by M. D. Cooper
Cary asked.
Faleena chuckled in their minds.
Saanvi threw her arms in the air and let out a cry of frustration. “Can we keep this conversation on track?
Cary giggled. “Sorry, you’re such an easy target.”
Faleena shrugged in their minds.
Cary held back a snicker and glanced at Saanvi’s mollified look out of the corner of her eye.
Cary shrugged.
Cary shrugged.
Cary’s eyes met Saanvi’s and the sisters frowned.
Cary nodded. It felt wrong to spy on Nance; she was one of their mother’s friends, plus she had gone above and beyond for New Canaan. But they couldn’t ignore evidence because of that. By the same token, they couldn’t alert any authorities—such as their father—until they had something more concrete.
Cary hoped so. She also hoped it was nothing at all—but the feeling in her gut was telling her otherwise.
THE UNSINKABLE RESTAURANT
STELLAR DATE: 08.11.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Imperial Palace Guest Suites
REGION: Alexandria, Bosporus System, Scipio Empire
After a light meal and lengthy discussions regarding what concessions they’d be willing to make to Diana, the three women and their guards left the suite and walked through the palace to a nearby shuttle pad.
Flaherty had called in to let them know he was still beating the bushes, but had developed some leads on where Elena might go. Additionally, Tanis had received another packet from the I2, where Terry—who now headed up the SOC with her new rank of colonel—had determined that there were at least two accomplices in Elena’s escape.
Terry didn’t have IDs yet, but she reported that the traces on the Mark X FlowArmor canister did not align with those of the person who had tampered with the animals’ behavior control implants.
The news was troubling, to say the least, but Tanis had expected issues with the non-ISF crew aboard the ship. Though I hadn’t expected a jailbreak to be the first major incident.
She put it out of her mind as best she could. No one—apart from Bob, who was also on the case—knew the I2 better than Terry. If there was a trail to be found, and Tanis was certain that there was, Terry would find it.
At this point, the how was far less important than the what.
As in, what would Elena do?
Tanis had spent days reviewing the political structure of the Scipio Empire, but it was, at best, a morass. A thousand star systems broken into quadrants, then regions, then provinces, and within those provinces, individual systems. There was a federal senate and a legislature, an elected prime minister, prelates, and, of course, the empress. Power was not distributed evenly, either. There were leaders of provinces that seemed to have more political clout than leaders of sectors, though it seemed that the four quadrant prelates were supreme over their underlings.
She wasn’t surprised that the empress so often felt harried and under attack. She probably was.
They reached the door to the shuttle pad as Petra replied,
Petra said.
P
etra said.
Sera laughed in response.
Petra agreed.
Major Valerie ducked her head out of the shuttle and nodded to the trio of women that their transportation was secure, and they filed in with two of the High Guard bringing up the rear.
Petra said as they boarded.
Petra looked confused as she took her seat, and then barked a laugh. “Wow,” she said aloud. “It never even occurred to me that it would be me. Up until now, I assumed that I would just get transferred to another post and a real ambassador would be assigned.”
“It’ll give you a reprieve from all the cloak and dagger stuff,” Tanis said as the shuttle took off. “Well, some of it, at least.”
“I suppose that I could really be myself then, too. Petra of the Transcend, representative of the Khardine Government. Sounds good to say it. Though I may slip up once or twice and say ‘Miriam League’.”
“You? Slip up?” Sera asked with a raised eyebrow. “I know you too well to believe that. Every hair’s position on your head is calculated.”
“Well of course they are,” Petra said. “Half of them are transceiver antennas.”
“So where are we going?” Sera asked. “The Starview, the Subterra?”
“Not tonight,” Petra replied. “I checked your records, Sera, and got us reservations for a place you’ve never been, but one that’s fit for a president.”
“Oh yeah?” Sera asked. “The Stellarium?”
“Better. The Oceanus.”
Sera frowned. “I’m not familiar with that one.”
“It’s new—well, relatively new. Opened up a decade ago.”
“They certainly like restaurants that start with ‘S’; glad to see they changed it up a bit,” Tanis observed.
“Tanis, to call these establishments ‘restaurants’ would be like calling a star a flashlight.”
“I’ll withhold judgment,” Tanis replied. “Alexandria is impressive, but none of you have seen the Cho. As big as your world-city is, if the Rings of Callisto were unwound and their levels placed side-by-side, they would be far larger than this place.”
“I would love to see the Cho someday,” Petra mused. “Perhaps when this is all over, and you two have conquered the galaxy, you can assign me to Sol. I’d love to see what’s there.”
“It’s all yours,” Tanis replied. “I have no intention of ever returning to that place.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Sera advised.
“You should keep in mind,” Petra added, “much of Alexandria is over a thousand levels deep. Over four trillion human souls reside on this great sphere.”
“Four trillion?” Tanis couldn’t hide her amazement. “I take it back. This place may have the Cho beat.”
