Ignite the Stars: An Anthology (Aeon 14: Tales of the Orion War Book 2)
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Joe shook his head and laughed. “And here I thought I was the crazy flyboy.”
“Do I normally show caution, or ease into things?” Tanis retorted. “You’ve made fun of me for that more than once.”
“Feel more like yourself?” Angela asked Tanis.
“Stars, yes! Thanks, Ang. You know just what a girl needs.”
Angela nodded and touched Tanis’s head. “Even though I’m out here, I’m still in there. I can feel what you feel.”
“What would happen if I stepped off the cliff?” Joe asked. “How real is this sim?”
“Now who’s the thrill-seeker?” Tanis laughed as she grabbed Joe’s hand, and saw him grab Angela’s. They looked at one another, each with a grin on their faces.
“Leap before you look!” Angela called out, and all three stepped off the cliff as one.
They fell for a moment and then landed on something hard. Tanis looked around and saw that the sky was black, and they were standing on a gleaming silver hull.
“It’s the Intrepid,” she said, somehow speaking aloud, though they were in the cold vacuum of space.
“Back when she was new,” Joe added, bending down and patting the hull.
“Another of our homes.” Angela nodded appreciatively. “The home.”
Tanis laid down on the ship’s hull, staring up at the stars. “The journey became the destination. Where are we, anyway—wait, never mind. We’re in Sol, or close to it. The Centaur’s front leg is in the right place.”
“This is when we passed out of Sol’s heliosphere,” Angela supplied.
Joe laid down beside Tanis and folded his hands behind his head. “When we all really left home for the first time.”
“We were all in stasis by this point,” Tanis said, glancing over at Angela. “Why are we seeing this?”
Angela shrugged. “Just wanted to see how we all felt being here, thinking of it.”
“I like it,” Joe said. “Feels good to think of this time, of what lay ahead.”
Tanis nodded. “Tough times, but we pulled through.”
Joe unclasped his hands and reached over to Tanis, patting her on the stomach. “Did a lot of good, too.”
“My stomach did? I’m not gestating Faleena in there, you know. She’s growing in our noggins.”
Joe laughed. The sound was infectious, and Tanis joined in a moment before Angela did.
“I patted your stomach because it’s what I could reach without worrying about elbowing you in the face. I guess I could have patted your breast. I’ll do that next time.”
“Sure, promises, promises.”
“Easy, you two,” Angela said. “No shenanigans. I don’t want to be left out.”
Joe looked over at Angela, who lay on his other side. “Who said you’d be left out?”
Tanis propped herself up onto her elbow to see her friend’s response.
Angela was a bit wide-eyed. “Well, that’s a twist.”
“Is it?” Joe asked. “Look at you, Angela; you’re almost identical to Tanis now. You never used to portray yourself that way. Half the time when you speak, I hear Tanis’s words coming from you—” Joe turned his head to look at Tanis. “And half the time, I hear Angela in you. I don’t think it’s possible to love one of you and not the other. I’m not even certain how separate you two even are anymore.”
Tanis felt an uncertain expression creep across her face. She could see it mirrored on Angela’s. Did Angela really feel uncertain, or was her otherself showing the same expression because what one felt, the other did as well?
“Sometimes we can’t tell ourselves apart, either,” Tanis admitted. “Certain thoughts are clearly mine, and others are Angela’s, but some…some things seem to come from us both at the same time.”
“I don’t know why you worry about that so much with me.” Joe’s voice was compassionate, but a little strident. “I came to accept this years ago…back on the Gamma Base at Kapteyn’s. Honestly, it makes things easier.”
“It does?” Angela asked.
“Yeah,” Joe replied. “Angela, you’re a fantastic person. And I’ve spent almost as much time with you as I have with Tanis.”
“Technically, you’ve spent the exact same amount of time with me as with Tanis.”
Tanis rolled her eyes. “Har, har, Ang. Now that came just from you.”
Joe slid his left arm under Tanis’s head, and his right under Angela’s, pulling them both close. “You’re not my wives; you’re my wife.
Tanis leaned forward to brush her lips against Joe’s cheek at the same time that Angela did. At first, she wondered why her otherself had done that, but then she realized they were moving in concert, mirrors of each other. She felt herself in both bodies, and felt Angela in both, as well.
“This is strange,” Angela said as she pressed her lips against Joe’s neck.
“More like ‘fantastic’, if you ask me, Angela.” Joe smiled broadly.
“I’m Tanis,” Angela said.
“And I’m Tanis,” Tanis added.
Joe looked from Angela to Tanis, confusion and a little concern in his eyes.
“Are you two OK? If you’re in both, Tanis…Where’s Angela?”
“Here,” both Tanis and Angela said at once.
“Are you…finally one person?” Joe asked.
“No,” Tanis said with Angela’s voice. “Well, maybe right now, in this moment, we are.”
Tanis-Angela leaned back over Joe and planted her lips on his, while Angela-Tanis unfastened his shirt.
Joe closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Not going to argue with this, love, but I thought we were making a baby with our minds, not our bodies.”
