Книга: Ignite the Stars: An Anthology

IGNITE THE STARS

TALES OF THE ORION WAR

COLLECTION #2

BY M. D. COOPER & AMY DUBOFF

SPECIAL THANKS

Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Reads

Belxjander Draconis Serechai

Marti Panikkar

Lisa L. Richman

Mannie Killian

Mikkel Anderson

Belxjander Serechai

James Dean

Cover Art by M. D. Cooper

Editing by Jen McDonnell

Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered

trademarks of Michael Cooper.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A NEW ADDITION

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

MEMORIES

NEW ADDITION

RAPID EXFILTRATION

FAMILY

SHIP OUT

SERENDIPITY

FATHER KNOWS BEST?

A NIGHT OUT ON HIGH VICTORIA (by Amy DuBoff)

CAPTAIN

A NIGHT ON THE STATION

SECOND CHANCE

AN UNCLE’S UNDERSTANDING

THE PRAIRIE PARK

THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

Thanks for picking up this anthology of tales from the Orion War.

These stories follow events overlapping with the last third of Orion Rising, after the Defense of Carthage was complete. It is intended to be read after Orion Rising, and ideally before The Scipio Alliance—though one can certainly come back to it after reading later books.

Many readers have asked for the story of Faleena’s birth, which sets it in place as the first story. Following that, we learn of how Flaherty got off Airtha to eventually meet Sera and Tanis at Khardine.

Then we jump forward to the day when the I2 left New Canaan and get insight into Captain Espensen’s background, and how she very nearly ruined her future—or thought she did, at least.

Lastly, we spend some time with Sera and Finaeus as they have a much-needed chat between uncle and niece.

I hope you enjoy reading these stories. I especially like writing these small views into what makes the characters tick, and am glad to be able to share them with you.

M. D. Cooper

Danvers, 2018

A NEW ADDITION

BY M. D. COOPER

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

STELLAR DATE: 04.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2

REGION: In Orbit of Carthage, New Canaan System

One day after the celebration at Tanis’s Cabin for the Defense of Carthage…

Tanis peered over the rim of her coffee cup at Joe as he moved about the kitchen, preparing a light breakfast before their meeting with Earnest.

“You’re way too alert for this early in the morning,” Tanis said after her cup was half-empty.

Joe glanced over his shoulder at Tanis and laughed before turning back to his skillet of eggs and peppers. “It’s 0600. You’re gone by now, most days.”

“Gone, yes,” Tanis replied after taking another sip of her coffee. “Alert? No. At least not after a late night like we had yesterday. I was starting to think the guests would never leave. I had trouble sleeping, too…my mind kept racing.”

 Angela offered.

“Do you sing her to sleep?” Joe asked as he pulled the skillet off the heating surface and dished out two plates’ worth of food.

Angela laughed in their minds. <Sometimes. Which shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve done it for you. And the girls.>

Joe leaned across the table and set Tanis’s plate in front of her and followed with his own across from her. “I thought we were never to speak of that, Ang.”

Joe laughed and sat down. “You might have, but you had me snoring in minutes, so I don’t rightly recall.”

“In hindsight, I should have taken a song or two,” Tanis replied as Joe began to tuck into his eggs. “You know how it is. You think that if you just mull things over a bit longer, you’ll come to some meaningful conclusions.”

“Never works,” Joe said around a mouthful of food. “You’re closing in on three hundred. I would have thought you’d know that by now.”

Tanis picked up a piece of egg and flicked it at Joe. “I am nowhere near three hundred.”

The egg-bit’s trajectory was true and it would have struck Joe on the forehead if he hadn’t jerked to the side and caught it in his mouth.

“Showoff,” Tanis grumbled.

Joe tapped his head. “Half this skull-space up here is hardware dedicated to handling relativistic math on the fly. You think I can’t track the trajectory of a piece of egg moving at 1.1 meters per second?”

Tanis stared at Joe for a second and then burst out laughing. “You’re still just as much a cocksure pilot as when I first met you, you know that?”

Joe shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth and grinned insolently. “Of course I am. You’re a hard woman to please. Gotta make sure I live up to the promise.”

“I am not a ha—” Tanis stopped mid-word as Joe cocked an eyebrow.

<Yeah, I was going to have to mock you pretty hard if you said that out loud, Tanis.>

“Let’s just get breakfast done and get to Earnest’s lab.”

* * * * *

Every time Tanis walked into Earnest’s lab aboard the I2, it looked different than the visit prior. This time it was still recognizable as the same space, but only because Earnest had spent most of the last decade working on different projects across New Canaan.

Tanis and Joe wove through the jumbled mess of half-completed projects, most of which had purposes Tanis couldn’t even fathom.

“What do you suppose that’s for?” Joe asked, pointing at a device that looked like a long, narrow, ship-mounted laser cannon.

“Not sure…looks too small to be effective at long-range,” Tanis replied.

<That was an early version of the Mark VII polariton-based lasers we used until we upgraded everything to particle weapons,> Angela replied, refreshing Tanis’s memory. <You saw it back when we first settled in Victoria.>

“Yeah…I vaguely recall that. I remember the ones we put in service, just not that.”

 Angela sounded almost remorseful.

“Why?” Joe asked. “They have antimatter to power electron and proton beams. Not to mention gamma rays. Why do they care about lasers? Photons are far less effective weapons.”

“OK, got me there. Sometimes I have tunnel vision.”

Tanis squeezed Joe’s hand. “You and me both.”

They rounded a corner and arrived at an open space with an a-grav pad in the middle. Earnest stood at the edge and nodded in greeting.

“On time, even. Excellent.”

“What do you mean?” Tanis asked. “I’m always punctual.”

The chief engineer gave her a quizzical look. “I meant me.”

Joe barked a laugh, while Tanis replied with a soundless ‘Oh’.

“So, what do you think?” Earnest asked, gesturing at the a-grav pad.