She gazed out the window at the never-ending city, wondering what it would be like to grow up in such a place. Perhaps not so different from the Cho; though here, there would be sky overhead—not just another ring and layers of sweeps wrapped around one another.
After several minutes, she could see a blue line in the distance, peeking out between a row of towers that stretched a dozen kilometers into the air.
“The Adrian Ocean,” Petra said as they passed between the massive spires and over the great blue expanse. Ships plied the water—some in it and some above it, moving between large floating islands drifting near the coast.
The shuttle continued across the open ocean until it came to a relatively small—at least compared to the endless sea around them—pad standing atop a wide shaft that disappeared beneath the waves.
“And here we are,” Petra said. “The Oceanus.”
“Doesn’t look like much,” Tanis said with a smirk as the shuttle settled onto the pad. Valerie disembarked first with Sean, the only other one of the High Guard accompanying them before calling up that it was clear.
The pad was a simple affair, protected from the wind and crashing waves by a grav field. Shuttles dotted the surface, and Tanis estimated that three hundred of the craft could easily land on it. Possibly more if the cradles could stack.
In the center of the pad was a tall golden spire, and it was to that bright needle that Petra led them. At its entrance, a tall man in a long coat bowed graciously. “Madam President, my ladies, you are most welcome here this evening. I do hope you’ll enjoy everything the Oceanus has to offer.”
“Thank you,” Sera said, as Petra led them into the spire.
Within was a single lift car, perfectly round, like a droplet of water floating in zero gravity.
The floor was a grav field, and Tanis felt her feet bounce slightly as she trod across its surface.
“Nice effect,” she said.
“Just wait,” Petra said with a grin.
Once the three women and the High Guard were all within the bubble, it dropped.
Tanis could only feel the slightest flutter in the pit of her stomach—courtesy of the inertial dampeners—but looking up, she watched the top of the golden spire disappear at an alarming rate.
“Well that’s one way to go down.”
“Express elevator to hell,” Major Valerie said quietly, citing the name FROD Marines gave to their drop pods.
Tanis peered out the sides of the bubble, noting that the golden shaft had either become translucent, or was gone altogether. The idea was slightly alarming, as thousands of kilograms of ocean water lay on the other side of the bubble.
“What’s that?” one of the Valerie asked.
Tanis looked to her right and saw a massive shadow pass by. For a moment, she thought she saw a four-meter eyeball blink at them, but then it was gone.
“That’s a kraken,” Petra said. “The big ones are over a hundred meters long. Some former ruler’s fancy, so I’m told. There are only a few thousand of them left, but Diana is not a fan, and has a program in place to reduce their numbers further.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Sera said. “I bet when one of those things gets upset, or even mildly curious, they can wreak havoc.
Petra chuckled. “Yeah, havoc has been wreaked in the past. Sometimes they get in fights; when they do it near the shore, it makes a pretty serious mess.”
The bubble continued to descend. When Tanis’s augmented vision could finally make out the ocean floor, she estimated that they had reached a depth of seven kilometers.
Though there were low ridges along the floor on either side of the bubble—reflecting light from some unknown source—directly below, there was only darkness.
“We’ve another two klicks to go,” Petra announced. “Oceanus is at the bottom of the rift.”
“Quite the place to put a restaurant,” Sera said. “Though not as bad as the people out at Judas, who spent decades trying to put one inside a star.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tanis asked. “How’d that go?”
Sera spread her hands wide and made a fizzling sound, eliciting a laugh from Petra.
Tanis could just barely make out the walls of the
rift they were slipping into. On one side, she gauged the jagged stone to be thirty meters away, while on the other, the distance was closer to sixty.
As she watched the rock slide by, she began to notice more ambient light, and looked down to see a dim glow beneath them. The glow grew brighter until it became an elongated blob. The blob slowly resolved, becoming clearer, until Tanis knew its shape.
“It’s a sunken ship,” she said.
“Not just any sunken ship,” Petra corrected her. “The Oceanus; the great ocean liner from Terra in the nineteenth century.”
“The what?” Tanis asked.
“I thought you were from Sol?” Petra replied. “The Oceanus—the ship that could never be sunk, the one that went down on its maiden voyage. They replicated it down here.”
“I’m not an expert on that era of history,” Tanis said, “but I’m pretty sure there was no such ship.”
“Are you sure?” Petra asked.
“The what?”
“Well that’s a rather melancholy thought as we descend with nine kilometers of water over our heads,” Sera said.
“Huh, I can’t believe they boned the backstory,” Petra shrugged. “Still, the place is amazing. It’s a lot bigger than the ship, too. Goes a long way back into the cliff.”
Now that they were closer, Tanis could see the great ship lying against the rift wall at a forty five degree angle. When the bubble reached the listing deck of the ship, it began to move laterally across the deck toward a set of doors that stood wide open, seemingly protected from the waters by a grav field.
As the bubble approached the doors, ‘down’ shifted so that the deck of the ship no longer appeared to be at an angle—though the cliffs above seemed to loom drunkenly overhead.
