Oganno was no different. He used his wealth to fund many other spin-off research groups but spent most of his time on his new island. He was going to meet them at the warehouse but was then expecting them to spend at least a day with him.
"Have you seen this thing?" Ayia asked.
She had brought up a picture of the island residence. It was about a square mile in size, floating a few miles off the main city. It was shaped like an egg. From the picture, it was hard to make out the actual residence among the heavy vegetation. Large trees covered the island and only in a few locations could they make out a few red towers peeking out from above the trees. On one side, white sand glistened against the still image of waves crashing onto its shores. The rest of the border was rocky, likely as protection against the many storms that crisscrossed the Alothian oceans.
"I wonder if I could afford one," she thought out loud.
Kale glanced over to look at the picture.
"Probably not. They really cashed in on the Gora hook."
"How about a big boat?"
"You want a boat?" Kale asked, surprised.
"I’ve never even been on a boat. Well, not a real boat. Not on the ocean."
"So why a boat?"
"Just feels like the right thing."
"I've never been on a boat like that, either. The Dominion doesn’t really offer boat rides to its slaves."
"See? Wouldn’t that be great?" she said, pulling up pictures of different kinds of yachts
Kale shrugged his shoulders.
"What would we do with the ship?" he asked.
"I’m talking about long after this. You don’t want to do this forever, do you?"
Kale didn’t answer and Ayia knew she had hit a sore spot. They had this conversation before. The former slave knew nothing else.
"Do I need wealth?" came the voice of Sentinel over the speakers.
Both Kale and Ayia looked up.
"You want wealth?" Ayia asked.
"I have been alive now for almost four years. At first, my survival was the ultimate goal. I think it is clear I can and will survive. It would seem natural that I create goals for myself. The hunt for wealth appears to be a common theme."
"Makes sense to me," Kale said. Ayia gasped. "KALE!"
"What?"
"You find something wrong with that desire, Ayia?" the AI asked.
"Yeah, Ayia. Explain," Kale smiled.
"What do you even need money for?" she asked.
"I live in hardware, Ayia. I cannot expect it to last forever. It will have to be replaced."
"We can get you more cores. It wouldn’t be an issue," she said.
"You can get them," Kale said under his breath.
"I am thankful to you for that, but I cannot be your child forever. What happens when you’re gone?" Sentinel asked.
"We're not going to leave you Sentinel. You are family."
"You will one day. Ayia. I will outlive you."
There was a brief pause as Ayia realized the truth. He was hardware based, not organic. His lifetime was virtually infinite. Certainly the new being would need to be able to support himself. "The only problem is that, well, you're not legally alive," Kale pointed out.
"I have already set up an alias. Henry Griffin from Chicago."
Kale exchanged confused looks with Ayia.
"So, you have really thought this out," Kale said.
“I wouldn’t proceed without your permission or advice. In that aspect I am still your child.”
“Our kid is growing up and wants to go get a job. Fine by me,” Kale stated, returning back to his console.
“What are you planning to do? It’s not like you can just show up at a factory and start working,” Ayia asked.
“Commodities trading on Mars. It is one hundred percent virtual, doesn’t require physical presence.”
Kale looked up again. “Ok, just make sure you don’t trigger any alarms. Trading with computer AIs is highly illegal.”
“I'm no more computer than you are Captain,” the AI pointed out.
“Ok. I'm not having THIS philosophical debate again. You know what I mean.”
“There will be minimal trading. Just enough to start saving money.”
Kale nodded, knowing the AI could see him. Ayia sat down and was quiet in thought. After about a minute, she asked, “Sentinel, have you ever thought about being physical?”
Kale began to laugh. “Being physical?”
“Please explain, Ayia,” the AI asked.
“Yeah, that didn’t sound right. No. What I meant is, do you want to be Pinocchio?”
“My body is this ship, at the moment,” the AI replied, “I would rather not be a wooden boy.”
“But don’t you want the freedom to move around?”
“I move around a lot now.”
“I think what Ayia is trying to say is wouldn’t you rather be more like humans, with a body of your own,” Kale tried to elaborate.
“Why would I want that?”
Kale laughed. “Yeah. Really. Why would you.”
A small green light began blinking on Kale’s console. He tapped the green light twice.
“Lion transport HJK-3342, please submit flight plan.”
Kale tapped the console on the bottom right of the screen, bringing up a small document. He dragged the document over to the green light. The document vanished. Moments later, the voice chimed in again.
“Thank you. Please descend to seventeen thousand feet and proceed on bearing one-ninety-three. We have you on flight lock. Do you need docking assistance?”
Kale leaned over the console. “No assistance needed. Thank you.”
“Very well. Welcome to Benard City. Weather is clear, but storms are moving in from Northeast.”
Ayia stood up. “Where is northeast?”
Kale pointed and she looked out the window. In the distance, she could make out the dark storm clouds. As they descended in altitude, she could see the flashes of lightning.
