Date Point: 10y4m AV
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Xiù Chang
The doctors had kept them for nearly three weeks. All of them had felt well enough to be discharged inside two, and Julian had – with apologies – immediately made a bee-line for his late grandfather’s Minnesotan property in Clearwater county, promising to return as soon as he’d inspected the place and decided what he was doing with it. Neither of the girls were inclined to protest.
Allison had collected a sizeable pay package from somewhere, apparently earned for being on Kirk’s crew, and had accepted the duty of flying to England to track down Amir’s family and commiserate with them. She’d arranged to come back via Minnesota with Julian.
Xiù had… gone home. Ridden home in the back of what had been, on the night of her abduction, her father’s brand new Kia and watching a skyline that had changed subtly but disturbingly since she had last seen it. She was wearing the clothes she’d laid out on her bed to change into after ballet practice before leaving home the last time, just some comfortable black sweats and a loose long-sleeved Guess top that at least did a decent job of covering her scars.
Her bedroom was exactly as she had left it. Exactly as she had left it, right down to some carelessly-discarded underwear tangled up under her office chair, a half-finished pack of gum on the bedside table, her two favourite rings resting on the corner of her dresser, and her laptop still open on the desk. The laptop was by now hopelessly obsolete, but when Xiù prodded the space bar experimentally, it turned out that it had never actually been powered off – the fan and hard drive whined into quiet life.
She sat on the corner of the bed and watched it emerge from its long hibernation, trying to ignore the musty, untouched smell of the room as she turned the rings over and over in her fingers, not looking at them but still giving them a thorough tactile evaluation.
It took it a while – ten years of standby mode apparently didn’t come to an end at a moment’s notice – but… yes, there was her half-finished essay on Lady Macbeth, there was her Michelle Yeoh wallpaper, there was the OS update notification she’d religiously closed every time it dared to show its face…
She reached out and stroked a finger across the trackpad.
It promptly froze and blue-screened.
She closed the lid and toured the rest of the room. Had she really been so enthusiastic for pink? There was a lot of it. The fairy lights tangled in the bedstead were a nice touch, but the wall calendar had been purloined from her friend Ai’s family takeaway business and was the kind of tacky cartoon shengxiao calendar that bore the kitchen’s phone number and website, a declaration like ’Many Happy Fortunes!’ and a round of advice to “Wed a Tiger or Dog but never Rat”, or whatever.
She sneered at it, and threw it away.
She put the rings on, and then away too went three boy-band posters, a graveyard of antediluvian incense that she’d been forbidden by her parents’ landlord’s fire safety regulations ever from lighting, a venerable McDonald’s paper cup that was only disqualified from being a valuable antique by the fact that it was a McDonald’s paper cup, and the unopened pack of cigarettes she’d once bought on a dare and then been so worried sick of discovery that she’d never found the courage to smuggle them out of the house or throw them away.
Finding her rhythm she threw open the windows to try and blast some of the dust and stale air out, then decided to get rid of the curtains. They were sun-bleached and faded anyway. She was equally vicious to her wardrobe, going through everything that didn’t fit, all the silly ankle-twisting platform heels and the clothes she’d sworn that someday would fit again if she just lost weight regardless of the fact that the problem hadn’t been weight but age and height.
Most of the survivors were then thrown out on the principle that they were wildly out of fashion, or had just never looked that good anyway. All the clothing went into a pile she mentally labelled “charity”.
She was left with a handful of simple t-shirts, a couple of good pairs of jeans, one pair each of flats, running shoes and kitten-heeled calf boots, some sportswear, and three bras that were, while generous enough to accommodate her teenage self’s insecure padding-out, not actually oversized.
The laptop turned out to have given its swansong, and was now thoroughly dead. She considered asking Wei if he could resurrect it, but then decided against it – the last thing she needed was her older younger brother performing digital necromancy on her blog posts and browser history, and in any case the machine was so haplessly dated that she’d probably struggle to achieve half the things a modern Internet user wanted to do.
Out went the pink bedclothes, out went a sad deflated soccer ball, out went so much stale makeup that she couldn’t have worn it all if she’d spent every day of her absent years painted up like a hooker. Out went more stuffed toys than a sapient being had any right to even know existed. She took apart the flat-pack furniture and stowed it under the bed and in the back of the closet.
She tested all of the progress she’d made on rehabilitating her abused lungs in spinning around the room like an efficiently ruthless tornado until it was gone. All of it. Every last little thing that wasn’t hers, thrown out, dusted or vacuumed until she was down only to the things that she cared to keep.