“Why do we need that?” Joe asked as he approached it. “Aren’t we going to do the standard sim where we pick traits from a pseudo DNA strand, Angela does some randomizing and then adds the traits to a clone of her neural net, and voila?”

“I really don’t know,” Earnest said. “Angela just told me what she needed. We’re doing it in my lab for privacy—best not to let the masses know too much about your brain, Tanis, Angela.”

“OK, Ang, what gives?” Tanis asked.

<Wellll.> Angela drew the word out slowly. <Most of the time, the trait selections for an AI child—for organic ones, too—are deliberate, like you were talking about, Joe. But I want to do something different. I want us to take a journey through our lives. I’ve written—with some help from Earnest, don’t let him fool you—something that will take us through our pasts, remind us of the good and the bad. We’ll respond to the events, and the system I’ve made will select the traits we exhibit.>

“That sounds novel.” Tanis had never heard of this method before, but it sounded interesting.

<It’s closer to how AIs generate new neural nets between non-organics.>

“The base net, a clone of Angela’s, is here.” Earnest patted a small cylinder mounted atop an imaging system. “What you experience will feed into it, and we’ll bake ourselves a baby.”

“Faleena,” Joe said. “In just a short while, we’ll get to meet Faleena.”

<Daughter number three,> Angela added. <Getting a brood going.>

“Not a patch on what Jessica did,” Tanis replied. “Sixteen kids is a lot to catch up to.”

Joe’s warm laugh escaped his lips. “That’s for sure. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“We also don’t have the Dream to raise our kids in a flash.”

“You know…” Earnest began, touching his index finger to his lips. “I wonder if I could figure that out.”

<Earnest, we’ve talked about that.> Bob’s voice filled the air around them—an impressive feat, since he spoke into their minds. <The rest of humanity isn’t ready for what they did at Star City. I’m not convinced they were, either.>

“Your reservations notwithstanding, they did do it, old friend,” Earnest replied. “Though it’s not necessary to use the Dream in this case. Faleena will mature fast enough.”

<I’ll ensure it,> Angela replied.

Tanis knew that was true, but she could still feel Angela’s sadness—which mirrored her own. They would only have a short time with this daughter. Something like the Dream from Star City could have given them a lifetime before they had to leave.

Not going to get lost in that worry. Tanis forced the thoughts out of her mind. She didn’t want fear for the future to be present when she helped create her daughter.

MEMORIES

STELLAR DATE: 04.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2

REGION: In Orbit of Carthage, New Canaan System

Tanis’s breath caught as she suddenly found herself on the shores of the Melas Chasma, the great rift-valley sea on Mars.

Tall grass blew in a gentle wind, and small waves lapped gently at the water’s edge, a dozen meters from her feet. She looked up to see the blue sky punctuated by Mars’s artificial rings. First was the wide expanse of Mars 1, with its own lakes, rivers, mountains, and forests visible above her. Beyond that was the MCEE ring, with its spiderweb of stations and platforms hanging from long tethers.

What she saw was a memory, something from a time long ago. Mars was no longer a lush, green planet. The Mars 1 ring no longer hung above. The images Tanis had seen of its destruction flashed in her mind. All this—her childhood home—was gone.

The seashore where she now stood lay under a billion tons of wreckage, the remains of the ring that once hung above.

Mars 1. Humanity’s first megastructure. Destroyed by the Jovian Combine, which now styled itself as the Hegemony of Worlds, spreading their cruel regime across the stars.

A hand rested on her shoulder. “Relax, Tanis. We’re here to remember what was, not what is.”

Tanis turned to see Angela and Joe standing beside her. It was Joe’s hand on her shoulder, but Angela had spoken.

She reached around Joe and pinched Angela.

“Ow!”

Tanis smiled. “Just curious how real this sim is.”

“I like it here,” Joe said as he walked to the water’s edge. “It’s been a while since we used a sim to visit.”

“It’s not the same…knowing what happened.” Tanis gestured at the Mars 1 ring overhead.

Joe nodded. “Yeah, it’s what we get for outliving civilizations. Nothing lasts forever.”

Tanis wished it would have. To stand on these shores would have been the only reason she’d ever consider going back to Sol. Though she feared a return may be necessary someday, regardless.

Although, with Sera’s plan to have the Scipian Empire take on the Hegemony of Worlds, maybe she wouldn’t have to. Let someone else clean up humanity’s homeworld. Tanis was done with it.

Angela reached for her hand. “Tanis, you need to stop worrying about the past and future so much. It’s not what we’re here for.”

Tanis turned and looked into Angela’s eyes. Her friend so rarely used a physical Avatar anymore. Largely because when the AI did it without thinking, she invariably made an avatar that looked like Tanis’s twin.

Like she did right now—though her eyes were green, not blue, and her hair had a reddish tint.

Joe walked to the water’s edge, then turned and stared at the two women. “Is it wrong that I love both of you?”

His eyes were troubled, and Tanis wanted to remove this worry for him. “Joe, you let Angela sing you to sleep—and she does it. This isn’t news to either of us.”

Both Tanis and Angela reached out for him, and the trio embraced on the shores where Tanis had once played as a young girl, dreaming of going to space and seeing what wonders the universe held.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them once more, they were standing in a garden filled with an abundance of plants laden with fruit and vegetables.

“Oh ho!” Joe cried out as he looked around. “Boy did I spend a lot of time pulling weeds in here!”

Tanis looked into the sky and saw a fusion sun above. By the spectrum, she pegged it as a GE model FS-12A. “The Evans’s household on Venus, I presume?”

“One and the same,” Joe replied as he walked out into the rows and examined a tomato plant. “I loved coming out here—well, not at first. Mom always said that she didn’t need bots to manage her garden, she had a dozen kids. What else were they good for, if not pulling weeds?”

