“Now, Ms. Lane, don’t judge us too harshly. You can’t really expect a businessman to come across an opportunity like this and not seize it?”
“Perhaps not,” she begrudgingly admitted. After all, who could resist a real glimpse at the future? “But, you still haven’t told me what any of this has to do with me.”
“Yes, well, when I received my last message, nearly an Earth year ago, it contained your name. There was very little detail. All it said was that you would be with me at a critical moment this year. I suspect you will be there when we receive the next message in just a couple days.”
Tessa was silent for a moment, waiting for more information, more clarification, more explanation.
“That’s it?” she finally said.
“Well, yes.”
Tessa slowly pushed her chair back and stood up. “So, you mean to tell me I traveled through two star systems and put my work on hold all so I can be arm candy to a spoiled rich boy when he gets his next message from the future?”
Whynn did not seem to know what to say for a moment. “I…well I wouldn’t put it like…”
“Well I would,” she cut him off curtly. “Thank you for dinner Mr. Whynn. Have a good night.” With that, she turned on her heel, marched across the room to the elevator and made a swift exit.
Tessa holed up in her quarters for the rest of that evening. Whynn made multiple attempts to contact her, but she refused them all. I can’t believe that I was pulled away from my own life and my own work just to sit by as this man awaits a message from the future! Until that dinner, she had at least believed that her being in the Dextronin System had something to do with her own work. Now she knew that Mr. Whynn did not care in the least about her or her scientific discoveries. He had only contacted her because he was following a script he’d received from a year in the future.
Mr. Whynn was pulling a fast one on his fellow Dextronins and he wanted her to ride shotgun.
It was despicable. It was cheating the market. It was ethically and morally reprehensible. Worst of all… it was tempting as hell. She hated to admit it, but she was not immune to the allure of future knowledge. The message Whynn received the previous year had said that Tessa would be with him when he received the next message. Presumably, this new message would have information relevant to her as well. That possibility was not something she could afford to pass up.
Chapter 6
The next evening, she accepted an invitation from Whynn to join him in a garden on the middle deck of the station. She arrived about 15 minutes late, out of spite, but again resolved to remain civil. He was waiting for her at the entrance to a path that meandered through the colorful, fragrant garden. A multitude of large, impressive Dextronin flowering plants lined the path as they walked side-by-side.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I didn’t mean to make you feel objectified. The fact that you were mentioned in my last future message implied to me that there was a very good reason for you to be present when I retrieve the next message.”
“I…appreciate the apology. But, I don’t really see how I can be of use to you.” She looked to him for confirmation.
“The message is very vague about your being with me. I only know that you will be there when I get the message. It should be arriving any time now. We can send it back in time roughly a year, but the exact time and place it will emerge is, as I said, impossible to pinpoint.”
“But you’ll know when it arrives?” She was still trying to make sense of what he had told her at their dinner under the dome.
“Yes. The probe carrying the message will send out a beacon.” He stopped walking and turned to face her. “Ms. Lane. Your work as a xeno-paleontologist may or may not be relevant to the coming message, but either way I have been aware of your work for a year now and I have read extensively on your research. I had not really stopped to consider my people’s biological history until I read your papers on Callistian fossils. You opened my eyes to an incredible field of inquiry. Yes, I did get you here by offering to fund your research, but getting you here was not my sole reason for doing so. Before we even met in person you’d already made me reevaluate a fact of my own existence: Where did I come from?”
Tessa smiled. No one had spoken of her work with such intensity of tone before. The Callistians didn’t care about her research at all—only about their own paychecks.
‘Thank you,” she humbly said. They resumed their garden walk, both lost in thought.
Chapter 7
The beacon was detected three days later. Tessa was in a holo-room surrounded by recreations of Dextronin animals. The bones were all very young, in geological terms. The oldest had died only 10,000 years before. When the computer chimed and that robotic voice told her the beacon had appeared, she immediately saved her progress and deactivated the holograms. Frell met her in the hallway and filled her in on the details. The beacon had appeared on the far side of the Dextronin System’s asteroid belt. It would take Whynn’s ship a few days to get there even at top speed. It would feel like only a day, thankfully, due to time dilation.
Erill Whynn insisted on piloting his own ship to retrieve the message. It was the only way he could be certain its contents remained confidential. He usually took the trip alone, aided only by the ship’s onboard AI. This time, however, he would have company joining him. The ship had been on standby for days. All they had to do was climb aboard and take off.
Whynn was waiting for her at the ship’s port. He smiled broadly as she approached.
“Well, here we go,” he said excitedly and gestured for her to board first.
The ship’s AI greeted them then it started launch preparations.
The trip to the message’s arrival point took three days, as estimated, but they experienced less than a day of that time. Whynn’s newest generation ship could achieve a significant per cent of the speed of light in only a couple of days. As the newest ships in the Dextronin System used gravity generators and inertial dampening technology purchased from Humans, even under the fastest acceleration, the ride was smooth for all aboard.