This left her with a bare, cold and almost undecorated room to stare at, its former clutter hinted at only by unfaded patches of carpet and wallpaper. Other than that, she had the two rings she was now wearing, the fairy lights on the bedstead and that was about it.
She threw the lights out too when they turned out to be broken.
Only once she was standing alone in the middle of an empty floor-space did she finally find room in her head to think about what she’d just done and appreciate the full absurdity of it. She took a deep breath, produced a helpless arm-flapping shrug that clapped her hands once against her thighs, and issued something that was nearly a laugh.
”…Welcome home, Xiù.”
Date Point: 10y4m AV
IDF Checkpoint, Qalqilya, the West Bank.
Corporal Moshe Harel
“Uh, Moshe?”
“Yeah?”
“That white van you didn’t like the look of isn’t moving…”
Corporal Harel wasn’t the only one who looked up and scrutinized the van in question, his attention ratcheting up a gear. Tensions were running high—they were always running high—and the last thing they needed right now was a suspicious vehicle. The way the van (a venerable Toyota) had parked a good long way down the road from the checkpoint, not even in the shade of the trees or anything, and hadn’t moved since was definitely troubling.
“How long?”
“Not in ten minutes. I don’t see anyone inside…”
“Son of a bitch…” Moshe swore. “We can’t ignore that…”
His buddies nodded and checked their SMGs. Even if the driver floored it right now, the van would have to navigate a slalom of concrete dividers to approach the checkpoint, and would do so under fire from all sides by heavy weaponry. An ordinary, elderly Toyota van wouldn’t make it a fraction of the way—the first shots would go right through the engine.
“Radiological?”
“Nothing I can detect.”
Harel grabbed his binoculars and aimed them at the van. Between the heat haze and the sun reflecting off the glass, it was hard to be certain, but it certainly didn’t look like there was anybody sitting in there. There might have been a slight darkening, but that could equally be the headrest, or the van’s own shadow.
“Did we see anybody get out?”
“Running the tape back now… No, nobody got out of it. Not that I can see, anyway.”
“That van’s in full sunlight and the windows are up. It must be cooking in there!”
“All I know is, the camera didn’t see anybody.”
Harel considered his options, swiftly narrowing them down to a clear course of action. “Lock it down. Close the road right now.”
Everyone leapt into action, acutely aware that their safety and everyone else’s hinged on doing their jobs right. Within seconds, the checkpoint was closed.
As soon as they were, Harel would have liked to breath a little easier. That was one threat dealt with. Instead, he licked the inside of his dry mouth and moved on to the next bit. “Get the ‘bot up.”
“Yes corporal.”
The ‘bot was summoned and bounced its way across the scorching asphalt, fetching up right underneath the van’s passenger side window. Harel watched over its operator’s shoulder, expecting at any second for the van to suddenly accelerate, or explode, or for armed men to surge out the back. Even with their huge advantage in terms of firepower and positioning, even with the van being so far away, none of those options were at all desirable.
Even when the ‘bot cranked itself up onto the ends of its treads and extended its camera as high as it would go so as to look down into the footwell, there was no sign of a driver, nor of any kind of trap rigged up to the doors.
”…Check the back, Stolarz.” Harel ordered. The bot dropped back onto the asphalt and scooted under the van where it deployed millimetre RADAR to get a good look inside.
“Nobody in the back, Corporal.” Stolarz finally announced, though he tapped an object on his screen. “But that looks mean, whatever it is.”
“Uh… Corporal?
Private Wexler’s tone of voice was NOT one that Harel wanted to hear on a radiological sensor operator. “Yes?”
Wexler cleared his throat. “Radiological alarm, Moshe.”
Harel looked back at the van as Stolarz backed the ‘bot off a bit, as if that would do anything. “This,” he decided “is starting to look way above our pay grade.”
They called EOD, who quickly called in somebody MUCH higher up. The whole town was on lockdown within minutes as IDF vehicles rolled in by the hundred, and Harel’s checkpoint had to spend the rest of the day turning back civilian traffic and offering no comment for the cameras. All the while, the cluster of people around the van got larger and more grim-looking.
The sun was going down by the time they finally gave an all-clear and loaded something from the back of the van into an IDF truck, which vanished back over the Armistice Agreement Line under ridiculously heavy escort.
From the road, nobody could have seen what it was. From his vantage point, however, Harel got a good look, and promptly wished he hadn’t. It was covered in bright yellow radiation hazard stickers, labelled in both English and Urdu, and had borne the white crescent and star of the Pakistani flag.
Date Point: 10y4m AV
CIA Chicago office, Illinois, USA, Earth
Darcy
“Welcome back. How’s our new asset at Byron Group?”
