by M. D. Cooper
“If we don’t find them here, perhaps we should widen the net,” Captain Sheeran suggested. “Go from pairs of cruisers to single ships visiting each system,”
“Yes, we may have to do just that.” Tanis considered where they could send their escort, the Derringer, next.
“If the Marauders have moved on from Albany, then we should go to the Hercules System,” Oris advised, providing one possible answer to Tanis’s unvoiced question. “They have a training facility there—recently established. They may know where the general is, currently.”
“Ma’am!” the Comm officer called out a moment later. “I’ve stripped the beacon. STC has record of an MSS Foehammer. It entered the system a week ago and was headed for the planet Hudson in the inner system. No record on this nav beacon of it leaving the Albany System after that.”
“General Mill’s flagship,” Oris said with a grin.
“Finally!” Tanis grinned at Captain Sheeran. “We can have our chat with this General Mill and learn what we need to know.”
Sheeran shared Tanis’s smile, then turned to his bridge crew. “Comm, pass the tokens we were given by the PM to the system STC and set a course for Hudson. See if you can find anything out about where the Foehammer might be berthed.”
Tanis wondered where this lead might take her, if it was a lead at all. Following the Caretaker backward through its various actions may not guide them to any place other than where the entity had been in the past. Perhaps she should turn her focus solely toward stopping Nietzschea. Once she found additional allies. There was still something about the Septhians that didn’t sit right with her.
Tanis couldn’t argue with that logic. Hopefully Mill lived up to the reputation.
“Admiral?” the comm officer asked. “I got a response from a local STC NSAI just a few light seconds out. It says that it never received authorization codes to match ours. We’re being denied entrance to the system.”
Tanis blew out a long breath and turned to Oris. “Well, time for you to do your job. We need to be insystem yesterday. Please work with Comm to sort this out.”
Oris nodded, walked over to the Comm station, and bent her head toward the display.
Tanis made a sound of exasperation in her mind.
Angela gave a mental nod of agreement.
Tanis pulled up the data they had on the world. It was a smaller terrestrial world, right around Mars’s size and mass. It was interesting that the ship wasn’t around the regional capital world of Pyra, but then she saw why.
“Whoa! The Nietzscheans attacked this system just last year.”
“Yes,” Oris nodded from where she stood next to the comm station. “They were repelled by a combination of local forces, the Marauders, and our SAF fifth fleet.”
“I see,” Tanis said aloud, while commenting to Angela,
Tanis reached back, pulling at her ponytail.
Tanis could sense that Angela wanted to say something, but was considering her words.
Tanis chewed on Angela’s advice. She knew that the Nietzscheans were a clear and present danger, but every time she thought about not taking the fight to the Trisilieds….
Tanis replied quietly.
Tanis swallowed. She didn’t need Angela to remind her of her failings, of the mountain of bodies that was piled up behind her. But in this case, perhaps Angela was right. She had given Ouri everything she could…and the Trisilieds soldiers had killed her. For that, they would die.
Tanis could feel Angela’s comforting presence grow in her mind.
Tanis drew a slow, steadying breath.
“Admiral Richards?” Comm called out. “We have managed to get permission to take one cruiser in, but they won’t allow both passage. I imagine if we get in touch with something other than this f—stupid NSAI, we can get an exception made.”
“How far away is the closest sentient?” Tanis asked.
“Nine light hours, round trip.”
“So we could be looking at days before we get approval for both ships.” Tanis straightened her back and looked to Captain Sheeran. “Captain, take us in at whatever max speed they allow in this place. I’ll let Mel on the Derringer know that she’s to wait for us out here.
”
“Aye, Admiral. Setting a course.”
Tanis glanced at Oris, who was still talking with the NSAI at the Comm station. She considered saying something to the woman, but decided not to.
There was a BLT with her name on it in the officer’s mess, and more conversation with Oris was bound to sour her stomach.
Tanis snorted.
UNEXPECTED GUESTS
STELLAR DATE: 08.13.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Andromeda
REGION: Edge of the New Canaan system
Joe resisted the urge to give the major a snippy comeback. Ore haulers from the Grey Wolf Star were jumping in every day, along with couriers from Khardine. For all their hopes at secrecy, New Canaan was practically a bustling hub.
Then the second part of her statement hit him. An interdicted jump. That meant the ship was not jumping on a predetermined schedule, and had been caught in the system’s defenses.
The long search for the remnants had worn him and his daughters down, but now they were taking the entities to a special detainment center outside of Canaan Prime’s heliosphere.
That arduous task was almost complete. Whatever this was couldn’t be a patch on extracting extra-dimensional entities from human hosts.
The major’s voice was filled with excitement, but Joe couldn’t determine why. Voyager, he mused. The name was familiar.
The memories flowed into Joe’s mind like water pouring down his back. Voyager. The ship Tanis insisted they leave at Kapteyn’s Star, ‘Just in case Katrina has a change of heart’.
“Hooooleeeee shit!” Joe whispered as he flung his blankets aside and grabbed the uniform he’d draped over his chair the night before.
OK…so maybe this is on par with capturing remnants.
Joe dressed quickly while pulling up the scan data. The Voyager was just over a light minute from the Andromeda. Based on their current speed, it would take Katrina’s ship half a day to arrive, but that would give him plenty of time to catch up with her—even with the communications lag.
