Xander had implied that he was only a shard of the actual AI he referred to: Alexander. What would that be like, to have bits of her consciousness divided up and spread throughout Sol, representing her and reporting back?
Lyssa turned her attention to the other end of the shuttle, Harl Nines stood next to Senator Walton and Fugia. Both women looked lost in thought. The Senator tapped a slow rhythm on her leg as she thought, staring at the floor, while Fugia’s gaze was locked on the opposite wall.
Lyssa tried.
The small woman glanced up, surprised. She looked at Andy then seemed to realize Lyssa was contacting her separately from him.
Fugia said.
Fugia smiled.
Lyssa thought of Fred’s ocean and how overwhelming the sight of all the data had been, like it would dissolve her simply by looking at it, by knowing it existed.
Multi-nodal.
Fugia nodded.
Fugia asked.
Fugia replied.
Lyssa mused. She replayed the moment Andy had stepped in the metal control room with the short pillar in the center. Her attention had been on Fugia, May and Harl on the right side of the room. That was where Andy had looked. She recalled other shapes out of the corner of Andy’s vision but she couldn’t verify they were the others from the meeting in the library. The more she tried to focus on the room, the more it warped and slipped away from her.
Lyssa admitted.
Fugia said.
Fugia shook her head, still looking like she was lost in thought.
Fugia said slowly. Fugia frowned.
Lyssa asked.
Andy, Brit and Cara were so caught up in Tim that Lyssa hated to interrupt them. Fugia felt the sentiment and seemed to agree silently. Her gaze slid toward the other side of the shuttle and she watched Tim, the sad expression still on her face.
Lyssa asked.
Fugia said.
Fugia’s serious face cracked into a slight smile of gratitude. she said.
The shuttle arrived in Sunny Skies’ main cargo bay and they activated their magboots to walk down the ramp to the deck. Without proper boots, Tim floated along beside Cara. They had only made it halfway across the bay when a frantic yipping sounded from the interior airlock and Em launched toward them with a strong kick from the inside wall. The Corgi puppy collided with Tim and fumbled across his chest, pawing at the air.
Tim didn’t respond as the puppy expected. He raised his hands and Lyssa thought he was going to bat the dog away. Instead, Cara caught Em around the middle and hugged him, turning her face away from his tongue, holding him so Tim could watch with a confused look on his face.
“You don’t remember Em?” Cara asked, struggling with the excited puppy.
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
Cara frowned. “Why would you hurt him?” She seemed surprised to see tears beading in Tim’s eyelashes.
“I don’t know. I just felt like if I can’t hold him he’s going to float away.”
Andy gave Brit a worried look. “We’re not going to let him float away,” he said. “He’s part of our family.”
“I know,” Tim said, lowering his face. He didn’t sound convinced.
“We’ll talk about it when we get up to the hab ring,” Andy said. “We’ll take a look at your room and you can watch some vids if you want. We’ve got a bunch of them up there.”
Tim had seemed most calm in the hotel room when watching the nature vids. Now he nodded absently and looked toward the interior airlock.
The inner airlock opened and Fran walked in, magboots clicki
ng on the deck. She gave Andy a knowing smile before walking over to Tim.
“How you doing, there?” she asked, using the semi-gruff voice of a mechanic.
“Good,” Tim said.
“You remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“You got a hug for me?”
Tim shook his head and Fran took the rejection in stride.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Yeah,” Tim said.
Cara gave up trying to hold Em and let the puppy careen off her chest. He somersaulted, floating back toward Harl. The tall Andersonian soldier rolled his eyes at the puppy and caught him firmly, holding him against his chest.
“Come here,” Harl growled warmly, letting Em lick his chin. “Let’s get you back up where you don’t look so ridiculous.”
Cara was glad to see Fran standing next to her dad, although they seemed to take care not to touch one another right away. Her mom seemed too focused on Tim to notice. Cara figured that was better.
When they reached the habitat ring, Harl, May and Fugia went to their rooms, looking exhausted. Andy helped Tim to his room. Brit was still afraid to let Tim go to sleep, and agreed to stay with him while Andy checked the astrogation for the trip to Europa.
“We haven’t refueled or taken on any new supplies,” Andy said, rubbing the side of his face. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“It’s not that far away,” Brit said.
“I’ve learned not to take supplies for granted. When we can get them, I get them. I’ll be on the Link if you need me.” He bent over to give Tim a hug, who returned the embrace absently, then walked through the door with Cara following.
“You don’t want to stay with your brother?” Andy asked her in the corridor.
“I need a break,” Cara said.
Andy studied her face. His thought that she already seemed older than thirteen was plain for Lyssa to interpret as he experienced a mix of pride and worry. Andy wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close as he continued walking.
“I wish I could promise things were going to be all right,” he said.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Cara said. She wrapped her arm around his back, grabbing one of his harness straps, and leaned into his side.
Lyssa thought about Fugia’s earlier emotion and realized she understood what had made the woman sad. Or at least she thought she did. Lyssa experienced something she hadn’t before, a sort extension of what she felt through Andy: empathy for Fugia Wong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 10.02.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
The passage from the Cho to Europa was a simple one; given that Callisto was the outermost of the Galilean moons, all a transfer to Europa required was slowing down and letting Jupiter’s gravity draw the ship further in.
Navigating the congested flight paths around the gas giant was another thing altogether.
Cara’s dad had laid out the plan using the old astrogation computer, shifting information to the holodisplay every now and then to show different options. She had entered hundreds of flight plans in the same system to watch them play out in simulation but still enjoyed the excitement on Andy’s face as the imaginary dot representing Sunny Skies crossed the distance between celestial bodies. It all still seemed like magic to him.
