by TR Cameron
He showered again afterward and visited the medical section. A couple more white-coated people were present, each seemingly engaged in their own projects. Students? Staff? Something between? Jax shrugged mentally. No way to know here, and not sure it matters. If everyone is here to learn and to teach, the distinction kind of breaks down. He broke into a smile as Doctor Juno Cray appeared from behind the wall that had formerly been transparent but was now translucent. She crossed the distance between them and nodded a greeting. “Welcome, Captain Reese. We’re getting a lot of data from your prosthetics. Whatever activities you’ve been doing, you should keep them up.”
“Will do, Doc. I’ve just been kicking around enjoying myself, so that’s no burden.” They shared a laugh. “The Professor said I should visit so you can adjust the transponders in my prosthetics.”
She snapped her fingers. “Right. I saw that note earlier, then forgot about it. Come on over to my workbench.” She led him to the back of the room, where a large rectangular table with a glossy white surface stood a few feet away from the wall with enough space on the long sides for two people to work next to each other. She strode to the far end and gestured for him to stand diagonally across from her. “Okay, let’s do the arm first, before making you climb up there.” She pulled a tablet out from under the table, unpacked its tri-fold panels, and tapped some buttons before sliding her finger on it in a curve.
Jax stepped back in surprise as the table’s surface rippled like it had suddenly turned liquid and a cradle shaped like his arm emerged from it. Doctor Cray laughed. “I’m sorry. We do that to everyone. It’s just…fun.” Her dark eyes, which he now noticed were a deep shade of purple, sparkled when she said it, and he was struck by the fact that she was as attractive as she was intelligent. Apparently I have a thing for doctors. Or maybe I’m simply spending too much time around them.
He chuckled. “I get that. Someday you should come play in my sandbox. I can show you how to blow things up. That’s also fun.”
She shook her head, but with a smile. “I put things together. Taking them apart is pretty much anathema to my purpose in life, but I appreciate the offer.” She gestured at the modified table surface. “Insert your arm, please.” He obeyed and she nodded, then went back to manipulating her tablet. A slight whir accompanied one of the robot arms mounted on the ceiling as it slid across the room into a position above the table and unfolded. It ended in a featureless box that was the same shade of white as the rest of it.
Cray said, “You doubtless know ‘transponder’ isn’t the correct name for what’s inside a prosthetic. It doesn’t send out a signal since the skin of the arm blocks signals from getting out, so scans don’t pick up that they’re artificial. It’s more like a signature. But you are absolutely right to be concerned that others could scan it and identify the origin of the technology.” She pointed at the box that had moved into position above the center of his forearm. “This will change the arm’s data so it’s not clearly UCCA military. You’ll need to have a story ready to explain how you wound up with it, so I need to know what you want it to read.”
He frowned. “What are my choices?”
“On the Alliance side, military-grade, commercial-grade, or medical-grade. On the Confederacy side, the same. Or we could give it a commercial black market signature. Lots of chop shops out there with technically illegal tech.”
The latter appealed to him, but he didn’t have the knowledge base to answer any questions about it. “Let’s go with Alliance medical. I can make up a story about being a wealthy civilian better than about being from the Confederacy or knowing the galaxy’s criminal underworld.”
The doctor nodded. “Good choice, I think. I don’t know your mission, but the logic seems sound.” She tapped some buttons, and the box emitted a buzzing noise. “There, done. Hop up and give me your leg.” She summoned a different cradle, and a couple of minutes later, the process was finished.
He climbed down from the table and checked his comm. It held new information to review, but more importantly, indicated it was the start of the dinner hour. “Want to grab some food, Doc?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got tasks to complete, but thanks for the offer. I might be in the Canteen later tonight, though. It’s trivia night, and I usually show up. My team can always use someone with a unique sphere of experience.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Dinner was the same as the previous night, but with a different set of people around him. There seemed to be no clear rhyme or reason to who was allowed to be part of the Academy, or at least none he could see. He pictured Professor Maarsen as a spider in the middle of a web, choosing which flies to catch and which to let by, and choked on his coffee.
Jax spent the early evening reviewing the data on the mission ahead. Task. Job. Whatever. Then he told the comm to guide him to the Canteen and followed the directions until he found a dimly lit staircase leading down. He descended cautiously, figuring that if his leg was going to pick a moment to screw with him, right as he was entering a social space would be the perfect opportunity to make him look like a jerk.
He navigated successfully into the cellar room that had been turned into a bar. Four-top tables were scattered around the middle of the large room, with booths on the outsides and displays hanging everywhere, showing a wide variety of entertainments. He and his team sometimes watched the Earth media while on the Cronus, but his tastes went mainly to movies. These seemed to have a little of everything. Motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he spotted Doctor Cray, who waved at him to join them.
He pointed at the bar, and she acknowledged the gesture and turned back to the others in the booth with her. He walked up to the large wooden bar, which was made of the same material as most of the castle. The bartender was the man who’d been overseeing the afternoon fights. Jax asked, “You’re Coach?”
The man nodded, grinned, and stroked his impressive mustache. “That’s right. And you’re New Guy.”
“I prefer Jax.”