Darcy didn’t need to fake a tired smile for Jake, her usual work partner. She really had been in Honolulu less than twenty hours ago, and that much travel was guaranteed to leave her rumpled and drained even though she was thoroughly used to it. Between sleeping most of the flight and catching a power nap in the car outside Jenkins’ house she was perfectly rested, but it was still getting late in the day by her personal clock.
Jake would have seen through even her best false smile anyway. “He’s gonna be a pleasure to work with.” she said, honestly. “All carrot, no stick, all the way, just you watch.”
“That easy, huh?” Jake asked. He stood from his desk and set about making her a cup of tea, exactly what she needed. She hadn’t been flattering Jenkins about the quality of his coffee – it genuinely was superb – but Darcy had always preferred a good jasmine tea. Just one of the things that made Jake such a good partner.
“Oh yeah. He’s a classic misanthrope. Pretty sure he thinks the neighbors are all waiting for their chance to ram a Bible down his throat. Throw in a white knight streak, and…” she trailed off meaningfully.
“Likes to feel like he’s rescuing a worthy damsel, huh?” Jake noted. He dropped a little jasmine tea pearl into the teapot for her and covered it in newly boiled water.
“Oh yeah. Strong masculine streak there.” Darcy watched in pleasurable anticipation as the hot water made the pearl break open and unfold into a flowered frond. “He’s no idiot though. Seduction’s not on the cards for a second, he’d see through it instantly. But all I need to do is play to type for him and he’ll be extremely useful.”
Jake set the teapot and a cup down for her and returned to his desk while Darcy set about summarizing her trip to Omaha for their records.
“Any surprises?” he asked.
“Nothing surprising exactly, no. He knew what the WERBS acronym stands for, but he didn’t know the specifics and he didn’t push. Figure if we ever have to throw him a bone there, the cover about having nukes ready to jump will do just fine.”
“Good. Last thing we need right now is any more potential holes in that one.” Jake nodded. “Sounds like a good source.”
Darcy took a grateful sip of her tea “Almost perfect. He’s an honest man underneath the asshole exterior, so we don’t need to establish any real control over him. Just… give ‘im the sales pitch and let him motivate himself the rest of the way. I like him.”
“You always did have a thing for prickly guys with soft centers.”
“Guilty.”
They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Darcy finished her notes and her tea, and was considering wrapping it up for the day and sleeping in her own bed for a change when Jake sat back in his chair, arms folded, and frowned at the screen.
“Problem?” She asked.
“Could be.” his jaw worked side-to-side as he considered what he was reading. “One of those stolen Pakistani nukes just showed up…”
Date Point: 10y4m AV
Clan Whitecrest personal transport “Springing Ember”, Cimbrean System, The Far Reaches.
Regaari
Sensing and communicating with ships that were travelling at Superluminal speeds had been a serious challenge and concern before the Corti had figured out the algorithms for detecting and modulating the “wake” every ship created as it stretched and contracted spacetime around itself. The expansion and contraction of spacetime being unbound by the speed of light, the system made for an efficient and cheap means of FTL communication, with only the slight drawback that it had an effective range of no more than about a day’s travel at one kilolight. Not even enough for communication even between two relatively close star systems, and no inhabited systems were that close together anyway.
Still, it was good enough for ships in the same system to see and talk to one another. In the past, once a ship had departed, it would outrun any photons sent after it, and so talking to it was simply impossible unless you got in a faster ship, overtook it, and dropped a transmission in its path.
Nowadays…
“Unidentified vessel, this is HMS Violent patrolling Cimbrean local space. Cease your approach and identify, over.“
Regaari ordered the ship down to sublight at once. “Violent, Gaoian transport ‘Springing Ember’, piloted by Officer Regaari of Clan Whitecrest, on a diplomatic mission. Ceasing approach.”
As he did so, Ayma poked her head out of the ship’s ablutions chamber, combing her fur to clean out her dust-bath. “We’ve arrived?” she asked.
“We were just intercepted by one of the human ships. The Violent.“
Ayma’s ears quirked and she grimaced. ”‘Violent’?” she asked. “Just ‘Violent’? What an ugly name for a ship.”
“Unsubtle, isn’t it?” Regaari agreed, though privately he felt that the name was appropriately bellicose for a warship. Why mask its nature behind poetic imagery?