The ship was now undergoing a breaking maneuver. The AI had calculated just the right amount of deceleration to bring them to a stop only a few kilometers from the probe. Tessa emerged from the cabin in which she had been sleeping. The message had arrived toward the end of Tessa’s day cycle, so she had spent most of the trip napping. Whynn was still in the command center, apparently having worked through the night.
“Morning,” he said glancing in her direction. “We should be arriving in just a few minutes. Then we’ll—”
“Mr. Whynn,” the AI’s deep male voice broke in, “I am detecting a ship in the vicinity of the probe.”
“What?” Whynn turned back to the main control console. “Shit, he’s right. There’s a ship already there.”
“What are they doing?” Tessa couldn’t imagine.
“Nothing at the moment. They’re just sitting there. They might be simple asteroid miners. They probably stumbled on the probe and don’t even know what they’re looking at.” He smiled again, but she got the feeling he was nervous and didn’t believe it was really that simple.
“Sir, they’re starting to move,” the AI warned.
Tessa stepped up to the console, next to Whynn. She could see holo-readouts on the mystery ship’s motion.
“No, no, no, no…” Whynn was now clearly worried. “They’re chasing the probe!”
“Chasing?”
“Yes, the probe is programmed to avoid detection by anything or anyone outside of my trusted group. If anything approaches it without first giving my personal authorization code, it’s programmed to flee. If they were miners, they’d probably just let it go, but these people are chasing it.”
“Do you think they already knew about it?”
His face appeared to have lost some color. “They…they must have.” He tapped a button on the control panel. “Analyze their drive’s energy signature,” he commanded the AI. “I w
ant to know what kind of engine they’re using.”
The AI was quiet for a moment, then said, “They are using a DexTek 300 Drive.”
Whynn slammed a fist on the console and rose to his feet. “Dammit! They’re definitely not miners. Everyone out here uses my drives.”
“I’m guessing DexTek is a competitor.” Tessa knew the answer before she even asked.
“Yes, my fiercest. I won the Doorstop contract from them 10 years ago, and they’ve been after me ever since. They’re an old company with virtually endless resources. The only thing I’ve had over them in the last decade is the future messages. Now, it seems, they have been made aware of my messages and are trying to steal my advantage.” Whynn was clearly furious. Tessa didn’t blame him. She had seen the multitude of safety precautions he had in place to ensure the messages were completely private.
“We’re undergoing our final deceleration,” the AI updated them. “We are now within 100 kilometers of the DexTek ship.”
“Send them a greeting,” Whynn said menacingly.
Tessa and Whynn stood in silence for a moment, then the AI reported the message was received, but the unidentified vessel was not responding. “They continue to pursue the probe.”
“Tell them ‘Thank you for your interest in our latest probe designs, but we need to collect out corporate property.’” Again he sounded calmly menacing.
Another minute of silence passed. Whynn sighed.
“Alright, send the authorization code to the probe and tell it to rendezvous with us.”
“Code sent.”
Tessa could see by the holo-readout that the probe was altering its trajectory. Then the readings changed—the probe reported an energy discharge.
“They’re attacking the probe,” Tessa marveled.
“Of course,” Whynn confirmed. “If they can’t have it, then neither can us.” He pressed a button, opening his outside communications unit and spoke forcefully into the console: “DexTek ship. We are here to retrieve our probe. Destroying the probe would constitute an act of hostility. If you do this, rest assured I will bring my full legal capabilities to—”
“Sir!” The AI broke in. “We’ve received a reply message…but it’s…I’m having trouble…I can’t...”
“What’s going on?” Whynn shouted at the computer. “Status!”
The AI did not reply. New data began to flood the holo-readout. A holo-image came into focus. It was a cartoon-like Dextronin head, or more correctly the back of a head. It was facing away from them.
“What is…” Tessa started.
“It’s a rejection. An insult.” Whynn sounded disgusted. “They’re showing us that we are not worth acknowledging.” Apparently, the image was the Dextronin equivalent of an Earthly middle finger. “They’ve attacked us virtually. Our AI has been disabled, navigation is offline. They even deactivated our life support! We’re drifting without any working systems save our sensors.”
“Why would they leave those active?” Tessa felt her anxiety and confusion mounting.
“Out of spite, what else? They want me to watch as they steal my one advantage over them.”
They did indeed watch in silence as the DexTek ship overtook the probe. Then a thought occurred to Tessa.
“Your message last year said I’d be with you when you received the message. Doesn’t that mean I will be or I mean that you will successfully retrieve the message?”
“Not necessarily,” Whynn grumbled. “The probe’s launch sequence is automated to be sure that it happens at the right intervals. I add information to the message throughout the year, then the station’s computer launches it into z114 at the right time. I updated the message before we left. If we don’t get back to the station in the next couple of days it will launch. The message I receive in the past will say you traveled with me, just as it did. It won’t contain a warning about the DexTek ship.”
Chapter 8
Over an hour later, Tessa tapped away at the console trying to ignore the tension in the air. Whynn had not spoken in all that time. He had been forced to sit and watch helplessly as his biggest competitor stole his message. Their attempt to spite him had been a success. Erill Whynn was furious. His fury gave him a single-minded determination and he devoted himself to fixing the navigation and propulsion systems so they could catch up with the DexTek ship. Tessa tried to convince him that communications and life support should be priorities, but Whynn did not even acknowledge her. Anything she said fell on seemingly deaf ears.