“It’s nice to know that this might still be here,” Angela added as she walked through the garden toward one of the trees and plucked a pear.

“Whoa now!” Joe laughed. “Mom didn’t like unauthorized fruit-picking. She had a plan for every part of the yield.”

Angela grinned as she took a bite of the pear, slurping as the juices spilled down her chin. “Damn! That’s harder to do than I thought!”

“Juices will be juicy.” Joe winked as he walked back to Tanis and took her hand. “Whatcha thinking, love?”

Tanis let a rueful laugh slip out. “About how very different your home was than mine. My father would have abhorred a garden. I’m sure he would have said something like, ‘Growing plants like this is an inefficient use of resources!’”

Angela snorted, dribbling more pear juice down her chin. “You do your father well.”

“I forget that you met him a few times,” Tanis said to Angela.

“Indeed, I did. He was bit of an ass. But I wonder what he’d think of what we’ve done.”

“Stars,” Tanis sighed. “He would have dissected the shit out of every decision I ever made.”

“I bet he would have been proud.” Joe held up his hands, apparently ready for the retort Tanis was readying. “Seriously, he would be. I know there’s a temptation as a father to pick apart your children’s efforts to help them do better. Yes, your dad was a serious dick in a lot of ways, but he was always trying to help, in his misguided fashion.”

“ ‘Misguided’ is putting it lightly,” Tanis said as she leaned against a column that supported a trellis. “That man never saw a compliment that he couldn’t turn backhanded.”

“You know, Tanis,” Angela said. “We are supposed to be picking out good memories. Things we want to pass on to our daughter.”

“We are,” Joe said. “Tanis has steel in her spine—metaphorically as well as physically. Where do you think that came from?”

“Yay, my childhood was a crucible.” Tanis waved a hand in the air, signaling mock victory, then she straightened. “No, you’re right, Angela. Mopey dopey isn’t my thing. I think seeing the Melas Chasma got me messed up in the head. I’m ready.”

The garden disappeared, and they were suddenly on the side of a mountain, standing on a narrow ledge, with a sharp, thousand-meter drop centimeters from their feet.

“Now, this is more like it!” Tanis exclaimed.

“Where the heck are we now?” Joe asked, yelling to be heard over the winds whipping around them.

“Pavonis Mons!” Tanis shouted back. “This is where I had my first real climb.”

Joe looked down at the drop below their feet. “I thought Pavonis Mons had gentle slopes!”

“Yeah,” Tanis nodded. “It mostly does, but there’s an escarpment here on the southwestern flank. It’s where most kids I knew growing up did their initial climbs.”

“You Marsians are nuts,” Joe said, shaking his head. “How old were you when you did this?”

“Fourteen. Though I had a rebreather, and the cliffs were patrolled by drones. No one died up here, but you might get battered a bit if you fell.”

An especially strong gust of wind whipped past, and Tanis felt it tug at her, pulling her away from the cliff face.

“I’ll admit,” Angela called out. “This is exhilarating!”

Joe shook his head and laughed. “And here I thought I was the crazy flyboy.”

“Do I normally show caution, or ease into things?” Tanis retorted. “You’ve made fun of me for that more than once.”

“Feel more like yourself?” Angela asked Tanis.

“Stars, yes! Thanks, Ang. You know just what a girl needs.”

Angela nodded and touched Tanis’s head. “Even though I’m out here, I’m still in there. I can feel what you feel.”

“What would happen if I stepped off the cliff?” Joe asked. “How real is this sim?”

“Now who’s the thrill-seeker?” Tanis laughed as she grabbed Joe’s hand, and saw him grab Angela’s. They looked at one another, each with a grin on their faces.

“Leap before you look!” Angela called out, and all three stepped off the cliff as one.

They fell for a moment and then landed on something hard. Tanis looked around and saw that the sky was black, and they were standing on a gleaming silver hull.

“It’s the Intrepid,” she said, somehow speaking aloud, though they were in the cold vacuum of space.

“Back when she was new,” Joe added, bending down and patting the hull.

“Another of our homes.” Angela nodded appreciatively. “The home.”

Tanis laid down on the ship’s hull, staring up at the stars. “The journey became the destination. Where are we, anyway—wait, never mind. We’re in Sol, or close to it. The Centaur’s front leg is in the right place.”

“This is when we passed out of Sol’s heliosphere,” Angela supplied.

Joe laid down beside Tanis and folded his hands behind his head. “When we all really left home for the first time.”

“We were all in stasis by this point,” Tanis said, glancing over at Angela. “Why are we seeing this?”

Angela shrugged. “Just wanted to see how we all felt being here, thinking of it.”

“I like it,” Joe said. “Feels good to think of this time, of what lay ahead.”

Tanis nodded. “Tough times, but we pulled through.”

Joe unclasped his hands and reached over to Tanis, patting her on the stomach. “Did a lot of good, too.”

“My stomach did? I’m not gestating Faleena in there, you know. She’s growing in our noggins.”

Joe laughed. The sound was infectious, and Tanis joined in a moment before Angela did.

“I patted your stomach because it’s what I could reach without worrying about elbowing you in the face. I guess I could have patted your breast. I’ll do that next time.”

“Sure, promises, promises.”

“Easy, you two,” Angela said. “No shenanigans. I don’t want to be left out.”

Joe looked over at Angela, who lay on his other side. “Who said you’d be left out?”

Tanis propped herself up onto her elbow to see her friend’s response.

Angela was a bit wide-eyed. “Well, that’s a twist.”

“Is it?” Joe asked. “Look at you, Angela; you’re almost identical to Tanis now. You never used to portray yourself that way. Half the time when you speak, I hear Tanis’s words coming from you—” Joe turned his head to look at Tanis. “And half the time, I hear Angela in you. I don’t think it’s possible to love one of you and not the other. I’m not even certain how separate you two even are anymore.”