A minute later, Violent hit sublight at a relative stop a few hundred kilometres away. His transport only registered its presence by the friendly identity signals it was broadcasting: Without those, it would have been all but invisible. No radar signature, with a shape and albedo that sent every sensor they had skipping off without trace and zero visible heat—Regaari knew that it would be radiating all of its heat in a coherent beam back towards the nearest star. Only his experimental gravimetric sensors, designed to counter Hunter cloaking devices, told him that something was there, and they were still far too imprecise to narrow down the exact location of Violent’s mass to within a radius better than thirty kilometers.
“Springing Ember, please disable all electronic security and submit to a database scan.“
“They really are paranoid.” Ayma commented.
“I heard a saying of theirs once. ‘It’s not paranoia if-’“
”’-If they really are out to get you.’” Ayma finished. “Yes. But they can plainly see that we are not Hunters, can’t they?”
“Well, like you said: They are paranoid.” Regaari snorted, dropping the firewalls.
He watched the alerts unfold as Violent’s technicians first infiltrated, then thoroughly ransacked the Springing Ember’s computer. Fortunately, the ship wasn’t carrying any clan secrets—he’d made completely sure of that before leaving.
Two more contacts appeared on his sensors as the intrusion was withdrawn and he was sent an all-clear to re-establish his firewall. These were small compared to his transport and the human destroyer, but large relative to most starfighters. Firebirds.
“Springing Ember, proceed to orbit above the fifth planet of this system and await further instructions.”
Cimbrean-5 was the outermost of the system’s rocky worlds, and the only one outside the system protection field. It was classified as a “violent” world—a planet far too cold for sapient habitation where it rained liquid methane into oceans of liquid methane under hateful skies full of methane clouds, where pressure differentials in its thick, cryogenic atmosphere could pick up razor shards of rock-hard water ice and carry them around the globe at hundreds of miles an hour.
Under the watchful eye of HMS Violent and the two escorts, they sat restlessly and watched the lightning flashes in the planet’s upper atmosphere for nearly an hour before a fourth contact set alarms wailing on their proximity sensors as it appeared within only twenty kilometres or so, and well outside of Violent’s firing solution.
HMS Caledonia. He recognised it instantly. No sooner had it jumped in than he spotted the change in its sensor signature as it opened its bay door.
Regaari clipped on an earpiece and headed for the starboard airlock. Ayma cast around for something to do, clean up or tidy and, finding nothing, settled for lowering herself onto a couch and fidgeting nervously at her claws.
The Springing Ember’s sensors picked up the barest hint of a tiny warp drive pulsing, and Regaari inclined his head to listen as a new voice came on the communicator.
“Springing Ember, boarding party from HMS Caledonia requests permission to come aboard.”
“Permission granted, starboard airlock” he told them. “Is that you, Rebar?”
“Sure is, Dexter. They’ve got us doing marine shit. Starboard airlock.”
There were three total—Rebar, Blaczynski and Baseball, who squeezed into the lock, then through into the ship interior. Only when the lock was fully cycled did they de-mask, all grinning and happy to see him. If he wasn’t totally familiar with human body language by now, it would have been terrorizing to see that many bared teeth. For her part, Ayma retreated a little, and Regaari couldn’t blame her—the three men smelled powerfully male, almost overwhelmingly so.
“Not that I am not happy to see you…” Regaari began, greeting the three men with his best approximation of the elaborate and forceful handshake they’d taught him “But I’m quite capable of docking and landing this ship myself.”
“Security’s being tightened up.” Blaczynski commented. “Hopefully we’ll be able to brief you on why sometime, but right now, rules say I have to fly this thing for you.”
Regaari stood aside and gestured to the control room. In keeping with Gaoian architecture, it was at the back of the ship, immediately in front of the main engines. There was, after all, no good logical reason for the pilot to sit at the front of the ship when he would be flying by sensor readings and information displays anyway. Meanwhile the sleeping quarters could be mounted in the front of the ship, as far from the power core and main kinetic thrusters as possible and therefore quieter and calmer.
“And for that you need three?” he asked.
“No such thing as too careful, bro.” Baseball told him. “This a friend of yours?”
“Ah, yes…”
Base touched his forehead, which Regaari guessed was a respectful gesture. “Pardon me, ma’am. I need to scan you for hazards and contraband.” he declared.
Ayma shot a questioning look at Regaari, who ducked his head to reassure her. This was just standard human caution. She spread her arms and straightened up. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Base flipped a small grey oblong out of a pouch on his belt and delicately pressed it to Ayma’s head. Regaari couldn’t imagine why, but moments later the screen on its back lit, and Baseball relaxed. “Sorry about that.”
“It was no bother…” Ayma reassured him, politely.