“Sounds better, I agree. What can I get you, Jax?”
“What do you have?”
“Every variety of Scotch whisky known to humankind, plus beer and cider.”
He eyed the bottles of spirits stacked behind the bar but decided taste-testing new whiskys the night before a mission might not be the best idea. “Strongbow?”
The bartender nodded. “Coming right up.”
A moment later, crisp draft cider in hand, Jax slid onto the bench seat across from Doctor Cray in obedience to her directions. She pointed at the four others in the large booth and gave names, and he provided his. Each had a tablet in front of them, and she slid one over to him as well. Displayed on it was a trivia game, like many bar games he’d played, although this one seemed to include players from a third of the planet. He asked, “Are there stakes, Doc?”
She laughed, and he was again struck by how pleasant she was on the eyes and ears. Down, Jackson. Sit. Stay. Good idiot. “I’m off-duty. Call me Juno. And the stakes are mainly honor, although we’ve got a side bet going with a group of professors from Edinburgh University.”
“Sounds vicious.”
“If you have any doubt about that, you clearly haven’t been around enough academics. Those folks are wickedly smart and brutal when they win. Fortunately, the odds are kind of even. But maybe you can give us an edge.”
He chuckled. “And if I prove a liability?”
“We’ll figure out a forfeit that makes them happy and also subjects you to some sort of personal humiliation for failing us.”
“Damn. They’re not the only ones who are brutal.”
The teeth she showed when she grinned were attractive, too. “Then you better get your brain in the game, don’t you think?” He wasn’t sure if she was referring to his distraction with her or his lack of attention to the contest. Probably both. He shook his head, looked down, and focused on helping to represent the Azophi Academy trivia team against their invet
erate foes.
Chapter Thirteen
Cia joined him at breakfast the next morning while he was trying to wake up with his second cup of coffee. The trivia game had been as ferocious as Juno had warned it would be, and had extended into the early hours before their foes admitted defeat. She plopped into the seat across from him, setting a heavily laden plate full of eggs, sausage, and toast in front of her. She observed, “Found the Canteen, did you? You’ve got that look.”
Jax groaned. “Yes. I made the wise decision at the start to stick to cider, but it was a long session, and refills happened.”
“Many refills?”
“I lost count. On doctor’s orders.”
She laughed. “Ah, Doctor Cray was there. That explains a lot. She’s easy on the eyes.”
He changed the subject before his thoughts turned back to the woman who was responsible for his overindulgence. “So, we good to go?”
She nodded, finished the bite of toast she was chewing, and washed it down with her own coffee. “Yep. Grace is shipshape and ready to soar.”
He felt kind of silly for asking but did so anyway. “Is there a landing field here I missed or is your ship really small?”
“She’s not huge, but she’s not tiny either. Private airfield up the coast. I lease a hangar. They don’t have a VTOL pad, but Grace can launch and land like a terrestrial airplane if needed. Fair warning, she doesn’t have enough power for much in the way of artificial gravity beyond the basics. You can really feel the ride.” Cia’s tone suggested that was a positive in her book.
“I consider myself appropriately cautioned. How do we get there?”
She grinned. “I hear you brought a bike.”
Jax drove fast up the narrow lane that ran along the coast, Cia on the seat behind him with her arms wrapped around his stomach. She cheered him on, occasionally calling him names because he wouldn’t go faster. They covered the distance to the airfield in a little under fifteen minutes, and he was able to pull directly into the hangar where her ship rested.
Grace displayed a patchwork of pristine and aged plates on her exterior, and was about eighty feet high and three and a half or four times that long. Short landing struts with wheels extended from the lower hull to the floor. It had two stubby wings with an engine on the end of each, and another larger engine on the tail. The body of the craft tapered as it progressed from stern to bow. A shimmering musical note with a slash across it was visible on the side of the ship’s nose.
A short ladder led up to a side hatch, and he trailed her as she ran up it. Cia announced, “Welcome to the Grace,” and turned right to head forward. The passage was small, positioned down the centerline of the ship, and they passed doors on the metal bulkheads to either side as he followed. There was no telling what lay beyond them. He’d been on enough ships to know that consistency from one to the next just didn’t happen. His footsteps on the metal grate beneath his feet bounced strangely around. He imagined she’d done some recent repairs because the scent of paint was notable under the recirculated ship air. The corridor ended in an open doorway, and he ducked his head to pass through it.
The cockpit was exactly as he would have designed it if he’d been in charge. Two large padded seats sat side by side, separated by an equipment console that ran between them toward the main instrument panel. He spun the chair so he could sit, then rotated it into place, and it snapped in with a loud click. The controls in front of the two seats were identical, including flight sticks, throttles, foot pedals, and data displays. Cia grinned when he finally stopped staring around in appreciation. “She’s something, right? Either position is able to control any part of the ship. When I’m flying alone, I rely on the AI, but you’re welcome to sit up here with me.”
He admitted, “I’m not a space pilot. I can avoid making an idiot out of myself in a simple shuttle, but that’s about it.”
She nodded. “That’s good, then. As the Professor would say, it’s a ‘learning opportunity.’ Plus, that probably means that you’re going to be better at handling the exchange than I would be.”