Cara was more interested in how close they would pass to Ganymede and if she could pick up interesting signal traffic as they went by. Since Ganymede’s orbit had been adjusted and its surface partially terraformed, if offered a wide of spectrum noise—nearly as weird as Ceres with all the activity in the area.
“I don’t think you’ll have any problems picking up something to watch or listen to,” Andy said. He activated another visualization in the holodisplay and what had been black space between the Galilean moons and Jupiter filled with thousands of multi-colored icons. Some were obviously moving inside recognized shipping lanes while others floated in random sections of Jupiter’s orbit.
“That’s every ship with a registry ping,” he explained. “That’s not going to catch all the other stuff that might be sitting dark out there.”
Cara whistled. “Is the proximity alarm working this time?”
“And the shields are up,” Andy said. “Tell Fran thank you the next time you see her.”
“I heard that,” Fran said from the other side of the command deck. She was lying on the floor with her head inside the maintenance panel under a console. “I think there was a mouse in here at one point, and then it caught fire. It’s full of burned fur. How does that happen?”
“You mean the mouse caught fire or the electronics?” Andy asked.
“Something caught fire. It’s in my nose. Andy, I need you to get over here and pick my nose for me.” She coughed, making gagging sounds. “It’s in my mouth now.”
“Cara’s in here,” Andy said. “Just so you know.”
“I’m not going to make her pick my nose. The ship belongs to you. This is your responsibility.”
Cara laughed and couldn’t help making a disgusted sound. She loved how Fran said whatever she felt like saying. While her dad didn’t like fart jokes or teasing about things like picking your nose, Fran seemed to delight in things that, honestly, everybody did. The more Cara thought about it, the more unreasonable it seemed to pretend people didn’t have bodily functions, or express how they felt, or say when they were angry or scared. Listening to Fran sometimes, she felt dumb for having such basic realizations, but it helped her see something in her parents that she hadn’t been able to recognize before: they were uptight.
She understood why her dad kept himself wound so tightly, and he had gotten better since other people had joined the crew to help him with basic things like fixing the ship or watching the pilot’s console, but he also seemed to have a hard time expressing emotion toward anyone but her and Tim. Cara watched him looking at Fran and knew he wanted to touch her sometimes or tell her something, maybe that he cared about her, but he held back.
Her mom was the same way and even worse about it, in Cara’s opinion. Maybe it was Brit’s relationship with her mother, or that grandpa had died and she hadn’t been there, but Brit rarely told anyone how she felt—that Cara could remember. Now that she was acting like she had missed them, like that could make up for leaving in the first place, Cara felt kind of disgusted any time her mom did show some warmth or caring. The fact that she barely left Tim’s room made Cara want to stay as far away as possible. It was impossible to tell how Tim felt. In the few days since he’d woken up, he still seemed like a sleepwalker and not at all like he used to be.
“I’m going to check on Em,” Cara told her dad.
He nodded, not looking up from his charts. When Cara got to the door, Fran called out something from where she was working and her dad stood to cross the room to her. Cara found herself smiling at that. It felt good to see them getting along. She wondered if she should feel bothered that he and Mom weren’t being that way toward each other, and had another realization of how weird that would seem. Was it wrong that she couldn’t imagine her parents together anymore?
Cara walked back to her console and grabbed her portable headset, then went out into the corridor. Slipping the headphones over her ears, she tapped the activation controls.
“Lyssa,” she said. “Are you there?”
“Hi, Cara.”
“What’s Fran working on, anyway?”
“Why didn’t you ask her?”
“She obviously wanted Dad to go help her with it.”
“She likes talking to you.”
“I want them to get along.” Cara realized the truth she felt as she said it.
“You don’t want Fran to leave?”
“No.”
“Are you worried she will?”
“I don’t know. Won’t she eventually? There’s nothing keeping her here, really. I gue
ss there’s plenty of stuff to fix on the ship and she seems to enjoy doing that. But it’s not her ship. I don’t know that Dad’s paying her or anything.”
“They’ve discussed it,” Lyssa said.
Cara felt a surge of hope. “Her staying?”
“Her salary,” Lyssa said. “Fran holds the position of ship’s pilot. She is eligible for the highest percentage of profits below the captain.”
“We haven’t exactly been moving any cargo.”
“We are moving cargo,” Lyssa said. “We took on several shipments prior to leaving the Cho for a rapid delivery to Europa. Your father is going to make a three-hundred percent profit on the job.”
“When did he talk about that?”
“I don’t think you were there.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. He never stops worrying about money.”
Cara passed Fugia’s room. The door was open and she couldn’t help glancing in to see the woman sitting at her desk. Fugia glanced up from her work and saw Cara.
“Hey there,” Fugia called. “Come here for a second.”
Cara paused in the doorway of the room, looking. Not much had changed since Fugia had come on board but it felt more organized somehow. The bed was attached to a different section of the wall, which changed the overall flow of the room.
“I need your help with something,” Fugia said.
“I’ll be right back,” Cara told Lyssa, pulling the headset down around her neck.
Cara moved closer, seeing there was a collection of electronic components on the desk in front of Fugia. A dull gray casing sat to one side, along with several blocks of clay-like material.
“What’s that?” Cara asked.
“It’s a shaped charge,” Fugia said. She pointed to different pieces. “This is the brain, this is the antenna, this is a proximity sensor for anyone who tries to mess with it, and this is the sensor that checks whatever its going to blow up for changes.”
Cara’s eyes went wide. She pointed at the blocks of clay material. “And that’s the explosive, there?”
Fugia waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that. It’s inert until you apply a specific code sequence.”
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