by M. D. Cooper
Tanis was a bit surprised to hear him offering comfort. Maybe she had misjudged him, or maybe he didn’t want to think about being lost in this system for eternity either.
“Finish up,” Joe said. “We’re going to be hard at it for some time.”
They wolfed down the rest of their food and then ran to the bridge. The two humans and two AIs deployed a relativistic probe to get a view of the far side of Estrella de la Muerte while carefully examining the entire spectrum of the star.
The red dwarf had a rapid rotation and, before long, an angry blotch came into view. The sunspot the Intrepid had been using for magnetic repulsion had erupted.
“It went up…” Joe said softly. “It didn’t read as being that volatile, it should have held.”
“Or during,” Joe said.
“We’ll know more shortly.” Tanis brought up the data on the probe’s trajectory—the ETA was twenty minutes.
No one spoke in the intervening time. The probe was racing to where the Intrepid should be. It was traveling at 0.8c and would fly past before arcing around the star and back toward the Excelsior. An alert flashed on the holo display as the data came streaming in.
No sign of the Intrepid.
“It’s my fault.” Joe put his head in his hands and Tanis rose to sit beside him.
“It’s not. Everyone had the same data you did. They knew what flares are like on red dwarfs. We don’t have any evidence that the Intrepid’s magnetic repulsion caused the flare. Red dwarfs may be small, but that sunspot was still larger than Earth. It’s unlikely that the ship caused it to go up.” Tanis laid out a rapid-fire series of rationalizations.
It was bad, not quite 10,000 times the x-ray level of Sol, but close. A major flare. Plasma detection from the probe indicated that the flare went two million miles out into space, well beyond where the Intrepid would have been.
No one spoke for several minutes. Tanis forced the thoughts of the colony ship’s destruction down, refusing to consider them. She could tell that Joe was doing the same, while Angela was running math on possible alternate vectors the Intrepid could have possibly taken.
Everyone followed her example and helped in the search. Signals were sent out and the probe was set to orbit the star in ever-widening circles. Tanis prepared a meal after a few hours and brought it back to the bridge where she and Joe only picked at it.
So many people. There were two and a half million colonists on the Intrepid who went into stasis with the sure expectation that they would awaken to their new world, their new system, ready for them to shape and to create the future they always dreamed of.
An anomaly signaled on her interface and she focused the low-band radio antenna on a section of the search grid that seemed to have a bit more noise than expected. Then she heard it.
“[static]…say again…[static]…Excelsior, do you read? This is the…[static]…trepid. Do you read?”
Tanis’s heart leapt into her throat and she waved at Joe, putting the feed on the bridge audio.
“Intrepid. This is the Excelsior. We read you, and boy are we glad to hear your transmission.”
Joe let out a whoop as he brought up the trajectory that matched the Intrepid at the position the signal had revealed. The main display shifted to show the new outsystem path of the colony ship.
Tanis glanced at the distance and saw that the Excelsior was one hundred-thirty light minutes from the Intrepid. It would take over four hours to hear back. In the meantime, variations on the initial message continued to come in.
“I suddenly have a bit more of an appetite,” Joe said as he reached down and picked up his BLT. He polished it off in two bites and then took a long gulp of water.
Tanis set the probe to intercept the Intrepid before she devoured her food as well.
“That’s the great thing about a BLT; they don’t get any worse for sitting for an hour or so.”
“Well, the tomatoes get a bit soggy.”
“Adds to the texture,” Tanis grinned.
The pair sat in silence for several minutes, the adrenaline surge wearing off, leaving them slightly heady and still just a bit anxious.
“I’d like to know more about you, Tanis,” Joe said at last. “I mean, I know you pretty well, but I don’t really know much about how you got to be you.”
His timing seemed odd to Tanis, but maybe it was the relief in finding the Intrepid that caused him to ask—and she knew what he was asking about.
“Outside of work, I don’t have a lot to tell. I enlisted when I was twenty-two. When the Intrepid left Sol, I had just passed fifty years in the TSF.”
Joe nodded slowly. “It’s your work I find myself wondering about. I’ve been through the shit with you more than once and you’ve had my back and I’ve had yours. The Tanis I know doesn’t match the one I heard about back in Sol.”
Tanis didn’t respond immediately. This was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to get back into a relationship, she knew she would have to explain Toro.
“You want to know about Toro.” The leaden words dropped off her lips.
Joe nodded. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I need to reconcile the two Tanises.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Tanis said after a long pause then took a deep breath. “It’s about time I told the story.”
CRACKING A FEW EGGS
STELLAR DATE: 3241792 / 08.17.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Excelsior
REGION: LHS 1565, 27.0 AU from stellar primary
20:52 hours to asteroid group
Tanis recounted the tale of her mission to Toro, the horrors they found within, and what she did to get her Marines out safely.
She could tell as she told Joe about the things they had found that he was almost disbelieving. She didn’t blame him; some of those creatures still came to Tanis in her nightmares.