“So… yes.” Regaari stepped forward. “Baseball, Rebar, Starfall, this is Ayma…”
“Ahh, so that’s what this is about. Your friend Zoo.” Baseball snapped his fingers, the effect muffled slightly by his spacesuit’s glove.
“Shoo.” Ayma corrected him.
“Xiù.” Rebar corrected them both.
“Like you hadn’t guessed.” Regaari noted.
The humans chuckled again, and Rebar looked around the Springing Ember’s interior. “Nice ship.”
“Whitecrest personal transport. One of the newest models. Designed to deliver an individual or small group on relatively short journeys, very quickly.”
“Surely the faster it is the further it goes?” Rebar asked.
“We… borrowed some ideas from you” Regaari told him. “Using capacitors to power the engines gives much better speed but limits the range. That was deemed an acceptable trade, seeing as it’s intended for rapid travel within our territory, between Gao, Gorai and the new colony at Guen Ha. Cimbrean, fortunately, is not that far from Gorai.”
“So this thing runs on solar power?” Blaczynski asked, settling into the pilot’s couch.
“Usually, it recharges off its own generator. We wanted to install a quantum core plant but… our versions of those are bulky and not very efficient yet, so we went with old-fashioned fusion. It can recharge via its shields if it has to though, yes.”
Blaczynski nodded, and checked in with Caledonia, Violent and the two Firebirds to confirm that the ship now had a human pilot and that all life forms on board were accounted-for. “Edda Two, go for slave jump, whenever you’re ready.”
“Slave ju-”
The cryogenic grey storms of Cimbrean-5 vanished. In an eyeblink the planet Cimbrean—the inhabited one, all blues and greens and white—replaced it below them and much larger.
”-mp? Oh. Impressive.”
“Nice and secure. Only way in is directly under our guns and with our permission.” Blaczynski waved a hand through the ship’s controls, a little tentatively but clearly knowing what he intended to do and more or less how to achieve it. He was hindered a little by not being able to read Gaoian, but the interface was designed to be clear and intuitive. Selecting the Folctha colony’s landing beacon and ordering the Springing Ember to land at that beacon took him only a minimum of trial and error.
“So, yeah. Zoo.”
“Shoo.“
“Xiù.”
“In my defense, my mouth is the wrong shape to pronounce that.” Regaari pointed out. “I don’t know what Baseball’s excuse is.”
“She was in a bad way, bro.” Baseball told him, aiming a friendly obscene gesticulation by way of reply. “I don’t know what the fuck happened to them exactly, but when we pulled them out of that liferaft they were dying from recent vacuum exposure.”
Ayma keened slightly and Regaari barely restrained the impulse himself: The thought was distressing.
“Hey, hey, it’s fine!” Baseball hurried to reassure them. “Horse ain’t just a pretty face, he’s a damn good medic too. She’s back on Earth now. Last I heard, she’s doing just fine.”
“Major Powell should know more.” Blaczynski added. He was watching the Springing Ember’s instruments for any sign of trouble, even though the ship was completely competent at landing itself. Already, their re-entry was raging a burnt orange around the edges of their forcefield.
“Good, because it’s him that we’re here to see.” Regaari told them. “Pleasant as it is to see you again, this is important, both personally and politically.”
“Dude, we’re on the job too.” Rebar reassured him. “But you’re cool to hang out once your business is done? Movie night?”
“That would be nice.”
“Politically?” Blaczynski asked.
“It’s all…”
Ayma interrupted him. “Shoo is a Female.”
The humans blinked at one another, nonplussed. “Well, yeah…” Baseball agreed, in a tone which suggested that this fact could not possibly be lost on them.
“I mean a Female.” Ayma stressed, patiently. “A member of the Clan of Females. Legally speaking, she’s a Gaoian.”
“To hell with ‘legally speaking’.” Rebar scoffed. “Legally speaking, less than ten years ago we were non-sapient indigenous fauna.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss legal technicalities.” Regaari warned him. “By making her legally a Gaoian, the Females made her legally sapient, and that afforded her all the rights and protections guaranteed by the Dominion charter. One technicality used to defeat another, you see?”
“Forgive us if we’re not exactly gonna start cheerleading for the Dominion there, southpaw.” Rebar commented.
“If you ever see me waving those pompoms myself, then clearly I’ll have taken leave of my senses and as my friends I hope you would shoot me.” Regaari retorted, doing his best to imitate a grin. It seemed to work, as the human chuckled, and Ayma chittered along with them.
“Atmospheric flight.” Blaczynski interjected.
”-But he makes a valid point.” Ayma told them. “Irritating as legal technicalities might be, they’re never going to go away. Rather than railing against them and achieving nothing, it’s better to pick them up and use them as weapons.”