So, she decided to fix their life support problem herself. She was certain she could already feel it getting cooler. She had no intention of freezing to death or suffocating because Whynn had chosen to obsess over the wrong repair. She seemed to be making progress thankfully. It was a chore to clear out all the junk the DexTek crew had infected their systems with. She guessed they had an extensive IT department at DexTek. Their attack had blown right through the computer’s firewall like it was tissue paper. They had also completely deleted the AI, all trace of essentially the ship’s mind. She mused that she knew many people back in the Solar System who would consider that a murder, but she didn’t know what an AI’s legal standing was in this system.
Working nonstop for the next few hours, Tessa managed finally to clean the life support program and start a reboot of the system. She could feel the temperature in the room increasing and breathed a sigh of relief.
Whynn looked up from his console. “What was that? The air is back on?”
He stood up and walked over to her console.
“Yes, and you’re welcome,” she spat. “Now we won’t asphyxiate while you plot your precious revenge.”
“How did you…”
She stood up and looked him challengingly in the eyes. “When you’re the only Human on a station orbiting a planet of non-humanoids, you make sure you know how to fix your own life support.”
Taking a breath to launch into another tirade, Tessa was blindsided— with a kiss full on the mouth. She jerked back and took a step away from Whynn, from his urgent lips...
“What the hell was that?” she demanded indignantly.
“A thank you. I knew I needed you with me. You’re right, all I cared about was catching up with them and getting revenge. If you weren’t here, I probably would have fixed the propulsion system and frozen to death halfway back to the inner system.”
“Ah…well… You’re welcome.” She knew she should chastise him for the kiss, but something held her back.
Whynn turned back to his console. “I think I’ve almost got it.”
“Even if you do get it running, realistically can we catch up with them?”
“My engines are far superior to DexTek’s,” he boasted.
Tessa sighed. She needed to find a way to dig through the ego to get to talk to the intellect underneath.
“Yes, I know your engine is more efficient, but can we reach a velocity that will allow us to overtake the DexTek ship before they reach one of their own stations?”
Erill paused and looked up from the console. “No… No we can’t. Their ships can match our top speed.”
“Okay, so we need a Plan B. Can we contact people, have them head off the DexTek ship?”
“No,” Whynn said. “It will take several more hours to get communications back up and at the speed of light, our signal would take two days to reach my people. By the time they get it, the ship will have already reached DexTek’s port.”
Tessa returned to her seat. What could they do now? They couldn’t catch up to the other ship and they couldn’t forewarn Whynn’s employees about it before it passed the Station. She thought about the people there, going about their business, unaware that their boss was stranded on the far side of an asteroid belt. She got the feeling that Erill Whynn kept most of them at a distance, not wanting to reveal his secrets. Frell was the only one she knew for a fact was aware of the messages. Others employees had to be aware of the fact that z114 was still active. It would have taken a tea
m of scientists to maintain.
Tessa sat up in her chair. “Z114!”
Whynn jumped at her outburst and looked over at her. “What?”
“z114! It’s a shortcut from here to your Station.”
“But the aperture is closed. It opens just long enough to deposit the probe, then it closes again. I might be able to reopen it, but even if I did, traveling from this end back to the Station would take us a year into the future. We’d emerge long after the DexTek ship had passed.”
Tessa considered this.
“Didn’t you say that energy can travel between openings without being displaced in time?”
“Yes. When the wormhole is continuously open we can send lasers or simple radio waves through it and they emerge in the same time. It’s only solid matter that gets displaced as it travels through. That’s why we had to use a probe to deliver the message.”
“So, maybe we can too. It’s probably the mass of the objects that triggers the time displacement. We could modify the inertial dampeners and gravity generators to mask our mass as we pass though the wormhole.”
“Maybe…” he considered. “Yeah, but there would be no way to test it beforehand. We’d be taking too great a risk. We also don’t have an AI to make sure we find the right pathway through the wormhole. A trip in the opposite direction should lead straight back to our fixed aperture at the Station, but it might not.”
“I’m willing to take the risk if you are.”
Chapter 9
It took them an entire day to make the modifications. That left them only a few hours to get through the wormhole and head off the DexTek ship. Tessa and Whynn had to strap themselves into their seats for this transit: The modifications they’d made meant there was no gravity on the ship and the inertial dampeners were operating on reduced power. Despite spending her entire adult life in space, Tessa abhorred zero-G. She’d only gone on one spacewalk ever and swore she’d never do one again. Her stomach was already threatening to cause problems during transit. She knew the lack of inertial dampening meant the motion sickness was only going to get worse. She tried to focus her mind on the holo-controls ahead of her and away from her roiling tummy.
Romance: Alien Romance: Simply Aliens: A Ten Book Alien Romance Collection (Paranormal Scifi Interracial Romance) (Fantasy New Adult Alpha Short Stories) Page 31