Tanis ended the story with a small choke as she remembered the Marines calling after the MPs for her release—their commanders narrowly stopping a mutiny on the Arcturus. She looked up at Joe to see tears in his eyes; he reached out and wiped one from hers.
They didn’t speak as they embraced for several minutes. Tanis found herself sobbing as emotion she had bottled up for so long came crashing out.
After she had regained control of herself, Joe spoke. “But it wasn’t that bad—they didn’t discharge you or imprison you.”
Tanis nodded. “Once they watched the full sensory vids and the investigators sifted through the ruins, they realized that I had made the right call. Cardid was planning an all-out assault on several habitats and would have killed millions. It was only because we caught him by surprise that we were able to stop them. He had more powerful defenses, but they weren’t online because he didn’t want Toro to be targeted before he launched his missions.
“So, in the end, I didn’t lose my commission, I got a slap on the wrist for violating Phobos and knocked down to an LCO.”
“And you got the media lambasting you.”
Tanis nodded, the tears welling up in her eyes again. “That was the hardest part. Pretty much everyone I knew shut me out, including my husband.”
“You were married?” Joe coughed. “I distinctly remember you saying that you’d never been in a serious relationship.”
“I remember that, too,” Tanis gave Joe a sheepish look. “I didn’t want to talk about it then—don’t want to much now. His name was Peter, I married him when I was fifty-five, I know, a little early for marriage, but I thought we were in love.”
“I take it that he didn’t handle Toro too well,” Joe said with a frown.
Tanis shook her head ruefully. “He
didn’t care about what I did on Toro. He always got off on me being the tough girl who kicked ass and took names. He divorced me because he didn’t want the career damage that being married to me would—” Tanis’s voice broke and she took a moment to regain her composure “—that being married to me would cause,” she managed to finish.
Joe wrapped his arms around her and held her for several minutes as she cried softly.
“Thanks… I haven’t spoken of him since the day he left me. I didn’t expect talking about him now to turn me into more of a mess than telling you about Toro.”
“So I guess he’s not the type of ex we have to say nice things about. We can call him super-douche.”
Tanis snorted a laugh. “Total ass-hat. The guy left me with nothing. I was unhireable and had to stay in the TSF, which I pretty much hated at that time for betraying me. I put in for colony the day he filed for divorce, but the TSF told me they’d block it if I didn’t stay in the military for another decade.” A fire was back in Tanis’s eyes as she thought about it.
Joe shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry it went down like it did; you certainly didn’t deserve the raw deal you got. I have to admit, though, I didn’t learn about Toro until you joined the Intrepid’s crew. There was all sorts of scuttlebutt about how you got on the roster.”
“Really?” Tanis asked. “How did you not hear about Toro? I blew up an entire station. It was practically the only thing in the news cycle for weeks.”
“I was on a mission when it went down. I had heard people talk about the Toro disaster a bit, but even after you came onboard I didn’t look into it—I wanted to form my own opinions of you, not be poisoned by someone else’s.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. ‘Killed twenty-thousand people’ is a hard first-impression to lose. The redacted mission report isn’t much better. Thank starlight that the captain and Sanderson had access to the classified version, or they would never have let me aboard.” Tanis cast Joe a thoughtful eye. “What sort of mission were you on that you didn’t hear about Toro, though?”
“Remember Makemake?” Joe asked.
“Remember? It was the thing that took my name out of the news.” Tanis saw the pained look in Joe’s eye and her expression turned to one of concern. “I’m sorry, that was cold. It must have been a really raw deal for you guys.”
Joe nodded. “I didn’t file my application the next day, it was a bit later. I was at Makemake—”
Troy interrupted.
Joe looked at Tanis and nodded. “Play it,” he said.
Captain Andrew’s face filled the holo.
“Excelsior, good to hear you are still out there and apparently on your planned vector. I’m sure you noticed we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. We had a bit of a run in with a rather unfriendly solar flare.”
Joe glanced at Tanis, he looked concerned, but the captain’s voice hadn’t betrayed anything one way or the other.
“We’re still not certain if it was going to happen anyway, or if our magnetic resonance caused the flare, but either way the sunspot erupted. We had thirty-five seconds’ notice and Bob put everything our engines had into getting us clear, which we did, but just barely. The flare took out a lot of exterior electronics, destroyed some of the structural arcs, melted off the housing on the main port engine. There were some severe x-ray bursts, but with the ES shielding already focused on the port side, we didn’t receive any lethal doses, though everyone is getting treatments. There were some gamma ray bursts, which can mess with stasis fields, so we’ve got teams checking everyone in stasis, which will be a bit of a task.”
As the captain paused and Tanis and Joe looked at one another. This would be where the other shoe dropped.
“With our last moment burst and the engine damage, we came out of the slingshot at a different than planned trajectory. We don’t have the fuel to correct, so you’re going to have to meet us somewhere along our current path.