“Sticks in the craw, but she’s right…” Rebar mused, then frowned at something forward in the ship and edged through the doorway past Baseball to investigate. “What’s this thing?”
“Hmm? Oh, that’s the ship’s nanofactory.” Regaari told him.
“What’s it do?”
“Builds things. You call up a blueprint and it assembles the desired object from raw materials.”
“Like a 3D Printer?” Blaczynski asked.
“In the same way that this ship’s short-range FTL comms are like a telephone, yes.” Regaari agreed. “This is a small one. Clothing, basic tools, replacement parts for the ship… larger ones can assemble vehicles, prefabricated modules that can be assembled into cheap buildings, even other nanofactories.”
“Brother,” Baseball warned Rebar, in a friendly tone. “You know your techs won’t like it if you go and cream your suit.”
Rebar laughed, but continued to study the nanofactory with a rapt expression. “So, it can build anything?”
“Anything synthetic.” Regaari agreed. “No cooked dinners, pharmaceuticals, complex organic molecules or anything made out of, say, wood or bone, but… plastics, metals, glass. All you have to do is feed in the materials.”
“Could it build something that could make those things?” Rebar asked.
Regaari hesitated. “…You know, I’ve never thought of that. I suppose it probably could.”
“Dude, we have GOT to get one of these things.” Rebar aimed a look at him that Regaari guessed meant he wanted to ask if they might scavenge the one off his ship. He chittered.
“Sadly I cannot do that, my friend.” he apologised. “Not only would I be breaking a rather important law, but the Fathers who own this ship would be upset and in any case, it’s an integrated part of the Springing Ember’s fittings.”
“It’s not a module you can pull out and replace if it breaks?” Rebar frowned at it again.
“Oh, I could.” Regaari said. “It would just ruin the façade. This is a diplomatic vessel, Rebar. Our military vessels are much more… what’s that word? Spartan. Besides, as I said, sharing nanofactory technology with a species that does not yet have it is gravely illegal. This device could cause a traumatic economic upheaval for your whole species and delay your advancement. I assume you don’t want that.”
“Right.” It seemed that Rebar would have liked to argue for a second, but instead he stood up, sighed longingly at the nanofactory, then a thought struck him. “Dude! Do you mind if I make something?”
Regaari quirked his head, a gesture analogous to a human shrug. “I don’t mind.” he said. “Hmmm. Ship. Make a… make a diagnostic sensor.”
The ship chimed acknowledgement and Rebar took a step back as the ‘forge built up to operational power with an edge-of-hearing keen of capacitors charging before….
THUMP.
Modern Gaoian nanofactories—and this was one of the latest and most advanced models—could do in a few seconds what their primitive forebears had needed minutes to do. Admittedly, the built in accelerated-time fields helped there, but the result was that within five seconds of his issuing the order, the transparent door folded down and a pristine new engineering scanner was pushed onto the delivery tray.
Baseball grunted a surprised laugh. “Shit!”
“Damn, Dexter…” Rebar picked up the scanner delicately, as if he feared it might be hot, or would disintegrate at his mere touch.
“Give it a try.” Regaari told him. Rebar eagerly examined the little device, figured out how to turn it on, and aimed it at a nearby wall. Volumetric displays began to give him a detailed breakdown of the wall’s composition, internal structure, the conduits and systems running behind it, microscopic work fractures in the metal hull behind it, and the action of the ship’s internal damage control forcefield constantly sweeping over and repairing that wear and tear. His jaw dropped, and he set about waving his new toy at every system and fitting he could find.
“Final approach!” Blaczynski announced some minutes later, as Rebar was making enthusiastic noises about the infra-hull integrated crystal circuitry. “His pants still dry, Base?”
“Fifty-fifty.” Baseball grinned.
Regaari quirked his ears amusedly as the three of them settled into a round of friendly insults and ambled over to where Ayma was standing alone by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that ringed the Springing Ember’s lounge area. She’d retreated there probably as much to get away from the masculine aroma pervading the air around the SOR men as to try and compose her thoughts, he guessed.
“They’re very… male.” she whispered.
“Shoo was very female.” Regaari countered. “Similar pheromones.”
“It’s a good thing I’ve seen human movies though. That large one—Baseball?”
The man in question glanced in their direction on hearing his name, then politely looked away again.
“Yes?” Regaari asked.
“If I didn’t already know about ‘ethnicity’, his skin colour would have come as a surprise.”
“Be careful.” Regaari cautioned. “Humans can be quite offended by observations like that.”
