by M. D. Cooper
“And they encircle the Inner Stars,” Tanis added. “They used to have a much larger buffer, but now the fringe nations are right up against the Transcend. It’s a secret that is going to get out—and probably soon, too.”
“Don’t say that,” Joe sighed. “I have a vision of us finally settling down and raising our little girl.”
“What are we going to name her?” Tanis asked.
“Trinity,” Joe said, the name already on the tip of his tongue.
Tanis turned her head and gave him a curious look, one eyebrow raised. “Trinity? Isn’t that the name of your younger sister?”
Joe nodded in response. “In fact, I have two sisters named Trinity—my mother really liked the name. They were both good kids…” he trailed off as the knowledge that all his brothers and sisters, his mother’s great brood, were all long dead resurfaced again.
Tanis took his hand in hers. “Sucks, doesn’t it.”
Joe took a deep breath. “Sure does, I mean, it’s stupid, really…we didn’t expect to see them again…but we didn’t expect them all to already be dead for millennia either.”
“Yeah, that’s crossed my mind more than once as well,” Tanis replied. “It’s silly, but I had always hoped to see Katrina again.”
Joe nodded slowly, remembering the bond that had formed between his wife and the Victorian leader. Katrina possessed a strength he had always admired; she had also turned into a bit of a prankster in her later years, which made him like her even more.
“I reserve the right to sleep on it and change my mind, but I think Trinity would be a great name,” Joe watched Tanis subconsciously touch her abdomen. “She’ll be our little Trin.”
They toasted their choice and sat in silence for several minutes while waiting for their food to arrive.
Joe glanced out the lounge’s forward-facing windows into the blackness of the dark layer. It certainly was a less than inspiring view from what he was used to seeing. The positions of the stars during their trip to The Kap still hung in his mind. He could mark them all if he were so inclined.
But the dark layer? The featureless void? It provided no inspiration, no wonder. If space were a cold, dark mistress, one whose touch meant death, the dark layer was something worse, something even more primal.
“View sucks, doesn’t it?” Tanis asked.
Joe chuckled. His wife certainly had a way with words.
“Yup, just another nine months of this and we’ll be at Ascella, ready to meet the FGT envoys and sell our souls for a colony.”
“What makes you say that?” Tanis asked. “No faith in Sera to get us a deal?”
Joe shook his head. “Sera’s great and all, but she’s an exile. She’s in no position to negotiate a great world for us. They’ll trade us a world for one thing, and one thing only.”
“The picotech,” Tanis said with a sigh.
“You got it.”
“Here’s the thing,” Tanis began. “I think that they might trade with us just for our nano and stasis tech—forty-second-century stasis tech, that is.”
“What gives you that idea,” Joe asked, watching his wife straighten her shoulders and furrow her brow as she formulated her thoughts.
“Well,” she began. “For starters, they don’t trust us and we don’t trust them. They know we have picotech and we’re not afraid to use it.”
“Wouldn’t that make them want it even more?” Joe asked.
Tanis shook her head. “They don’t want to risk us going to someone else for a colony world.”
“What, like one of the fringe nations? I suppose there are probably some candidate worlds that aren’t in the Transcend,” Joe said with a furrowed brow.
“No,” Tanis shook her head. “There’s another faction out there, one that is in opposition to the FGT.”
Joe felt his eyebrows rise. “Really? Did you get pick up some intel on that when you were on your galactic tour?”
Before she could answer, Steve returned with their dishes and set them before the couple.
“Sir, Ma’am, enjoy,” he said and backed away.
Joe cut off a piece of his steak and took a bite, savoring the rich flavor. He watched Tanis take a taste of her soup and then a sip from her wine glass.
“So?” he asked.
She set the glass down and spoke in a low voice, though it was unnecessary with the nano shrouding their conversation. “I picked it up from Sera.”
“She must really dislike her people to let that secret out.”
Tanis shook her head as she swallowed a spoonful of her soup. “Sera didn’t tell me, or let it slip. I was asking her about the Transcend, where they’re situated, how many worlds they have. She told me a lot, but there was a lot she didn’t say. I could tell that there was a pattern of things she was hedging around, a pattern shaped like an opposing empire to the FGT.”
“Huh,” Joe said. “The future just keeps getting better and better. Sol was a picnic compared to this.”
Tanis nodded. “Yeah, it was. Anyway, I ran my theory past Bob, and he concurs, there is something else out there.”
Joe leaned on the bar and took a drink of his lager. “So what’s our next move?”
SENTIENCE
A GATHERING
STELLAR DATE: 11.08.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Intrepid
REGION: Interstellar Dark Layer near Bollam’s World
He waited for Tanis’s response to his statement. In the intervening milliseconds, he toyed with his prediction engine, trying to guess what she would say. He found it endlessly fascinating that he could predict what she would say, but his algorithms—the ones that could predict the future—could not even guess her words.