Tanis felt an uncertain expression creep across her face. She could see it mirrored on Angela’s. Did Angela really feel uncertain, or was her otherself showing the same expression because what one felt, the other did as well?

“Sometimes we can’t tell ourselves apart, either,” Tanis admitted. “Certain thoughts are clearly mine, and others are Angela’s, but some…some things seem to come from us both at the same time.”

“I don’t know why you worry about that so much with me.” Joe’s voice was compassionate, but a little strident. “I came to accept this years ago…back on the Gamma Base at Kapteyn’s. Honestly, it makes things easier.”

“It does?” Angela asked.

“Yeah,” Joe replied. “Angela, you’re a fantastic person. And I’ve spent almost as much time with you as I have with Tanis.”

“Technically, you’ve spent the exact same amount of time with me as with Tanis.”

Tanis rolled her eyes. “Har, har, Ang. Now that came just from you.”

Joe slid his left arm under Tanis’s head, and his right under Angela’s, pulling them both close. “You’re not my wives; you’re my wife.

Tanis leaned forward to brush her lips against Joe’s cheek at the same time that Angela did. At first, she wondered why her otherself had done that, but then she realized they were moving in concert, mirrors of each other. She felt herself in both bodies, and felt Angela in both, as well.

“This is strange,” Angela said as she pressed her lips against Joe’s neck.

“More like ‘fantastic’, if you ask me, Angela.” Joe smiled broadly.

“I’m Tanis,” Angela said.

“And I’m Tanis,” Tanis added.

Joe looked from Angela to Tanis, confusion and a little concern in his eyes.

“Are you two OK? If you’re in both, Tanis…Where’s Angela?”

“Here,” both Tanis and Angela said at once.

“Are you…finally one person?” Joe asked.

“No,” Tanis said with Angela’s voice. “Well, maybe right now, in this moment, we are.”

Tanis-Angela leaned back over Joe and planted her lips on his, while Angela-Tanis unfastened his shirt.

Joe closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Not going to argue with this, love, but I thought we were making a baby with our minds, not our bodies.”

“Our bodies are floating above the a-grav pad in Earnest’s lab,” Angelia-Tanis said. “We are using our minds.”

Joe laughed. “OK, if that’s how you want to play this.”

NEW ADDITION

STELLAR DATE: 04.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2

REGION: In Orbit of Carthage, New Canaan System

After their lovemaking, the trio traveled through dozens more memories. They experienced times during their long solitude aboard the Intrepid, the years building the Victoria colony, Tanis’s abduction, and Joe’s search.

A dozen more past experiences came and went, the struggles and victories that made them who they were coming back into their minds.

Eventually, they relived the final memory that Angela had selected, the reunion with Cary and Saanvi after the girls had been found in the wreckage of the Trisilieds fleet.

As they stood in the hospital room, watching themselves with their daughters, Angela turned to Tanis and Joe, a wide smile creeping across her lips.

“We’ve done it,” she whispered. “We’ve made another daughter. Faleena is alive.”

“Born of our minds.” Joe said as he gazed at the memory from just a few short weeks ago.

Angela touched his cheek and then wrapped an arm around Tanis. “And maybe a bit of our bodies, too.”

The memory faded, and Tanis found herself alone in darkness for a moment before Earnest’s lab swam into place around her.

She blinked and realized that her limbs were entwined with Joe’s as they floated in the a-grav column.

Joe opened his eyes and smiled as his gaze settled on Tanis. “Well that was fun, we should do that again sometime.”

“To make another child?” Tanis asked.

“Sure,” Joe said with a small shrug. “Or maybe do it just for pleasure.”

<No objections here,> Angela replied. <I’ll admit…I’ve never felt some of those things before. Even living in Tanis’s mind, it was somehow different this time.>

“Trust me,” Tanis grinned. “It was different for me, too.”

The sound of a throat being cleared reminded Tanis that Earnest was present, and she turned to look in his direction. His face was a little red as he stood beside the imaging system.

“We didn’t…uh…do anything inappropriate, did we?” Tanis asked.

“Well, you’re married, so there’s nothing wrong with it—I just didn’t expect to see it.”

“Our clothes are still on,” Joe said with a wink. “It couldn’t have been anything too extreme.”

“I would have thought so, too,” Earnest said with a manufactured look of shock on his face. “But it turns out there’s a lot you can do with clothes on.”

“Stop it,” Tanis chided as the a-grav column lowered them back down to the deck, and she pulled out her hard-Link cable. “Is she…conscious?”

<She is,> Angela’s avatar was beaming in their minds. A small girl was holding her hand, and Angela picked her up. <Faleena, say ‘hi’ to your other mother and your father.>

Faleena’s voice was like the sound of leaves blowing in a light wind, with rain pattering around. <Hi, Mom and Dad.>

It was one of the most beautiful sounds Tanis had ever heard.

THE END

RAPID EXFILTRATION

BY M. D. COOPER

FAMILY

STELLAR DATE: 03.29.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Genmere District

REGION: Airtha, Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance

Flaherty held back a sigh and schooled his expression to hide the worry that was building inside. He reached across the table for his daughter’s hand, but she pulled hers away, a mixture of anger and fear behind her hazel eyes.

“Mary.” Flaherty ensured his voice was calm. “I understand that you only recently moved, and that you just got the promotion at your job. I am happy for your accomplishments, I really am. You’ve come so far and make me a proud father every day.”

Mary’s expression softened at his words, but only a little. She had too much of her mother in her to let flattery sway her overmuch.

“I don’t see how. You’re telling me to throw it all away. You must not hold my ‘accomplishments’ in any great esteem.” Her delivery was calm, but he could see a tremor in her lips. Deep down, she had to know that her father would not make such a request lightly, that something must be very wrong.

“I do, but I am.” Flaherty gave a single nod, his eyes not breaking contact with hers. “I need you to understand this in the simplest of terms. Those accomplishments won’t mean a thing if you’re dead.”