“Oh… he can’t hear us, can he?” Ayma asked, glancing at him.
“You two talkin’ about me?” Base asked. “Cause I don’t speak Gaoian.”
“Sorry.” Regaari told him.
“Nada. Just wonderin’.”
“You’re very… large.” Ayma suggested. “It’s a little intimidating.”
“Not much I can do ‘bout that.” Base shrugged. “But if it helps you feel better, I’m a medic.”
“A… medic? I hadn’t anticipated that.” Ayma examined him. “Why does a medic need to be so large?”
“I’m what we call a Protector.” Baseball said, going down on one knee to try and mitigate his bulk. It didn’t work. “My job is to get people out of harm’s way and keep them there. Doesn’t matter if I have to skydive from orbit to do it, I go in there, I fix up people who need fixing, and I carry them out. Just like my buddy Horse did for your boy here.”
Ayma glanced at Regaari, who nodded. “Warhorse is shorter.” he said. “But more…” he made an inflating motion his paws and shrugged his own shoulders to hint at a muscularity that no Gaoian—not even the supremely physical Clan Stoneback—would ever approach.
“That’s my boy.” Baseball beamed.
“Uh, ladies and gentlefolk, we’re now coming in low over downtown Folctha, if you look out the port windows you should get a nice view of the river. Local time is eleven-twenty, and the weather is a gentle sixty-five degrees.” Blaczynski called. “Thank you for flying Air SOR, and please take care when opening your overhead lockers, as bags and luggage may have shifted during the flight.”
Regaari hadn’t landed at Cimbrean last time. Caledonia had warped directly to Gao to drop off its cargo of survivors from Capitol Station, on the grounds that the Gaoians were diplomatically better equipped to send them home. He was curious to see what a human settlement looked like from the air.
Folctha wasn’t large, but it did manage to impress him. The layout was equal parts logical and illogical—clearly at first they had built according to where the colonists wanted to go, and when the time had come to expand, they had allowed that early random development to remain and grown out from there sensibly and methodically.
The humans obviously loved the river, which flowed from a reservoir fed by artesian aquifers in the grounds of the alien palace that had once stood at the top of the valley. The buildings along its banks were separated from its waters by a wide green strip of parkland and trees, and the river itself was strung with three slender footbridges and a pair of wide, sturdy road bridges. The advertisements were colourful and pleasant, the construction sites were neatly organised and full of interesting yellows and blues and the roads, though wide and capacious, were for now populated more by cyclists and pedestrians than by larger vehicles.
The Springing Ember circled in low over a walled and forcefielded enclave that could only be the Alien Quarter, banked to race up the west bank of the river where relaxing pedestrians shielded their eyes to look up and watch it, shed its speed over the palace grounds and finally alighted, delicately, on a concrete circle in the grounds of a fenced base some distance from the town.
“Good landing.” he complimented Blaczynski.
“Eh. It was alright.” the SOR man’s cocky smile said he knew it had been damn near flawless, but didn’t want to make a big deal of it.
“Man. Never thought I’d get to see one of those things up close…” Rebar chuckled, casting a last longing glance at the nanofactory.
“Don’t you have one?”
“Think they’re building an experimental one in Germany. It’s the size of Caledonia and they reckon it’ll drink about about two hundred megawatts.”
Regaari reflected on that. “…Sometimes I forget that you’re still a long way behind us, technologically.”
“Dude, it’s only been like ten years since first contact.” Rebar said. “We’ve had warp for… what, eight years? Seven and a half?”
“Yeah, and our CO’s banging the chick who flew Pandora.” Baseball grinned as they stepped through the airlock.
“Now that’s an interesting fookin’ thing to hear.”
As ever, it was difficult to hear the humour in Powell’s bassy voice. You had to know that gruff and softly-spoken was his ground state of being to spot that he wasn’t remotely annoyed. All three of his men froze. “Wherever did you hear a rumour like that, Burgess?”
Baseball cleared his throat. “Rumour, sir?”
“My mistake, I must have misheard what you were saying.” Powell nodded. “Incidentally, the sand in the gravball chamber needs raking flat. I’ve always fancied it might be fun to turn that into some kind of Zen garden thing. Think I saw some suitable large rocks over by the gym. Sound like fun?”
Burgess didn’t do anything so obvious as deflate, but there was a definite resigned hint to his “Yes sir.”
“Get out of that suit and go play, lad. I’m sure our guests’ business is urgent and I mustn’t keep them waiting. I’ll be along to see how you’re getting on in a bit.”
“Yes sir.” Burgess vanished, double-time.
Powell turned to Rebar. “Owt to report?”