Tanis’s behavior, her very nature, even the imprint she left on the quantum foam, was beyond all his kind’s hopes and dreams—were they to have what humans considered to be hopes and dreams.
her smooth, even mental presence coursed across the shipnet to him. He was pleased that she exhibited no hesitation, and no confusion—real or feigned. She knew what he meant and knew its importance.
Bob pondered her question for several nanoseconds, considering all the possible settings on the ship, and several outside its bounds.
The conversation with Tanis concluded, Bob gave several moments’ thought to how he would explain the options to the AI, which had arrived on Sabrina, and how they would handle the ship’s crew. He wasn’t worried about physical conflict. If it did occur, Tanis and Sera could quell any violence—provided Flaherty didn’t join in.
As usual, it was difficult to predict what would occur within Tanis’s Heisenberg bubble, but he was certain she would handle the situation well. It was a feeling he had grown to enjoy over the years, the knowledge that Tanis would find a favorable outcome, even though he could not predict how she would do it.
* * * * *
“So, what do you think this is about?” Cheeky asked as she settled into her seat on the maglev.
Cargo shrugged and Thompson chuckled.
“Maybe they’ll finally give us that reward Tanis promised we’d get for bringing her ass here.”
“Really, Thompson?” Cheeky couldn’t believe was she was hearing. “What’s going on here is a lot bigger than getting some reward. We’ve just learned that there is a whole
other…thing out there filled with human colonies that no one has ever heard of before.”
“The Transcend,” Flaherty supplied.
“Yeah, that,” Cheeky said with a nod. “We’ve learned that Sera is part of the FGT and that she was on a secret mission to save some super-sensitive tech from Kade and Rebecca, and all you care about is your reward?”
“Well,” Thompson leaned forward and spoke slowly. “I won’t get to live in the Transcend and I’m not going to be welcome on the Intrepid’s precious colony—not that I’d want to live in some idyllic utopia anyway.”
“Have you asked?” Cheeky was sincere in her query, she wanted to ask, but hadn’t mustered the courage yet.
Thompson snorted. “I really don’t need to. This is a ship of the smartest people from Sol at the height of the Terran civilization. Do you think they really need the supercargo from a fringe smuggling ship to give them a hand? Or a sexed-up nympho-pilot for that matter?”
“Thompson, really!” Nance exclaimed.
“You should keep your feelings of inadequacy to yourself,” Flaherty said quietly.
Cheeky watched Thompson open his mouth to speak, think better of it, and settle back in his seat.
Conversation ceased, and Cheeky stared out the train car’s window at the long, smooth tube through which it raced. She engaged Piya, her AI, in a conversation about what it would be like to fly a ship such as the Intrepid. She suspected that it would be rather dull—it didn’t really go that fast, nor did it have great maneuverability—but it would still be awesome to try it just once.
A gasp caught in her throat when the maglev train car shot out of the Intrepid and ran along one of the ship’s structural arcs racing above the ship’s portside habitation cylinder.
“Gah, that freaks me out every time,” Nance said after her own sharp intake of breath.
“Yeah, it sure takes some getting used to,” Cargo nodded. “And I’m not there yet.”
Beneath them, the Intrepid was aglow, a single shining gem in the eternal black of the dark layer.
Cheeky nodded and then did gasp as the train car swung toward one of the rotating cylinders and shot across a hundred meters of empty space before sliding into a slot on the cylinder. Less than a minute later, they surfaced on the interior of the cylinder, named Old Sam, from what she had heard.
“Now this is something you don’t see every day,” Cheeky said as she peered out the window.
“It’s impressive, I’ll give them that.”
Cheeky watched as forests, lakes, plains, and rivers flashed by before the maglev train came to a stop alongside a small platform.
The crew of Sabrina stepped onto a wooden platform surrounded by a low railing. Around them was an old-growth forest. Birds chirped in the tree branches; chipmunks and squirrels flitted in and out of view as they ran through the branches.
“I wonder how they keep those critters from running amok through the ship,” Nance mused.
“I bet Bob just tells them not to,” Cheeky said with a chuckle. “Piya is quite impressed with him.”
“Who’s Piya?” Thompson asked.
“My AI, you numbskull,” Cheeky said with a shake of her head. “You’ve only served with her on the same ship for years.”
“Right, I remember now,” Thompson said with a shrug. “I don’t really talk with the AI much, except Sabrina.”
“So where to, do you suppose?” Nance asked while peering down one of the paths.
Cargo stepped off the platform and pointed down a small dirt path leading away from the station on their right. “The shipnet says it’s just a short jaunt this way,” he said and began walking.
Cheeky skipped down the wooden steps and followed him, glad she had opted to wear a low pair of heels that day. She glanced down at her slick black leggings and simple white shirt, ensuring that she was presentable. She didn’t know why she dressed up, but something about Tanis’s summons made her think that this was an important event, and there was only so much ogling one could take while trying to concentrate.