He looked at the optical pickups that were tracking the Voyager, marveling at how it barely looked the same. Scuffed and scratched, mismatched hull plating across its port side, and a dozen cargo pods attached amidships.
“What have you been up to, Katrina?” he whispered.
Corsia said, a warm presence in his mind.
Joe laughed.
Corsia only laughed, and Joe shook his head. Motherhood had softened the once hard-as-steel AI a lot. Somewhere along the line, she had developed a strange sense of humor.
As he was walking to the Andromeda’s bridge, Joe pulled up the latest transmission from the approaching vessel. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of Katrina.
She looks so old, what’s happened to her? And how did she find us here and now, arriving by jump gate, no less?
“New Canaan, and Carthage,” Katrina laughed and shook her head. “I appreciate the irony. Troy’s altering vector, we’ll get there as fast as we can. Got a lot to catch up on.”
Yeah, a lifetime from the looks of it.
Then the name Katrina had spoken sank into Joe’s mind. “Troy?” he whispered aloud before sending a message to the approaching ship.
He sent the message off as he stepped onto the bridge, nodding to Major Blanca as she grinned like a fool. His brow furrowed as he wondered why she was so happy, but then it dawned on him.
“Blanca! I can’t believe I forgot! Katrina is your great aunt.”
Blanca nodded vigorously. “Great-great, actually, but who cares? Can you believe she’s alive?”
“With Troy, no less.” Joe nodded in response, feeling a bit silly as he and the major bobbed their heads at one another, but not caring in the least.
With all the struggle the last year had seen, he’d take any good news he could get. As far as he was concerned, Katrina and Troy arriving now was like a message from the ancient gods.
“But it can’t be that Troy,” Major Blanca said, twisting the long white braid that hung down her back. “He…he died at the Battle for Victoria. Three RMs hit the Excelsior. We all saw it.”
Joe shrugged. “Did you ever expect to see Katrina again?”
“Well…no, sir.”
“Then let’s hold onto hope a bit longer. Troy is one of our greatest heroes. Having him back….”
His voice trailed off, and Blanca nodded silently.
Joe saw that the three ensigns on bridge duty were staring at him and the major. “OK, you, keep on task. No bets on whether or not the Old Man can shed a tear.”
The ensigns spun about, and Blanca laughed. “It’s already up to a hundred cred—no, two hundred. Damn, that pool’s growing fast.”
“I need plausible deniability here, Blanca,” Joe chuckled. “Don’t ruin that for me.”
“Oh, I was talking about the price of a piece of art at auction I’m following, sir. No idea what you’re talking about.”
Joe nodded. “Good, I hope you win.”
Blanca snorted. “Odds—I mean bids—are too rich for my blood.”
They had only a minute longer to wait until Katrina’s response came back, and Joe put it on the main holotank.
Seeing Katrina at life-size was both less and more shocking. She still held herself erect, her eyes sharp and her measured smile giving her the same wry look he remembered so well.
But her face bore creases telling of many long years, and her hair was silver—not an affectation, either. Most of all, the difference was in her voice. It sounded tired and thin, though there was a joy in it.
“Admiral Joe now, is it? I seem to remember a cocksure young commander glued to Colonel Tanis’s side. Well, now that I think back, I suppose you were a colonel or something yourself before you left. I forget some of those specifics.
“And yes, it is that Troy with me. Would you believe he was just hanging out down on Anne’s surface, taking a break while we did all the work?”
“I remember it a bit differently,” Troy’s voice came from the holo, as dry and sardonic-sounding as ever.
“Troy…” Joe whispered, shaking his head.
“You’re one tough hombre,” Corsia added. “I recall you getting
blown up.”
Troy laughed. “I got better.”
“You are some hard sonsabitches to find,” Katrina said with a coarse laugh. “Sorry, you’re going to have to pardon my language. I’ve fallen in with some less-than-savory types over the years. I’ve become a bit more colorful as a result.”
“And by a bit, she means a lot,” Troy interjected audibly.
“We have a lot to talk about, but why don’t we wait ‘til we’re just a few light seconds away. My mind wanders too much with this much lag to have a meaningful conversation.”
“Otherwise known as her senior moments,” Troy added. “Is the I2 here? Bob?”
Joe opened the channel and sent a response. “I look forward to chatting more when you get closer, Katrina. Troy, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. You know we held a funeral for you? Anyway, Tanis and the I2—interested to know where you’ve heard that name—are not here. Bob, of course is with them. Couldn’t pry him from that ship with a black hole. At present, they’re in the Silstrand System. We can chat more about all that when you arrive.”
He closed the transmission and met Blanca’s eyes, which were brimming with tears.
“Good thing they weren’t betting about me,” Blanca said with a small laugh.
“Gotta get some steel in your spine, there, Major. Let me know if anything changes. I need to put on some clothes that smell better, and get some grub. I’ll be back before an hour is out.”
* * * * *
A half-dozen other issues cropped up before Joe got back to the command deck, and when he did, the Voyager was within a few light seconds. He reached out, making a direct, though delayed, Link connection to Katrina, glad to feel her amber presence touch his mind.
Joe replied.
A rueful laugh came over the Link.