“I thought you were a trader by birth and occupation?”
“Yeah, but maybe not for this kind of deal.”
He tilted his head to the side in a question. “Meaning?”
Cia frowned. “Meaning we should get on the way, and we can talk while I show you around. Buckle in.”
He obeyed, and she handed him a wristcomm similar to the ones he was used to and an earpiece to go with it. “Already integrated with the ship.” She lifted her arm to display her own, then said to the air, “Grace confirms. Send us a tug.”
Jax put in his earpiece and hit the buttons to activate the comm, then strapped it around his wrist. It was bigger than the one he’d been wearing but smaller than the one that he used in the field. Its touchscreen was responsive, and in moments he was listening in to Cia’s conversation with the control tower. A new gruff, good-natured male voice joined as a small truck with a tow hitch attached to it appeared. “Grace, this is Tug Seven. Ready to come out?”
She laughed. “You know my girl is always ready.”
“If only the same could be said of you. When are you going to give in and admit that you’re in love with me?”
Cia rolled her eyes. “You’re old enough to be my father.”
He laughed. “Some women dig that in a man.”
“I’m looking for someone a little less…fossilized.” She laughed along with the man as the ship started to roll out toward the airfield. Jax just shook his head, but he couldn’t contain his amusement at the banter.
The man towing them said, “Well, if you ever decide to lower your standards, you know where to find me. You are free to move independently, Grace. Be safe out there.”
“Right on, Tug Seven. Happy trails.” She tapped her wristcomm to kill the channel and said, “He’s a lot of fun. Happily married. Can’t stop flirting with every woman he sees, says his wife likes it that way.”
Jax shook his head. “Takes all kinds, I guess. Probably a healthier relationship than most.”
“Right? At least no one’s fooling around behind anyone’s back.” She gripped the flight stick in her right hand and nudged the throttle with her other one. “Time to focus. Switch your panel over to navigation, just in case something goes weird.” He imagined that she didn’t want him messing with her control of the ship but was too polite to say that out loud. “We’re headed for Lagrange one.” Jax knew enough about piloting to understand that you couldn’t jump within a gravity well. Bigger ships would need to get farther away because of some function of the jump drive he didn’t understand, but one this size could make use of the spot where the gravitational pulls from the planets and nearby moons were more or less balanced.
She steered the ship onto the end of a runway. “Tower, this is the Grace. Permission to launch, please.”
The synthesized voice of an artificial intelligence responded immediately. “Grace, Tower. You are cleared to launch on runway A-one. Note that there is traffic to both sides of your ascent. Ensure that you stay on your assigned vector.”
“When have I not, Tower?”
A pause lasted long enough to get uncomfortable, then the voice repeated, “You are cleared to launch on runway A-one.”
She grinned and replied, “Acknowledged, Tower. Grace out.” She closed the channel. “There’s something deeply enjoyable about flummoxing an AI.”
He laughed. “Flummoxing? Where did you learn to talk?”
She mimicked an upper-crust accent from the movies. “Do remember, I was raised in the lap of luxury, dah-ling. We could pay for all the extra words we wanted.” Her voice returned to normal. “Here we go.” She pushed the throttle forward gently, and the ship gathered speed. “Punching it.” The acceleration pressed him against his seat as the engine whine increased dramatically. They hurtled down the runway, and Cia whooped with delight as she hauled back on the stick and the ship climbed into the sky.
The
pressure eased when they moved out of the atmosphere and she redirected some of the power that had been going to shielding the ship from the burn to the artificial gravity system. He gasped, able to breathe fully for the first time in a while. “Nice piloting, pilot.”
She looked at him, smiling. “Thanks. This is my happy place.” The display, which had thus far replicated a look out the front of the ship, changed to add an overlay. The wireframe diagram showed a rectangular tube. She flicked some switches to her left and said, “Autopilot can handle the approach to L-one. Let me show you around.”
She unbuckled and stood, and he followed her out of the compartment. As they walked down the metal hallway, she slapped her palm against each of the doors they passed. “My cabin. Guest cabin. Armory. Medical.” Just beyond mid-ship, a metal staircase led upward and onward on the left, and another one led downward and onward on the right. “Ship’s tall enough here for three decks. Down below is cargo, plus the airlock. Up here is the fun part of the ship.” She took the short flight of stairs three at a time and bounded onto the upper level. Unlike the front area they’d come from, this section spanned the width of the vessel.
She pointed, “Galley here.” A rectangular dining table and chairs attached to the deck offered seats for six.
Jax gestured at the seats. “Is that your normal crew size?”
Cia shook her head. “No. Crew is one or two, maybe three if I need to bring an engineer along to do some work in transit. The rest is for passengers. Like you.” She grinned. “Kidding. You’re more like, I don’t know, quasi-crew.”
He frowned, but the edges of his mouth twitched upward. “Thanks. So kind.”
She waved a hand in the air. “Everyone says so.” She led him through the doorway set in the bulkhead. “Recreation area.” It held a couple of comfortable-looking couches and a large display on the right side and had a billiard table on the left with cues and balls in a case mounted on the wall.