“How long?” she asked.
“Um, looks like forty-five minutes, give or take,” Kale replied after looking on the console.
Ayia shook her head and walked out of the cabin down the short hallway and into their main mess room. Gheno was sitting on the far couch watching a virtuavid on the main screen. It appeared to be horribly outdated, with extremely low resolution shots and a bland, faded color. It was some kind of outdoor movie. Men on horses were running around shooting primitive weapons at even more primitive people. Gheno seemed to be completely engrossed in the spectacle.
“What is this?” Ayia asked.
“Just uh, a virtuavid,” Gheno replied after a pause. He had not taken his eyes off the show.
“About?”
“Cowboys and Indians.”
The combination of terms was completely foreign to her.
“Ok, I know what those two things are. How…” she began, “should that make sense?”
Gheno waved his hand in apparent disgust. The virtuavid paused, the shot remained heavily blurred due to the low quality. He turned to face her.
“It’s not the Indians from the continent. It’s the natives from North America,” he started to explain, but stopped when he saw even more confusion on her face.
“Ok, history lesson. Back on Earth, North America was populated by a simple people. No great empire, but thousands of small tribes, languages. This was before the North American Federation or even the United States. This was before Europa was anything even. Anyways, as Europeans began spreading out and sailing across the ocean, they came across North America. They mistakenly thought it was a part of India, so they called the people they saw there Indians.” Gheno waited to see if she was taking it all in.
“Ok. So why haven’t I heard of that?” she asked, sitting down on the couch.
“Many reasons. When the first Europeans came, they wiped them out. Partly through war and slavery, but mostly because they carried diseases the natives couldn’t deal with. As they s
pread west in North America, there were many conflicts between these European cowboys and the now improperly named Indians. It became a popular theme for some time.”
“The European’s killed them all?” she asked.
“Actually no. They moved the few that remained into camps. It’s kind of sad really. But the worst came later. In 2090, just a few years into the Last World War, do you remember all the genetic warfare that was going on?”
Ayia nodded. “Just barely. That stuff was banned during the war, right?”
“It was, but not before several minority races on Earth were wiped out. These Indians were among them.”
“Oh,” Ayia said, realizing the severity of that appalling historic event. She turned and looked at the screen glorifying the extermination of a people by a different race and she instantly felt sick.
“Are there any of them left on Earth?”
“I don’t know. I thought I read somewhere once that some still lived in the deepest jungles in South America. But the ones, like in this virtuavid, I think they are all gone,” Gheno answered.
“Wasn’t it just a few years later that we discovered space flight and the war came to a quick end?”
“Yeah.”
Gheno looked back up at the screen. He waved his hand again and the screen cleared.
“Now I feel horrible.”
He had studied history often, and had known this dark part of mankind’s past. Why he had so easily put it behind him bothered him. Just moments ago he had been watching white men with guns slaughtering the native men. It had been enjoyable at the time. It was a feeling of superiority that he got from watching the dominance of one man over another.
“Are we almost there yet?” Gheno asked.
Ayia told him what Kale had told her.
“Fine. Time for a quick nap then,” he said, ducking down the hallway towards his room.
Ayia was left there standing alone.
Kale and Gheno were unloading several crates from the transports underside with the assistance of the ship’s small internal crane when the hangar doors began hissing as they opened. The two stopped and turned to look just as the old man walked in. Gheno smiled and held his arms out wide as he began walking towards him. Kale stood there with his arms crossed. They hadn’t seen him much since they had turned in the hook information nearly three years ago. Due to that one event, he aged nearly overnight. Losing friends in such a violent fashion was traumatic enough. But three years later, he almost looked younger.
“Retirement has done you good, old man,” Kale shouted out at him just as Gheno reached him and threw his arms around him.
He was, by all means, their father. Oganno had adopted them, helped them, and taught them how to be independent. They routinely joked about how he wasn’t their biological father, but both Kale and Gheno respected the man as if he were.
Kale followed Gheno and extended his hand. Oganno shook his hand.
“Then maybe you need to retire because you look lousy,” he said.
Oganno had trimmed his beard very short, but had allowed his hair to grow longer. His skin had tanned considerably since they had last seen him. It was the byproduct of spending much more time outside as opposed to the decades he had spent indoors doing research. Kale expected to see a smile on his face after one of his usual sarcastic comments, but instead caught a very serious look.
“Now what?”
“You do look horrible.”
“Great. She talk to you?”
“She’s concerned. From what she has told me, I am as well. What’s wrong with you?”
“Seriously? A hand shake and a grilling? I'm fine, old man.”
“You're full of fine is what you are,” Oganno started, “but OK, be a strong man.”
Oganno looked around.
“Where is Ayia? I like her better than the both of you anyways.”
“We don’t like you, either,” Gheno replied.
“She went into town. She is meeting with our contacts to schedule the delivery for our next gig.”
“Are you coming out to my island?” Oganno asked.
