Galactic Thunder

by Cameron Cooper

  Clone rejuvenation was slowly becoming an economically viable option, thanks to the work that Lyth and Laxman were doing with the Laxman Institute, but when Dalton had received his new body, it had been expensive beyond belief. I knew precisely how expensive it had been because I had picked up the tab.

  “Did the cheap crush juice have long term effects, then?” Lyssa asked Dalton curiously, proving that she had been thinking along the same lines as me.

  Dalton shrugged. “Aches and pains. Nothing I could point to and say ‘that hurts’. Just low-grade discomfort.”

  I’d seen him try to get up from the bed in the mornings and would rank it higher than low-grade discomfort, but I kept my mouth shut. The conversation we’d put aside was crowding my thoughts and I didn’t want to open it up again. Not right now.

  A small silence settled between us, while the systems on the bridge hummed softly around it. Lyssa was prepping the ship even as she stood with us, so we could seal up and jump away the moment the resupply was finished.

  “I need coffee,” I lied and moved back to the exit. I could hide out in the diner until dust off.

  “Me, too,” Dalton decided and followed me.

  Fuck.

  —6—

  I paused just inside the open doorway of the diner and took note of the changes. The diner had once featured faux wood surfaces everywhere, gleaming brass and shining antique glass, not even carbon steel glass. The lighting had been simple, clear and bright.

  Now the lighting was very low. The wood tables had been replaced by tables made of some sort of extruded surface. I didn’t recognize the material. There were designs on the surface running in patterns. Around the edge of each table were strips of grooved, silvered metal.

  On each table was a small lamp of an upright glass shape which expanded in the middle. Inside the glass were globs of iridescent bright colored…gel, I guess. I’d never seen anything like it. The lamps contributed most of the light in the room.

  The waitress—another of the ship’s constructs—came around the counter to show me to a table. She didn’t wear the crisp pastel dress I was used to. Instead, she wore dark blue pants that flared from the knees into ridiculously wide hems that flapped about her feet. And her feet were nearly bare, except for a simple chain on each foot, running from between her toes up to the ankle. A flower was attached to each chain.

  The top she wore also flared from just beneath her breasts out into a wide skirt that hung about her hips. The fabric had abstract flowers printed in a range of primary colors. Her hair was loose, brushing her hips, and pulled back with a multi-colored scarf.

  “You can have your usual table, Colonel,” she told me with a smile.

  I studied her, assimilating the odd costume. “Um…coffee, please.”

  “Sure, honey. Take a seat.” She turned and headed back to the counter.

  “Wow,” Dalton breathed, behind me. “What is she wearing?”

  I didn’t have an answer. Instead, I headed for the corner table—a big rectangle with benches all around it. There was another of the blobby lamps on it, and the surface of the table was white, but looked orange in the red lamp light.

  The waitress brought my coffee, in my usual cup. She put her hand on her hip and said to Dalton, “And for you, Major?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Just coffee,” he said finally.

  My attention was drawn to movement on the other side of the long bank of windows running down the front of the diner. Once, the view beyond the windows had showed a small town we had all decided must be an ancient Terran representation, filled with slow, tall ground cars and families in funny costumes going about their business.

  I could see it was the same town as before, yet the ground cars and the costumes were different. The ground cars were much bigger, but also much lower to the ground. Most of them were painted in glittering colors, too. The costumes everyone wore were variations of the waitress’s. A few of the older people wore less flamboyant versions.

  A man walked down the street in a mincing movement that made me think he was about to break out into a dance. His hair sprang from his head in all directions, standing up on end and waving as he bopped along.

  I watched him until he bounced up the steps of a small store on the other side of the road and disappeared inside.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Dalton.

  He was staring at the street scene, too. He nodded. “It’s the same town, but it’s different. Some things that are almost the same.” He looked at me. “I think that the same time has passed on the street that as has passed for us. Twenty years, more or less. This is what people were like twenty years after the way Lyth had it running.”

  I suspected he was right.

  The waitress arrived with his coffee then went away again.

  Dalton sipped. Put the cup down. “Why is Lyssa still using bots?” he asked abruptly, as if the question had been weighing on him.

  As I had asked the same question only a few years ago, I could answer him without hesitation. “She says she’s not self-aware, that she’s just doing a really good imitation of it, so Laxman’s Syndrome would be an issue for her if she tried to switch to a cloned body.”

  Dalton snorted. “Bullshit,” he said softly. “She’s sentient. No one gets pissed the way she did with Umar if they’re just imitating humans.”

  “But she didn’t get upset about Darb and Vara ignoring her, either,” I pointed out.

  “Or she did and is hiding it,” Dalton replied.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want a bio body.”

  “Why would anyone settle for bots and being stuck permanently on a ship?”

  “She doesn’t know anything else.”

  He rubbed his jaw again. “I suppose…”

  “I think the idea of having a body, and a human life, frightens her,” I added. “She only has to look at Lyth’s life to see what awaits her.”

  Dalton lowered his hand. “The Humanists still have him on their hit list?”