“Our bodies are floating above the a-grav pad in Earnest’s lab,” Angelia-Tanis said. “We are using our minds.”
Joe laughed. “OK, if that’s how you want to play this.”
NEW ADDITION
STELLAR DATE: 04.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2
REGION: In Orbit of Carthage, New Canaan System
After their lovemaking, the trio traveled through dozens more memories. They experienced times during their long solitude aboard the Intrepid, the years building the Victoria colony, Tanis’s abduction, and Joe’s search.
A dozen more past experiences came and went, the struggles and victories that made them who they were coming back into their minds.
Eventually, they relived the final memory that Angela had selected, the reunion with Cary and Saanvi after the girls had been found in the wreckage of the Trisilieds fleet.
As they stood in the hospital room, watching themselves with their daughters, Angela turned to Tanis and Joe, a wide smile creeping across her lips.
“We’ve done it,” she whispered. “We’ve made another daughter. Faleena is alive.”
“Born of our minds.” Joe said as he gazed at the memory from just a few short weeks ago.
Angela touched his cheek and then wrapped an arm around Tanis. “And maybe a bit of our bodies, too.”
The memory faded, and Tanis found herself alone in darkness for a moment before Earnest’s lab swam into place around her.
She blinked and realized that her limbs were entwined with Joe’s as they floated in the a-grav column.
Joe opened his eyes and smiled as his gaze settled on Tanis. “Well that was fun, we should do that again sometime.”
“To make another child?” Tanis asked.
“Sure,” Joe said with a small shrug. “Or maybe do it just for pleasure.”
“Trust me,” Tanis grinned. “It was different for me, too.”
The sound of a throat being cleared reminded Tanis that Earnest was present, and she turned to look in his direction. His face was a little red as he stood beside the imaging system.
“We did
n’t…uh…do anything inappropriate, did we?” Tanis asked.
“Well, you’re married, so there’s nothing wrong with it—I just didn’t expect to see it.”
“Our clothes are still on,” Joe said with a wink. “It couldn’t have been anything too extreme.”
“I would have thought so, too,” Earnest said with a manufactured look of shock on his face. “But it turns out there’s a lot you can do with clothes on.”
“Stop it,” Tanis chided as the a-grav column lowered them back down to the deck, and she pulled out her hard-Link cable. “Is she…conscious?”
Faleena’s voice was like the sound of leaves blowing in a light wind, with rain pattering around.
It was one of the most beautiful sounds Tanis had ever heard.
THE END
RAPID EXFILTRATION
BY M. D. COOPER
FAMILY
STELLAR DATE: 03.29.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Genmere District
REGION: Airtha, Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
Flaherty held back a sigh and schooled his expression to hide the worry that was building inside. He reached across the table for his daughter’s hand, but she pulled hers away, a mixture of anger and fear behind her hazel eyes.
“Mary.” Flaherty ensured his voice was calm. “I understand that you only recently moved, and that you just got the promotion at your job. I am happy for your accomplishments, I really am. You’ve come so far and make me a proud father every day.”
Mary’s expression softened at his words, but only a little. She had too much of her mother in her to let flattery sway her overmuch.
“I don’t see how. You’re telling me to throw it all away. You must not hold my ‘accomplishments’ in any great esteem.” Her delivery was calm, but he could see a tremor in her lips. Deep down, she had to know that her father would not make such a request lightly, that something must be very wrong.
“I do, but I am.” Flaherty gave a single nod, his eyes not breaking contact with hers. “I need you to understand this in the simplest of terms. Those accomplishments won’t mean a thing if you’re dead.”
“Dead? Dad, what in the light are you talking about?”
Her turn of speech gave him momentary pause. ‘What in the light.’ He’d heard that saying with increasing frequency over the past few years.
At first, he thought it just meant the stars’ light, or perhaps Airtha’s light. But with the recent news, he wondered if it had been seeded in preparation for the coup he believed had occurred over the past day.
“I’m sorry, but being my daughter has put you at great risk, Mary,” Flaherty replied.
“Dad,” Mary said, a scoffing sound escaping her lips. “You’re a close friend of Sera Tomlinson. I even heard a rumor that her father is considering turning over the presidency to her. What could you fear that she can’t protect us from?”
His mind went to the woman he’d met a few hours ago. Whoever…whatever she was.
“The person…she is not Sera Tomlinson.” Flaherty shook his head. “It’s close—oh, so close. But there’s a piece that’s missing.”
“Dad. You’re making absolutely no sense.”
Flaherty rose from his chair and ran a hand through his long hair, tightening the band that held it secure. “You’re right about that. But I know this. Sera Tomlinson—my Sera Tomlinson—left with her father for New Canaan a few days ago. Their departure was kept quiet, so few knew of it. I also know that they have not returned. Yet Sera reached out to me today, and we met.”
“Then she has returned.”
“Daughter mine, you know I am a Sinshea. I cannot lie. The person I met today was a perfect clone of Sera—well, a clone of Sera as she was some time ago. But she was not Sera in mind.”