“Dead? Dad, what in the light are you talking about?”

Her turn of speech gave him momentary pause. ‘What in the light.’ He’d heard that saying with increasing frequency over the past few years.

At first, he thought it just meant the stars’ light, or perhaps Airtha’s light. But with the recent news, he wondered if it had been seeded in preparation for the coup he believed had occurred over the past day.

“I’m sorry, but being my daughter has put you at great risk, Mary,” Flaherty replied.

“Dad,” Mary said, a scoffing sound escaping her lips. “You’re a close friend of Sera Tomlinson. I even heard a rumor that her father is considering turning over the presidency to her. What could you fear that she can’t protect us from?”

His mind went to the woman he’d met a few hours ago. Whoever…whatever she was.

“The person…she is not Sera Tomlinson.” Flaherty shook his head. “It’s close—oh, so close. But there’s a piece that’s missing.”

“Dad. You’re making absolutely no sense.”

Flaherty rose from his chair and ran a hand through his long hair, tightening the band that held it secure. “You’re right about that. But I know this. Sera Tomlinson—my Sera Tomlinson—left with her father for New Canaan a few days ago. Their departure was kept quiet, so few knew of it. I also know that they have not returned. Yet Sera reached out to me today, and we met.”

“Then she has returned.”

“Daughter mine, you know I am a Sinshea. I cannot lie. The person I met today was a perfect clone of Sera—well, a clone of Sera as she was some time ago. But she was not Sera in mind.”

Mary ran a hand down her cheek as she stared up at Flaherty. “OK. You can’t lie. You think that Sera is gone, and you met with someone who was not Sera. But why should I think that, and why would this not-Sera try to harm you?”

Flaherty shrugged. “It could be because I told her that I didn’t believe she was Sera. Then she had her guards try to kill me.”

“Dad! Shit! Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“I was getting there, but then you got angry at me.”

Mary was already moving, rushing into her bedroom to grab a bag, stuffing a change of clothing and a few personal effects inside.

“If she tried to kill you, she’ll come for us! We have to get Drew!” she called out to him.

“I have someone picking him up. A trusted friend.”

Mary reappeared at her bedroom’s doorway, her gaze narrow. “A friend?”

“Trusted friend. Leeroy.”

“Dammit, Dad! I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but Leeroy and I are not involved anymore.”

“Doesn’t make him any less trustworthy,” Flaherty replied. “Drew knows him and will go along. They’ll meet us at the rendezvous.”

Mary grabbed a jacket and shouldered her bag, looking around her home. “How long do I have?”

Flaherty handed his daughter a pulse pistol. “Do you remember how to use this?”

She grabbed it from him, checked the charge and the emitter. “Yeah, I still practice, you know that.”

“Good.”

A dull thud shook the floor—the pulse-mine he had planted on her front step. He checked the drones he’d deployed above the hill and saw three figures laying prone on Mary’s front lawn.

The drones didn’t spot anyone else, but a lack of visual confirmation was hardly evidence of safety.

Flaherty nodded to Mary. “Time to go. Come.”

She didn’t say another word, though more than one disgruntled look came his way as they ran through her home and out the rear door.

Mary’s home was on a terraced hill in Airtha’s Genmere district. Her front door looked out over sweeping hills covered in blooming foliage, but the back door emptied out into a passageway that ran through the center of the hill.

“We’re sitting ducks in here,” Mary muttered.

“Yes.”

Flaherty stopped three doors down from Mary’s house and planted a lockhak over the access panel. A small light on the device turned red, then yellow, then green.

He grabbed the lockhak and pushed the door open.

“Quickly,” he said, ushering Mary inside.

“Light above, I hope Sally’s not home, she’s going to be piiiissed.”

Flaherty ignored the comment and walked through the house to the bay window at the front, standing a meter back as he peered through the glass.

This residence—Sally’s, it would seem—looked out on the other side of the hill from his daughter’s, and from what he could see, there was no sign of any enemies.

He wondered who not-Sera would send after him. It could be anyone from Airthan police to TSF soldiers, Hand agents, Greys, or any of the other elite forces the Transcend government operated.

Or worse.

The images he’d seen of the TSF Combat Automatons attacking Secretary Adrienne’s shuttle on High Airtha just the day before came to mind. He didn’t know if the secretary had survived, but there had been rumors of not-Sera’s presence there, too.

What little he had learned came from a friend in the High Airtha Police Department. A friend who had not responded to any attempts at communication in the last four hours.

Mary was at his side, staring out the window. “What are we looking for?”

“Everything,” he replied. “I have a car at the road two levels down.”

“They can track cars,” Mary cautioned. “We need to get deeper into the ring.”

“You’re right. We will. Come.”

Flaherty pushed the door open and held his breath as he stepped out into the Airthan star’s sharp white light. He didn’t pause as he walked down the front walk, glad that Mary was close behind. When they reached the shared pathway, he kept close to the shrubbery at the edge of the road, looking up the terraced hill to see if any pursuers were coming over the top.

The team not-Sera had sent was too small. She would know that three lightly armored agents wouldn’t be able to bring him in. There had to be others nearby.

<Do you have any drones out?> Mary asked. 

Flaherty nodded and passed two feeds from further up the hill to her, glad she remembered her training well enough to ask for them.

They turned down a staircase with a bower of branches overhead and came to the road where his car waited.

It was a sleek and low sport-racer. One that he’d upgraded with moderate stealth systems and anti-EM capabilities. An eye could spot the car, but it was almost entirely invisible on the higher end of the EM spectrum.

But Flaherty already knew they had eyes on the hill, and there was no way they wouldn’t cover the rear.

He held up a hand and gestured for Mary to wait, while he walked back up the cover path and worked his way further along the hill, above a rock outcropping. He deployed a surveillance countermeasure drone, hoping his Hand-issued tech was better than his prey’s.