“She’d kill me if we didn’t,” Kale replied. “We will head out there as soon as we get recycling done and order our regular supplies.”
“Fine, fine,” he said, waving him as he walked passed him, “Sentinel? I'm here. You have someone for me?” he shouted into the air.
“Oh, yeah. Come. You have to meet him,” Gheno said, rushing back towards the transport. “Or her. I'm not sure.”
“You didn’t even come here to see me, did you?” Kale shouted after Oganno as he followed Gheno into the Lion.
Oganno stopped at the hatchway and looked back at Kale.
“What a smart boy I raised,” he said before ducking into the ship.
Kale shook his head and walked back over to the crates. It would be up to him to finish the work now that Gheno was in scientist mode. He probably wouldn’t see either of them until after Ayia came back. He would finish up here and then go out to find her. The sooner they finished here the better. He preferred being in space on a mission where he had something to focus on.
He unattached another crate from the crane and pushed it over towards the side of the hangar. He removed his small Alioth Network mobile com and typed in a message to Ayia:
“Where are you?”
He set the small com down and went back to the crane. The small metallic arm went back into the ship and appeared a moment later with a smaller cylinder. It was the carbon waste from the ship. He would have it replaced with a new carbon base. On long missions, he could recycle the carbon waste into base again, but while at port, it was usually beneficial to exchange the cylinders out completely. He set the white cylinder down and carefully set it down on its long side. He began to roll it out from under the ship when he heard a beeping sound. He walked back over to the com and looked at the screen.
“Just finishing up. Small change of plans. Meet me here?”
He tapped the message and a small map came up showing her position in the city. She was located in a small wharf area just south of the hangars. He typed in a message.
“Be there in fifteen.”
***
Ayia sat down next to Kale on the high stools facing out towards the ocean. The sun had gone down but two of Alioth’s moons were chasing each other through the night sky, reflecting the sun fully down onto the planet. The eerie blue and silver lights reflected off the ocean. Kale hadn’t grown up around oceans, but after coming to Alioth, he found them very relaxing. The sound of the waves was calming. He reached down and cut himself another piece of the fried Ashoka on his plate. He dipped it into a buttery white sauce and slithered it into his mouth, enjoying every bit of its peppery taste before swallowing. He washed it down with ice cold water. He would have preferred a strong drink, but he was saving that for later. He glanced over as Ayia slid her tablet towards him.
“They are asking us to leave tomorrow. They are loading the ship tonight.”
“Wow.” Kale took another drink of his water.
“This is the system. Gemini 53. Apparently, they have been sending repair and supply drones out to the system and none of them are returning. They are beginning to get a bit worried and want eyes on the facility as soon as possible.”
Kale looked up and out towards the ocean.
“A rescue mission?”
“Well, we knew it was a possibility,” Ayia replied. She reached over and took some of Kale’s fish, cutting a small piece off with her fork.
“How many people at the facility?” Kale asked, going over the tablet information.
“Seventeen. We can bring them all back in one jump. It’ll be tight, but we can do it.”
“Yeah,” Kale agreed. “Ayia, tell me. Did they seem worried?”
Ayia nodded. Kale had the business sense in this partnership, but he was beginning to trust her more and more when it came to reading people.
“The drones not reporting in appears to be se
rious.”
“And you said…?” Kale began to ask.
“I said we would do it for a thirty-three percent markup in the payment, with half up front now.”
That was a steep hike, even for a risky mission.
“And they agreed?” Kale asked, incredulous.
“Yeah,” Ayia replied, sounding disheartened.
“That means it is serious.”
Kale took out his tablet and linked up to the Lion. He began typing in some commands.
“What are you doing?” Ayia asked, glancing over at the tablet.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going prepared. I'm having Sentinel order anything he needs to have that gun of his built. Gheno can work on it on the jump out.”
“The gravity gun you told me about?”
Kale nodded. They had used that weapon just once, during Ayia’s rescue, but Kale hadn’t wanted to show it off to just anyone, who might steal that design. Kale explained that they would be far from prying eyes if they needed to use it.
“You're OK with this?” Ayia asked apprehensively. “I kinda went over you and agreed to do it with the new risks.”
“All good. You did good.”
“I’ll admit, I'm a bit surprised,” she added.
Kale began typing a few more messages in his tablet.
“Ok, I'm still being nosy. Now what?” Ayia asked.
“Letting Oganno know that our visit to his little paradise is being put on hold,” he said as he continued to type.
“Oh. OH!” Ayia exclaimed. She had looked forward to this visit to the island and had been hoping to go swimming in the ocean.
Kale sent the message and put the tablet back into his belt pouch. He reached for the fork that was in front of Ayia. She grabbed it first, smiled, and tore into more of the fish. Kale rolled his eyes and looked back at the waiter. He raised his hand after he made eye contact. As the waiter came over, he turned to Ayia. She had moved the plate over and was eating the food he had ordered.
The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2) Page 8