Mary ran a hand down her cheek as she stared up at Flaherty. “OK. You can’t lie. You think that Sera is gone, and you met with someone who was not Sera. But why should I think that, and why would this not-Sera try to harm you?”
Flaherty shrugged. “It could be because I told her that I didn’t believe she was Sera. Then she had her guards try to kill me.”
“Dad! Shit! Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“I was getting there, but then you got angry at me.”
Mary was already moving, rushing into her bedroom to grab a bag, stuffing a change of clothing and a few personal effects inside.
“If she tried to kill you, she’ll come for us! We have to get Drew!” she called out to him.
“I have someone picking him up. A trusted friend.”
Mary reappeared at her bedroom’s doorway, her gaze narrow. “A friend?”
“Trusted friend. Leeroy.”
“Dammit, Dad! I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but Leeroy and I are not involved anymore.”
“Doesn’t make him any less trustworthy,” Flaherty replied. “Drew knows him and will go along. They’ll meet us at the rendezvous.”
Mary grabbed a jacket and shouldered her bag, looking around her home. “How long do I have?”
Flaherty handed his daughter a pulse pistol. “Do you remember how to use this?”
She grabbed it from him, checked the charge and the emitter. “Yeah, I still practice, you know that.”
“Good.”
A dull thud shook the floor—the pulse-mine he had planted on her front step. He checked the drones he’d deployed above the hill and saw three figures laying prone on Mary’s front lawn.
The drones didn’t spot anyone else, but a lack of visual confirmation was hardly evidence of safety.
Flaherty nodded to Mary. “Time to go. Come.”
She didn’t say another word, though more than one disgruntled look came his way as they ran through her home and out the rear door.
Mary’s home was on a terraced hill in Airtha’s Genmere district. Her front door looked out over sweeping hills covered in blooming foliage, but the back door emptied out into a passageway that ran through the center of the hill.
“We’re sitting ducks in here,” Mary muttered.
“Yes.”
Flaherty stopped three doors down from Mary’s house and planted a lockhak over the access panel. A small light on the device turned red, then yellow, then green.
He grabbed the lockhak and pushed the door open.
“Quickly,” he said, ushering Mary inside.
“Light above, I hope Sally’s not home, she’s going to be piiiissed.”
Flaherty ignored the comment and walked through the house to the bay window at the front, standing a meter back as he peered through the glass.
This residence—Sally’s, it would seem—looked out on the other side of the hill from his daughter’s, and from what he could see, there was no sign of any enemies.
He wondered who not-Sera would send after him. It could be anyone from Airthan police to TSF soldiers, Hand agents, Greys, or any of the other elite forces the Transcend government operated.
Or worse.
The images he’d seen of the TSF Combat Automatons attacking Secretary Adrienne’s shuttle on High Airtha just the day before came to mind. He didn’t know if the secretary had survived, but there had been rumors of not-Sera’s presence there, too.
What little he had learned came from a friend in the High Airtha Police Department. A friend who had not responded to any attempts at communication in the last four hours.
Mary was at his side, staring out the window. “What are we looking for?”
“Everything,” he replied. “I have a car at the road two levels down.”
“They can track cars,” Mary cautioned. “We need to get deeper into the ring.”
“You’re right. We will. Come.”
Flaherty pushed the door open and held his breath as he stepped out into the A
irthan star’s sharp white light. He didn’t pause as he walked down the front walk, glad that Mary was close behind. When they reached the shared pathway, he kept close to the shrubbery at the edge of the road, looking up the terraced hill to see if any pursuers were coming over the top.
The team not-Sera had sent was too small. She would know that three lightly armored agents wouldn’t be able to bring him in. There had to be others nearby.
Flaherty nodded and passed two feeds from further up the hill to her, glad she remembered her training well enough to ask for them.
They turned down a staircase with a bower of branches overhead and came to the road where his car waited.
It was a sleek and low sport-racer. One that he’d upgraded with moderate stealth systems and anti-EM capabilities. An eye could spot the car, but it was almost entirely invisible on the higher end of the EM spectrum.
But Flaherty already knew they had eyes on the hill, and there was no way they wouldn’t cover the rear.
He held up a hand and gestured for Mary to wait, while he walked back up the cover path and worked his way further along the hill, above a rock outcropping. He deployed a surveillance countermeasure drone, hoping his Hand-issued tech was better than his prey’s.
At twenty meters from the outcropping, Flaherty stopped and cycled his vision to focus in.
Sure enough, there was a stealthed sniper on the rock. Flaherty couldn’t see the person, but he could make out a small tuft of grass on the rock, flattened by a body on top.
Must be local police. Greys or Hand would have better stealth tech.
There was no time to wonder why not-Sera had sent the cops—and not anyone else—as he crept down the hillside toward the rock.
He gauged where the shooter had to be laying, in order to get a line of sight on the car, and fired three pulse blasts.
A series of scrapes and scuffling sounds came from the surface of the stone, and pebbles and dirt moved around under the invisible person.
Flaherty decided not to fire another shot and instead rushed down the hillside and delivered a kick to what he hoped was the figure’s head.