At twenty meters from the outcropping, Flaherty stopped and cycled his vision to focus in.

Sure enough, there was a stealthed sniper on the rock. Flaherty couldn’t see the person, but he could make out a small tuft of grass on the rock, flattened by a body on top.

Must be local police. Greys or Hand would have better stealth tech.

There was no time to wonder why not-Sera had sent the cops—and not anyone else—as he crept down the hillside toward the rock.

He gauged where the shooter had to be laying, in order to get a line of sight on the car, and fired three pulse blasts.

A series of scrapes and scuffling sounds came from the surface of the stone, and pebbles and dirt moved around under the invisible person.

Flaherty decided not to fire another shot and instead rushed down the hillside and delivered a kick to what he hoped was the figure’s head.

A woman’s groan came, and Flaherty knelt down, putting his knee on what he believed to be her stomach.

“Shut off your stealth tech, or I’ll just kill you,” he whispered.

“OK,” the invisible figure wheezed.

The woman’s body shimmered into view, as did a large caliber sniper rifle.

“Smart rounds?” he asked, and the woman nodded.

“No opportunity to surrender, eh? Just blow the car when we get in.”

“Orders,” she wheezed.

“How many are there?” Flaherty asked.

The woman didn’t reply, and her face was covered by her mask. He pulled it off and leant close to her face. “Numbers.”

“Six.”

Flaherty shook his head, then grabbed her hair and slammed her head into the rock. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to make her rethink her life choices.

<We’re clear, get in the car,> he called back to Mary.

<Was anyone out there?>

He grabbed the sniper rifle and set off down the hillside. <Just one.>

<You sure?>

<Yeah, she wasn’t a very good liar.>

Flaherty reached the car a half-minute later to find Mary waiting at the right-side door. He gestured for her to get in as he pulled open his door and placed the sniper rifle in the back.

“That’s some serious hardware,” Mary said as they settled into their seats.

“Enough to blow the car,” Flaherty replied as he activated the vehicle and took off. No point in waiting around to see if the woman had not been lying about more enemies lying in wait.

He set the car to drive on a pre-programmed route down the hill while he ran the scan suite, checking for any further hostiles. Luckily, nothing showed up other than residents in their homes, and the regular traffic on the hill.

Then Mary grabbed his arm. “Two gunships approaching, seven kilometers out. They’re staying low, only a dozen meters above the ground.”

OK, regular stuff…and gunships.

He tapped the drone feeds she was watching and spotted the enemies. “Good work. Keep an eye out for others.”

There was no reason to believe that the gunships had seen them yet, but there was also no reason to believe that those were the only enemies approaching.

Though a pair of heavily armed gunships approaching would terrify most people, it was comforting to Flaherty. Not-Sera was using conventional means against him, which meant he was less likely to encounter a gunship around the next corner on the road.

OK…still could be a gunship around the corner, but it’s a bit less likely.

Flaherty took over manual control of the car and pushed the throttle forward. He activated the car’s EM dampening, which would make it even harder for the approaching attack craft to spot them.

“You should go for Tunnel 72,” Mary suggested.

Flaherty grunted in acknowledgement; Tunnel 72 was on his list of possible egress routes.

Consisting of one hundred and ten lanes of horizontal traffic, and thirty of vertical, the tunnel was tucked half a kilometer beneath the surface of the ring. At this time of day, it would be packed, the volume of vehicles creating a near-perfect hiding place—both physically and electromagnetically.

The problem with Tunnel 72 was that it had traffic shunting systems that could move vehicles to other routes, or just stop them altogether, creating an impassible three-dimensional gridlock.

“Seriously, Dad. Tunnel 72 is our best bet. I know what you’re thinking, but they can lock down the other routes faster, and we can’t drive around on the ring’s surface with gunships hunting us.”

“OK,” he nodded, and turned the car off the surface road at the first entrance to the subterranean tunnel system.

Several other cars were ahead of them on the descent-ramp, and he swerved into the oncoming lane to pass the vehicles.

“Dad…that’s a hauler coming our way!” Mary braced herself as a large, boxy vehicle rounded the bend, heading straight for them.

Flaherty only grunted as he pushed the accelerator all the way forward and sped past the remaining slow-moving cars, swerving back into their lane a scant few meters before hitting the hauler.

“Piece of cake,” he said, looking for the exit to drop further down into the ring.

“Next right,” Mary said, her breath coming quickly as she shot him a dark look.

At the exit, there was a long, sloping road to bring cars down to Tunnel 72. The road wrapped around a large vertical shaft through which a-grav transports flitted.

Flaherty tapped into the traffic network, looking at the patterns in the shaft for a moment before twisting the controls sharply and boosting the car’s a-grav systems.

They surged into the air and flew over the decorative rocks and shrubbery at the edge of the road, slotting into a clear pocket in the shaft traffic.

Mary sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything as Flaherty pointed the nose of the car down and killed its vertical a-grav lift. They dropped like a rock, and he worked the lateral a-grav emitters to weave in and out of the transports while the ring’s motion force tried to send them into the anti-spinward wall of the shaft.

“I don’t know why they made these shafts straight…they should have angled them,” Mary muttered as Flaherty wove around the other shaft traffic.

He didn’t respond, concentrating on lining up to drop into the top layer of traffic in Tunnel 72—which he managed to pull off with only a light bump against a hauler.

“Just be glad they didn’t enforce maglev as strictly here,” he said while trying to keep his breathing even, pushing the car toward its max speed of three hundred meters per second.

“Yeah…well…starting to wish they did!” Mary said through clenched teeth as Flaherty squeezed the car between the top level of traffic and the roof of the tunnel.

“We’ll drop down into lower traffic in a minute,” Flaherty grunted as he swerved around vehicles entering from a shaft above. “We’re close to the rendezvous. Grab the glide packs from the back.”