“I don’t need to tell you that things aren’t much better than they were before—except that we didn’t burn up in Estrella de la Muerte. Unless you get us that lithium, we’re not going to be able to even course correct enough to get to Epsilon Eridani.
“Good luck, Excelsior. Intrepid out.”
Tanis leaned back. “Well, no one died, at least.”
Joe looked shaken as he leaned back in his seat. He paused to choose his words and responded softly. “Sometimes I don’t get you, Tanis. I know you are pretty hard-bitten, but sometimes you just seem blasé. Maybe just once you could have a good ole fashioned freak-out about something. It would make you more approachable.”
Tanis didn’t know how to respond. She had hoped that Joe finally got her. It wasn’t that she was an emotionless bitch; she knew wisecracks were her coping mechanism. It hurt whenever people thought she didn’t feel; the hurt made her angry.
“Get your shit together, Commander. The Intrepid can limp through space for ten thousand years if it has to. They have the equipment and resources to travel across the galaxy—if it would still be there once they made it to the other side—but we don’t.” She felt ashamed of herself the moment she said the words, but didn’t know how to take them back.
Joe wiped a hurt expression off his face. “Is that how this is going to be? You’ll pull rank and be ass-hat Tanis on me?”
Tanis lowered her eyes, staring at her cup of coffee.
“No, it’s not. I am scared, I’m scared a lot… I think it’s how I stay alive—by never letting it get to me. I push the fear down and compress it into action. Give me a problem and I’ll make a plan. Once I have that plan, I put all my fear, doubt, and worry into making that plan work. And it works.”
She looked up at him, his expression showing concern. “As a result, I only seem to have the one pep-talk speech.” Tanis shrugged apologetically. “It involves words like shit, fuck, and ass. And it always uses rank.”
“I’m not going to judge you, Tanis. I’ve seen you at your best and I’ve seen you at your worst—” Joe held up a hand to Tanis, stopping her from speaking. “You may think I haven’t seen the depths of you, but I have. I watched when you tortured Kris and Trent. I know I wasn’t supposed to, but I saw the feeds.”
Tanis’s face reddened. “I didn’t know you saw that…I…I’m not sorry I did it, but I’m not proud of it either. I’ve done that sort of thing enough that sometimes I wonder if I have a soul anymore.”
Joe reached out and turned her face so he could look into her eyes. “I know what you are capable of. You care for people around you. You care so much that you’ll sacrifice your body and soul for them. You get called a hero and a demon, often at the same time, by the people you try to save. So you lock down.”
Tanis nodded. “I know I do, I…”
“It’s OK,” Joe said, holding her close. “Like I said, I know the best and the worst of you, and I still love you. Take your strength from that.”
Tanis lay against Joe for a long time. Perhaps he understood her better than she did herself.
Tanis’s head suddenly snapped up. “Damn.”
“What is it?” Joe asked, concern lining his features.
“We didn’t respond to the Intrepid. They’ll wonder why we’re taking so long.”
Joe’s quizzical look froze on his face for several long seconds before he broke into laughter.
“What is it?” Tanis looked at him, perplexed.
“You,” Joe chuckled. “I swear, there is duty imprinted on your DNA.”
“Of course there is,” she smiled. “I had it tattooed on when I enlisted.”
While she sent the message, Joe and Troy worked out the alterations they would need to make to reach the asteroid belt so
oner and meet the Intrepid before a rendezvous was impossible.
“We’re going to have some hard burns in a couple of hours,” Joe informed Tanis as she completed her response to the Intrepid.
“Let’s get some food before that happens,” Tanis said, a mischievous smile on her face. “Don’t think you can get out of telling your tale, you’re still going to tell me about Makemake.”
CHURN AND BURN
STELLAR DATE: 3241792 / 08.17.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Excelsior
REGION: LHS 1565, 30 AU from stellar primary
20:21 hours to asteroid group
Tanis stood up after the meal and poured two cups of coffee, adding sugar to Joe’s and cream to hers. She handed Joe his cup and settled down in her chair, cradling the warm beverage.
“Mmm, just the way I like it,” Joe said after a long draught. “You do pay attention.”
“I did my fair share of dinner runs to the mess, if you recall. It wasn’t all just you getting me my BLT.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Joe said with a wink.
“Enough stalling, it’s your turn, mister.”
Joe nodded and took another long drink before beginning.
“Like with Toro, the full story of Makemake never made it out to the public. It started before your jaunt to Toro began and ended a few months after. I was with the seventh fleet on the Normandy. We were leaving Ceres on our way to meet with the rest of the fleet for maneuvers near Venus.”
“I read a briefing about that,” Tanis said. “It was to test defensive patterns after the left-over core from Uranus was positioned between Venus and Earth.”
“Yup, but we never arrived, we did a polar loop around Sol and boosted north. The word on the ship was that orders changed and we were doing a patrol of the Oort cloud, but we all knew we weren’t provisioned for a haul that long.
