing I’d expect Andrea to do.”
Serge shrugged. “I guess it could be. They’re both snakes in the grass. My gut tells me it was Mark, though.”
“Neither are worth the O2 they burn,” Sera grunted. “Use me to fucking kill Tanis and then pray that the Marines mowed me down.”
“So, we’re going with that?” Terry asked with a raised eyebrow. “Is it a guess, or do you remember now?”
“I remember,” Sera replied. “It took a bit, and they didn’t spell it out, but the pieces are all there. The question is, who ordered it?”
“I can tell you that it wasn’t in the mission plan. We were to trade your fifth millennia tech for the colony. No pico, no stasis shields,” Serge said with raised palms. “There was nothing about any infiltration or subversion—though there was a very strongly worded section about bringing you back to Airtha, Sis.”
Sera nodded. “Not surprising. Father has probably had enough of me flitting about the Inner Stars. Though, given the successes I’ve had, you’d think he would want me to stay out there.” She finished with a chuckle that turned into a cough. “Ow, I guess no laughing yet…”
“And what about Elena here,” Tanis asked Serge, watching him with every sense she possessed. “Was she part of the plan?”
“Not even a little bit,” Serge replied with a smile. “But I bet that Justin is going to be mightily pissed that you just jetted out of Scipio. There’s a lot of work to do there, and it took forever to get you planted.”
Elena waved her hand dismissively. “My cover can be rebuilt—if I’m not fired…or worse.”
“Treason, I assume?” Tanis asked.
“AWOL at the least,” Elena replied with a solemn nod. “Treason if Andrea decides that she has it in for me—which she will. There’s no way they expected you to get Sera restored—and I’m sure Andrea and Mark had a scheme to take Sera back with them. A trip she would not have survived.”
Sera shook her head. “I can see Mark doing that, but Andrea? Has she really become so calculating?” She directed the last to Serge.
“And then some,” her brother sighed. “Father has been putting more and more on her shoulders. She resented being sent out here to fetch you, even if it only took a few months out of her schedule.”
Tanis’s eyes snapped up at Serge’s statement.
“Months?” Tanis asked.
Sera sighed. “You never really could keep a secret, could you, Serge?”
Serge shrugged in response. “You keep secrets that you don’t need to, Sis. Ford-Svaiter mirrors being a prime example.”
Tanis saw that Elena was shaking her head and fixed Sera with a hard stare before she reached out to Bob.
Bob replied.
Tanis sighed. She had suspected, but her suspicions and Bob’s were on entirely different levels.
“We can chat about that la
ter,” Tanis said with a wink. “However, what can we expect from the commander of this watchpoint?”
“That’ll be General Greer,” Sera confirmed. “Has he called?”
Tanis shook her head. “Called, no. Sent in two fleets? Yes.”
“Sorry about that,” Serge shrugged. “It’s protocol.”
Sera flashed her brother an exasperated look before replying. “Greer is by the book, and he bears our father no special love, though I don’t know if that will work out in our favor or not. I hope it does—it’s one of the reasons I chose this watchpoint.”
“Thanks, Amanda,” Tanis said aloud. “I’ll take it privately.”
If Greer was on any of the approaching ships, he would still be at least thirty light minutes distant, though she wondered if the Transcend ships could effect their wormholes within a stellar system.
Another possibility she had to consider.
She took a chair and the room around her disappeared, replaced by the bridge of a warship. In the center, with hands clasped behind his back and legs in a wide stance, stood a tall man with long, brown hair, and a reddish beard. His hair swept back over his shoulders and the beard was neat and trim. His eyes were blue and cold, and, while not menacing, they contained the certainty of someone fully aware, and confident, of their abilities.
His black uniform was crisp, and a single star adorned each lapel of his collar. His posture remained rigid and unwavering as he began to speak.
“To the commanding officer, or colony leader, of the ISS Intrepid,” he began. “This is General Tsaroff of the Transcend Space Force. We have received a distress call from our diplomatic mission to your ship and are approaching to render assistance. Please be advised that should any harm come to Transcend Government representatives, we will view this unfavorably, and take strong action in response.”