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Mary turned and grabbed the two packs.

“Shit, I think I saw two drones drop in back there!” Mary called out.

“I disabled the biolock on the sniper rifle. Take them out!” Flaherty ordered.

“What? Dad! I’ve never fired anything like this!”

Flaherty swerved around a large hauler that consumed two lanes, and rotated the car onto its side to squeeze between it and another truck. He heard Mary fall sideways onto the side of the car, and then back onto her seat as he leveled out again.

“It’s a smart gun. It’ll guide you. Activate it, find your target, fire.”

“Just keep us level, for light’s sake,” Mary muttered.

Flaherty did his best, though the ride was still far from smooth.

“Ok…” Flaherty heard is daughter whisper as she crouched on her seat, the gun’s bipod resting on the back dash. He quickly rolled his window down, creating an outlet for the pressure wave the weapon would create inside the vehicle, not to mention the sound.

“Watch the re—” he began to say as Mary fired.

The gun threw her back against the dashboard, and she cried out in pain as her head cracked against the windscreen.

“—coil.”

His right ear rang so loudly he could barely hear Mary as she yelled at him.

“Fuck! Thanks for the timely warning, Dad.”

“Did you get it?” Flaherty hollered back over the sounds of the traffic and their impaired hearing—though that was rapidly clearing up for him. She may be hearing bells for some time.

Mary struggled forward once more and looked out the back window. “Shit, yeah…blew it to smithereens. I hope no one got hurt.”

“Mostly automated transports up here,” Flaherty replied. “Where’s the other one?”

He could see Mary peering around, swinging the rifle side-to-side as she used its holosights to search for the other drone.

“Shit! Duck!”

Flaherty dropped his head as shots hit the car, some bouncing off, some going clear through.

He didn’t have time to check himself over as Mary swung the rifle around while calling out, “Stay down!”

Flaherty acquiesced, staying hunched forward, and felt the barrel of the gun resting on his back. It wasn’t too hot yet, but if she fired more than a few—

A trio of rounds burst from the barrel and his right ear seemed to shut down entirely. He did see an explosion outside the car, and Mary sat back in her seat, lifting the hot barrel off his back.

He saw her lips move, but couldn’t hear a word she was saying—she probably couldn’t, either.

<Get the glide packs,> he reminded her, dropping the car down into the next level of traffic.

He saw her nod silently, her face a mixture of fear and excitement.

Flaherty didn’t blame her. Firing a weapon like that rifle was a rush when you weren’t doing it inside a vehicle moving at three hundred meters per second.

She managed to get the rifle tucked down between them, and then reached into the back for the glide packs. <Diving out of the car, I take it?> her mental tone was calm, but he could see her hands shaking as she pulled the glide packs into the front seat.

Flaherty nodded. <I’ll slow down first.>

<Gee, thanks, Dad. Think I’ll ever hear again?>

<Give it a few minutes. It’ll be back soon.>

Lane by lane and level by level, he worked his way down through Tunnel 72’s traffic. The car had racked up over seventy fines, but the vehicle’s remote kill-system was disabled, and the car wasn’t connected to Flaherty in any way.

More drones had been deployed—or, he expected they had—but so far none were visible around them. That was the difficulty for law enforcement. They couldn’t put everyone at risk to catch one speeding car—even if it was firing on drones.

Flaherty, on the other hand, had no compunctions about scaring the crap out of other drivers if it meant saving his daughter.

When he reached the second to lowest level of traffic—the bottom consisting of maglevs and bulk haulers without a-grav—he slowed to match the flow of traffic and set the car back to autopilot.

Mary handed him the second glide pack, and he slid his arms through the loops, pulling it snug to his chest.

“I can finally hear again…mostly,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Good. On three, then,” he said. “One, two, three!”

They kicked their doors open and jumped out of the car, gliding alongside the vehicle for a moment before Flaherty signaled Mary to follow him.

He tucked into the left-hand side of the tunnel as the car sped off once more, pulling back up into the main flow of traffic. Flaherty turned his attention to the task at hand, searching for the maintenance shaft showed by the ring’s schematics overlaid on his HUD.

<You know they have cameras down here; they’ll have seen us get out of the car,> Mary said as she pulled up beside him.

 Flaherty replied as he spotted the narrow maintenance shaft and turned into it.

<And the cameras on all those cars, haulers, and maglevs?>

<A localized network routing issue is going to make a mess of all the data feeds to the NSAI analysts. We should have thirty minutes before they realize where we went.>

Flaherty glanced back at his daughter to see her lips drawn in a thin line. She didn’t speak further, and he didn’t offer any more information.

There would be plenty of time for her to lay into him when they got on the ship.

SHIP OUT

STELLAR DATE: 03.29.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Ring Service Tunnel 183.AA91.CC2

REGION: Airtha, Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance

Mary set down on the platform beside her father and pulled off the glide pack while looking out over the tunnel they’d stopped in.

It angled down at just over twenty degrees, was dimly lit, and probably would eventually dump right out of the ring into space.

“Your pack,” Flaherty said, holding out his hand.

Mary handed hers over, and he grunted in acknowledgement. She watched as he linked the two glide packs together and programmed a flight path into them.

Then her father gave a single nod of satisfaction and tossed the glide packs back into the shaft, where they sped off.

“Should buy us a bit more time,” he said before turning to the door leading off the platform.

“Any word from Leeroy?” Mary knew not to Link to the networks, but she hoped that her father had managed some way to spoof his connection, so he could keep tabs on things.

“No,” Flaherty replied as he placed his lockhak over the access panel and took a step back. “I don’t want to risk contact. If there was a problem, Leeroy would let me know.”

“What if the problem is that he’s dead?” Mary asked, working to keep back the panic that had been at the edge of her mind since her father whisked her away. A panic that was somehow exacerbated by the adrenaline rush from firing the sniper rifle.