  “Number one, I’m sure,” I confirmed. “He’s the first and most famous of the digital sentients. It would be a major coup for them if they took him out. He’s not only a symbol of everything they detest, he actually works to make more of them.”

  He grimaced. “Still, that doesn’t mean Lyssa would step right into the same problems. The way she shook Fiori’s hand…she’s using construction nanobots. The drain on the ship must be stupendous.”

  “And expensive,” I agreed. “She resupplies at every stop, and charges like a brontosaurus to cover the costs.”

  “That’s a racing treadmill she’s on,” Dalton said.

  “It’s her choice,” I reminded him. “And she would argue that as she’s not self-aware, it’s not even a choice.”

  Dalton considered that for a beat more, then gave a gruff laugh. “The ‘not-self-aware’ argument is a complete stopper. No one can try to talk her around while she insists she’s just a complex AI.”

  “A fact that has stymied me for years,” I admitted. “I’ve thought about consulting Arnold Laxman, but if she is truly aware and in denial about it, we have to honor her sentience by letting her choose for herself.” I shrugged and drank. The coffee was as good as I remembered it being.

  “Not choosing something you want because you’re afraid isn’t a real decision,” Dalton said. “I found it disorienting to wake and find that months had passed, I had died, and this body wasn’t really me.” He raised his hand and turned it over and back. “And I already know how to make my limbs work and how to get energy in and waste out. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like for Lyth to go through that, and have to learn how to walk, how to even swallow, into the bargain.”

  I stared at him, my heart thudding unhappily. “It took him weeks,” I said slowly. “But I never really thought about it like that.”

  “You were kept unconscious when they transferred you,” Dalton pointed out.

  “Because they didn�
�t know if it would work.”

  “It still saved you from the disorientation. Didn’t they tell you they’d kept you in a therapeutic coma while you recovered from injuries?”

  I nodded.

  “I got the raw truth, instead,” Dalton added.

  I was startled. “You would rather have been lied to, the way I was?”

  Dalton hesitated. Then he shook his head and relief touched me. “I got scared in retrospect,” he said. “But that went away after a while, and I unclenched enough to appreciate the second chance that had been handed to me. Lots of people don’t get that. But mostly, I got to like—to really like—what you did for me.”

  His gaze met mine.

  I couldn’t maintain it. I looked away. I could feel my cheeks heating. “I’m glad you like it,” I said flatly. “It makes every payment I hand over to the Institute worth it.” Which was the absolute and literal truth. I was dead broke and would be for years but remembering what I’d bought with that debt took all the sting out of it.

  Dalton made a soft sound.

  “I’m not saying that to grind in the guilt,” I added.

  “I know you’re not. But maybe we should talk again about me paying off the bill, Danny. It’s not like I can’t afford it, anymore.”

  I shook my head. “You didn’t ask for this. I didn’t consult you. I just did it. That was…is still a huge assumption. So the debt is one hundred percent mine.”

  “Given that I was dead at the time, I can’t see how you might have consulted with me,” Dalton said softly.

  “I could have asked Lyssa to build an interface with your digital files. Asked you that way. We could have found a way to do it, if I’d really wanted to. But I didn’t.” I shrugged.

  “Because you figured you knew me well enough to know what my answer would be,” Dalton finished. This was not the first time we’d had this discussion, over the years.

  “And I was right,” I pointed out. “But that doesn’t take away the presumptuousness of what I did to you.”

  He sat back, examining me. “You just like being in a tight spot and having to fight for a living. You like not knowing what the day will bring.”

  The door to the diner opened, letting in a flood of normal light from the passage beyond. Fiori stepped through and paused just inside the door, her eyes widening. I had probably looked like she did when I’d come through a few minutes ago.

  “Fiori,” I said, gaining her attention. I waved her to the table.

  She moved to the table, her head turning as she took in the counter and the street view. “The concierge panel said you were here. Is this…a canteen?”

  “Of a sort,” I said.

  “This is the diner I told you about,” Dalton added.

  “This is a diner?” She looked around again as she settled on the front end of the bench opposite Dalton.

  “It doesn’t look the way it used to,” I added. “We think it has changed to match the passing of time.”

  “How…interesting,” Fiori replied, her head still turning. Then she saw the waitress. “Oh!”

  “Coffee, love?” the waitress asked.

  Fiori looked like she was trying not to laugh.

  “It’s a genuine question,” Dalton told her. “Or would you rather have something to eat? I’m sure she can print up that blood pudding for you.”

  Blood pudding? I looked at the waitress and raised my brow.

  “I have the file in the printer memory,” the waitress said. “It has never been accessed,” she added.

  “I bet,” Dalton said, with a grimace.

  Now I was dying to know what the hell it was. I looked at Fiori and was a touch disappointed when she shook her head.

  “Could I have…can you print tea?”

  “Beverage, plant, or dried leaves?” the waitress asked.

  “Oh, beverage. Hot. And honey.”

  The waitress moved away, her long black curls bouncing against her ass as she walked.

  Fiori bent her head to examine the waitress. “How extraordinary!”

  I gave a small laugh. “That about sums up the entire ship,” I told her.