“Nice ship. Clean. Pilot’s yellow, but his friend’s beautifully green.”
Regaari blinked in confusion. “we’re… what?”
“Uh, sorry. In-joke. I’ll explain later.” Rebar promised.
“Don’t bother.” Regaari sighed. “I could study human in-jokes for a decade and by the time I finished you’d have generated twenty years more.”
The humans chuckled. “Shall we go de-suit, major?”
“Go on, lads. Well done. Regaari? And I assume this is Mother Ayma?”
Ayma extended a paw, which the major shook. He seemed to have got the hang of exactly how much of his prodigious strength he could safely use, and there was no hesitation in the gesture. “Stainless, I presume.”
“Major Owen Powell.”
“Thank you for having us.”
They ambled away from the Springing Ember. “Nice ship.” Powell commented.
“It’s not mine personally,” Regaari told him “it’s the clan’s. I persuaded Father Rithu that this trip would be politically advantageous.”
“Hope you didn’t lie to the old man, Dexter.”
“Not deliberately.” Regaari shrugged for Powell’s benefit. “I would appreciate if you didn’t make me a liar, though.”
“Aye, I reckon I might be able to accommodate you there…” the major mused. “Or rather, Admiral Knight can. Political’s a bit above my pay grade.”
“If I’m any judge, you know something that the admiral has planned.”
“Oh aye?”
“You’re as opaque as a window, Powell.”
“That so?”
“But commendably stubborn.” Regaari conceded.
“You’re not exactly Mister Subtle yourself, southpaw.” Powell chuckled. “We pick your friend up and you show up as fast as Gaoianly possible? If you even fooled Father Whatsisface, I’ll be impressed.”
Regaari had to admit, he had a poi nt.
”…How is she?” Ayma asked.
Powell stopped walking and turned to face her, thumbs tucked into his belt. “Something of a local celebrity in Vancouver.” he revealed. “Medically, all I’ve got for you is what Burgess and Arés told me during the debrief.”
“Which is?” Ayma pressed.
“Miss Chang was recovered in the company of two other humans, all suffering from severe decompression injuries. Apparently they were exposed to hard vacuum for a few seconds.”
Regaari chirruped his astonishment. “And they survived?” he asked, scarcely believing it. Vacuum was death, everyone knew that. He wouldn’t have thought that even deathworlders could survive it.
“Barely.” Powell grunted. “All three of them were dying from their injuries. Lucky for them they got picked up by two very fine young medics aboard a flying hospital with stasis equipment on board.”
”…And?” Ayma squeaked. She was doing her best to stay composed, but Regaari knew her intimately, and could spot that she was in anguish.
“And they’ve all since been discharged and are rebuilding their lives..” Powell said, nodding reassuringly. Both Ayma and Regaari sighed relief. “She got prompt and expert medical attention, she’s young and healthy…Burgess reckons she should suffer no long term ill health, and he’d know.”
“Where was she before that?”
”…Good question.” Powell answered, which didn’t answer the question at all.
“You must have got the ship’s ID off the life raft. What ship was she on?” Ayma pressed.
”…I can’t say.”
Regaari studied him. Humans were aliens, their body language was only tangentially similar to that of Gaoians, and he was still having trouble with some of their subtleties of tone and language, but he’d learned to trust his instincts with them. Besides, Powell was a plain-spoken man, and Regaari’s assessment was that he rarely said anything that wasn’t exactly what he meant…
“Do you mean that you don’t know, or that you do and you can’t tell me?” he asked, and caught the momentary tic in Powell’s eye that suggested he’d scored a hit.
”…I can’t say.”
“Ah. So it’s the latter.”
“Transparent I fookin’ might be, but penetrable I’m not, mate.”
“You can say much by withholding comment.” Regaari pointed out. “There’s a secret here. For her to have turned up in the company of humans means she was on a human starship… or at least on a starship allied to humans, hmm?”
“By God Holmes, you’ve cracked the case.” Powell snarked.
Regaari ignored the wise-crack. “Life raft and vacuum exposure means that the ship was destroyed. Which means…”
Ayma finished the thought for him. “She found Kirk.” she said. “Or Kirk found her.”
Powell didn’t need to say a thing. He simply spun and directed an incredulous stare at Ayma, then at Regaari. When Regaari folded his arms and pricked his ears up, it dawned on Powell that he couldn’t have spoken a clearer confirmation, and he swore violently, furious with himself.
“Shit.” He gritted his teeth thoughtfully at nothing for a second, then exhaled resignedly. “Okay. I need to know exactly how much you two know about Kirk.”