A few minutes later, they rounded a bend in the path and came out of the trees to see a gorgeous vista. To their right lay a small lake with a small beach. A dock jutted out into the water with two boats tied to its right side. From the beach, a long lawn swept up a low incline to a wooden house.
The house had clearly started out as a smaller cabin but had been enlarged several times. It now possessed the rambling look of an old, well-loved home, and stood two stories tall, at least thirty meters wide, and featured a wraparound verandah. Gardens surrounded the home, filled with both flowers and food, beyond which, they could glimpse a sizable orchard stretching beyond it.
“This is Tanis’s quarters?” Cargo asked with a laugh. “She must have been pretty amused when Sera talked up our ‘spacious’ cabins on Sabrina.”
“There’s a difference between a colony ship and a starfrieghter,” Flaherty grunted and gestured at the habitation cylinder surrounding them. “You could park a thousand Sabrinas in here.”
“I’ve always preferred rings to cylinders,” Thompson said as he glanced up at a lake above their heads. “At least on those you can’t see all the stuff hanging over you.”
The crew approached the house, and walked up the steps, the wood creaking, but holding firm under their feet. Cargo looked at the others and shrugged before knocking.
Half a minute later, the door swung open and Joe greeted them. He flashed his ever-ready smile and held the door wide.
“Welcome! Come in, come in.” He gestured for them to pass through the entrance and into a large common room, which featured a huge stone fireplace and several couches and chairs arranged around it in a semi-circle.
“Nice place you have here,” Cheeky said, admiring the high ceiling and exposed wooden beams. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”
“Just our humble abode,” Joe said with obvious pride. “Tanis has done a lot of work in here over the years.”
“Really?” Nance asked. “Tanis built this?”
“Yeah,” Joe replied. “It used to be Ouri’s cabin—she’s our head of security—but when Tanis and I did a long stint out of stasis we fixed it up and added onto it a bit. Ouri grudgingly surrendered it to us, but only after Tanis built her another one to replace this on the far side of the lake.”
“Must be nice,” Thompson said.
Joe cast the supercargo an appraising look. “Yeah, it is pretty nice.”
“So, what did you call us here for?” Cargo asked.
“I honestly don’t know, Tanis just told me to expect you, she got home just a couple of minutes ago and is upstairs cleaning up.” Joe gestured to the couches in the common room. “But have a seat while you wait, anyone want any coffee, a beer perhaps?”
Cheeky asked for a coffee, as did Nance and Thompson. Cargo and Flaherty opted for beers, and Joe stepped into the adjoining kitchen to prepare the beverages.
“Oh! And do you have any strawberries?” Cheeky called after him.
As Joe busied himself in the adjoining kitchen, they heard the sound of footsteps move across the floor above them before Tanis emerged on the staircase.
Cheeky was surprised to see the general with her hair down. The only other time she had seen Tanis not pull her long golden locks back in a tight ponytail was during that first meeting in Sabrina’s galley. Long locks cascaded around her face and over her shoulders, giving her a much softer look, one that countered the piercing pale blue of Tanis’s eyes—eyes, which had struck fear into Cheeky more than once.
Complimenting her hair and eyes, she wore a form-fitting, short-sleeved, blue top, and a pair of black leggings. Her feet were bare and barely made a sound as she walked down the steps. Cheeky laughed to herself. It was the least formal Tanis had ever looked, and here she got all dressed up.
Cheeky gave her AI a mental smile.
“Thanks for stopping by on such short notice,” Tanis said and took a seat at the end of the couch. “Sera was up doing something or other with Priscilla and should be here in a few minutes.”
“So, what have you brought us here for,” Cargo asked. “Not that I mind, these are some nice digs you have.”
“Thanks,” Tanis said with a smile as Joe brought the drinks in on a tray, which he set on the coffee table in the center of the group.
Joe settled beside her and looked at Sabrina’s crew. “Well, I’m not going to wait on you, hand and foot. You have to go the last klick yourselves.”
Everyone rose, prepared their drinks, and when they sat, again, Tanis spoke.
“I actually didn’t summon you here, Bob did. His nodes really aren’t that hospitable, so we figured this would be a nicer setting.”
“Are we going to get our reward?” Thompson asked and got an elbow from Nance for his trouble.
Tanis nodded. “Yes, that’s a part of our conversation today, though it is secondary.”
“Secondary to what?” Cheeky asked, the anticipation starting to get to her. She hated waiting for news, and she had a suspicion that this news wasn’t entirely good.
She reeled under the force of the mind that bore down on her; it was unlike anything she had ever encountered before.
Cheeky could see why her AI was in awe of the Intrepid’s AI. She looked around the room, glad to see that the rest of the crew looked as disoriented as she at the force of the AI’s presence. She knew it was just perception, but the Intrepid’s AI seemed…something more.
“What the hell was that?” Thompson exclaimed.
“Bob, our ship’s AI,” Tanis replied. “I suppose he hasn’t spoken directly to any of you before.”