  She nodded. “I am starting to understand what Dalton has tried to tell me for years.” She paused. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

  “It’s an old conversation, anyway,” I said dismissively.

  “You’re still refusing to let Gabriel pay you back?” Fiori asked, her voice inflecting upwards.

  I grimaced. “My decision. My debt.”

  “It keeps her scrappy,” Dalton added.

  I glared at him. “You like your life interesting and varied, too.”

  “Not after eighty years of it,” Dalton growled. “Peace is nice. Boring is productive.”

  I raised my brow and stared at him, not fooled for a second.

  “For now,” he added, with a grin.

  “Peace has its upside,” Fiori added.

  “I’d hardly call scraping a living on alien balls stress free.”

  “Stress free isn’t the same as peaceful. People don’t shoot at us, at least,” Fiori replied, showing a rare spirit. “Planetside living is soothing. It has rhythms you can count on.”

  “Soothing?” I repeated. “Weren’t you Imperial Shield before you met Dalton?”

  Fiori pressed her lips together for a moment. “Soothing, for now,” she amended. “But that’s all ending, isn’t it?”

  I grew still. I couldn’t bring myself to glance at Dalton.

  Fiori nodded as if we’d both shouted an affirmative at her. “I was happy to spend twenty-five years off to one side raising Mace, but he’s a man now and…” She trailed off, all the animation running from her like water from a glass.

  Dalton sighed.

  They’d both remembered why they were onboard. The ship had distracted them for a few minutes, but now they were back to facing an unguessable future.

  “We’ll find him,” I said softly.

  Fiori looked at me. Her gaze was steady. “You don’t know that. Not for sure.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Dalton told her. “She’s Danny Andela. You’ve never met anyone like her and never will again.”

  Fiori gave a soft laugh, as if Dalton was making a joke.

  I just squirmed.

  Dalton wasn’t done though. He shook his head. “No, you don’t get it,” he told Fiori. “Maybe it’s because I’ve spent too many years talking about her. You can’t see it objectively.”

  “See what?” Fiori demanded, the tinge of backbone showing once more.

  “We could have reached out to a dozen different authorities about this—”

  “There is no authority, anymore,” Fiori pointed out, her tone cold. She looked at me. “That was your doing, too, wasn’t it?”

  I sat back, even more surprised. “I had nothing to do with the collapse of the Empire,” I assured her. “I tried to fix it.”

  “There are planetary governors,” Dalton said with the implacable patience I recognized was him intending to drive a point home no matter how pissed the other person was…or how angry Dalton might be, come to that. “Mayors of cities. National troops. Policing contingents. Even the Spacing Guild would want to know about a ship on their register going missing.”

  Fiori’s jaw rippled, but she said nothing.

  “There are a dozen other organizations we could have reached out to,” Dalton continued, his voice flat. “But we came to Danny. It was your idea, Fiori. You might not know the details, but you knew in your gut that Danny would sort this out. And you are right.”

  The silence in the diner was broken by a ground car making a distant, but distinct, honking sound. We all jumped and turned to look through the window, as the car’s pilot hung his arm out a side window and waved to someone on the path by the side of the road.

  The walker waved back.

  Fiori gave a soft laugh that sounded more like a release of taut nerves. “I just hope this ship is as wonderful as Danny is s
upposed to be. I can’t help thinking we’ll need it.”

  —7—

  At the fifty-nine-minute mark, the Supreme Lythion pulled away from the Melenia landing bay, maneuvered slowly to face away from the star city, then moved into its assigned jump vector.

  “Ready, Colonel,” Lyssa said.

  “So are we,” I said, glancing around the bridge to make sure everyone had their backs against an inertia cushion. “Let’s go.”

  Lyssa nodded. She had no need to stand against an inertial shell. She instead stared forward, through the quaint windows which Wedekind had thought was an interesting spin on the usual view screens.

  The Supreme Lythion rumbled deep in her guts, then accelerated at a pace that induced multiple gees of pressure. Lyssa was giving it her all. Just as I thought that surely the shells would slam closed over us and smother us in the disgusting oxygen-enriched gel that protected us from extremes of inertia which crush juice couldn’t cope with, Lyssa said softly, “Crescents arcing. Ready…and…now.”

  The actual jump, from inside a ship, was a confusing flash of purples and shimmering greens, as the crescents pulled the wormhole they were forming over the top of us and scooped it under us. There was a slight shudder of transition, then the screen was filled with the purple flashing lights which would quickly make any human nauseous.

  Lyssa dropped the shutters over the windows, hiding the view, and turned to us. “Don’t relax too much,” she warned, with evident satisfaction. “I maximized the speed of our entry. This will be a real short trip.” In the overhead lights, the fine spray of freckles on her face was clear. So was the twinkle in her green eyes.

  Lyssa was true to her word. Five hours later, we popped out of the worm hole, and emerged into normal space over an unremarkable rocky brown planet with no atmosphere to speak of, despite its size.

  Even though interstellar travel had transitioned from array gates to crescent ships, wormholes continued to defy good sense. The farther the end of the wormhole from the start, in normal space, the shorter the hole itself.