“Mary,” her father turned and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Not-Sera wants Drew as leverage over me. If she had him, she’d use him for that. They won’t kill him.”

“There are still a lot—” Mary stopped talking. She didn’t want to think of the things that could happen to her son.

“Drew’s a smart kid, Mary. Hell, he’s not even a kid anymore. He’s twenty-five years old.”

Mary bit her lip as she stared into her father’s serious, entirely unperturbable eyes. That was the best, and worst, thing about him—no matter what happened, he never lost his cool.

For a second, she wanted to slap him, get him to react to the danger they were in—that he’d placed them in. But instead, she took a step forward and wrapped her arms around his broad chest.

“You don’t let anything happen to him,” she whispered. “He’s the most important thing in the universe to me.”

Her father’s thick arms settled around her. “I won’t. Not to either of you. I feel the same way about you that you feel about him. You’re both precious to me.”

Mary saw the light on the lockhak change color. “Door’s open.”

Flaherty nodded but didn’t step away for another moment.

How is it that he can be such a fantastic dad while being a terrible father? Or is it the other way around?

He kissed her head and then turned to the door, sliding it open with one hand while detaching the lockhak with the other.

“C’mon. It’s not too much further.”

Mary picked up her pack and stepped into the passageway while her father pulled the door shut behind them.

“Turn right, then left, then left, then pass seven intersections, right, left, two intersections, right,” he said softly as he took the lead, moving in his strident, yet cautious way. “Repeat it back.”

Mary sighed. Of course she could repeat it. With her mental mods, her short-term memory was perfect. “Right, left, left, seven intersections, right, left, two intersections, right.”

“Wrong,” Flaherty said. “You would have turned right at the seventh intersection. Pass seven, then right. I shouldn’t need to remind you about our nomenclature.”

She couldn’t resist an eyeroll. “You don’t. I knew what you meant.”

“Good.”

Though her father’s directions made it seem as though the journey would be quick, the intersections in the narrow tunnels were widely separated. Twenty minutes had gone by, and they’d just passed the seventh intersection before the second-to-last right turn, when her father stopped and held up his hand.

Mary pulled up behind him and waited for his go-ahead. He had already halted several times, but he seemed more tensed this time.

She daren’t speak, and without a narrow-band Link connection, it was too risky to attempt a direct connect to her father to ask what he’d heard—her ears were still ringing, but she knew that with his mods, he’d be fine by now.

Then his hand touched her shoulder, and she almost cried out, but somehow managed to hold back the sound as he gestured for her to crouch behind a support column fixed to the passage’s wall.

With a short nod, she did as he instructed, carefully setting her bag down and drawing her pulse pistol. She knew his desire was to keep her out of combat—but he also expected her to fight if necessary.

She peeked around the column and watched her father creep down the passage, completely silent—at least to her ears.

Mary suspected that her father would have some nano probes deployed, but not many. He always said that relying too heavily on artificial eyes made you doubt the ones in your head.

She sat back, keeping an eye out toward the direction they’d come, wondering what her father heard.

Stars, the only thing I can hear—aside from this ringing—is my thundering heart, Mary chided herself.

Her head back, she breathed out slowly, then held her breath a moment before drawing air in through her nose. She repeated the process, slowing her heart rate, the actions triggering her lungs to open up and draw in additional oxygen.

There, getting to A-State.

That was the name her father had given to the condition of being one with your body, awareness expanded to take in one’s surroundings without having to focus on anything.

“You just have to open yourself up to absorb your surroundings,” he had always said.

Mary recalled those lessons, where he had tried to teach her how to reach perfect calm, to feel the world around herself as though it were an organism, and she a cell in its body.

Sometimes she’d come close, but Mary was certain she was never as connected to her surroundings as her father was.

Even so, the breathing helped slow her heart, and she began to pick up more sounds—mostly the creaks and groans of the ring around her.

She wondered how far down they were in Airtha. The ring’s thickness varied from place to place. The main structure of the ring was nothing more than a great circle of highly compressed carbon. While the upper half was built up, the outside kilometer or so was pure diamond.

She suspected they weren’t that deep, otherwise she would be surrounded by the ring’s diamond, not plas and steel. Either that, or this shaft led to one of the structural accelerators nestled within the carbon body of the ring.

As Mary mused about her location, a soft scuffling sound caught her attention, and she held her breath, listening with every fiber of her being.

It came again, a clicking now, and the sound of breathing, fast, heavy…it sounded like….

A shaggy snout came around the column she was hiding behind, followed by a pair of soulful eyes.

“Ohhh,” Mary whispered, as the dog came into view.

She held out her hand, and the dog came forward to sniff her fingers. A moment later, she was scratching the shaggy mutt behind his ears.

Dammit, she thought, realizing that she was being profoundly stupid. The dog would be impossible to keep still or quiet, yet shooing it off would make just as much noise—and may not be possible. Still, she was torn between how bad she felt for the abandoned dog, and the need for him to leave.

“Good boy, now go. I’m trying to hide, here.”

The dog cocked its head to the side as though he understood her. He turned and backed in beside her, his teeth bared in a silent growl.

Is this dog uplifted? Did someone abandon an intelligent dog down here?

To her surprise, the dog stayed perfectly quiet and still after moving behind cover. Mary placed a hand on his head and stroked it gently, glad for the companionship—while growing increasingly worried about her father. At this point, he’d been gone for over five minutes.

Suddenly the dog ducked his head down and over, moving it out of reach.

He seemed to be casting her a look that said, ‘I’m concentrating’, then turned one of his large ears, listening intently.

Mary took the hint and listened as well, not hearing a thing.

A minute passed, and then she did hear something—a scraping sound that was getting closer. It wasn’t loud, just a light, metallic scuff that came regularly.

She closed her eyes, concentrating on the sound.

It’s growing louder!

Mary’s eyes snapped open, and she looked to the dog, only to find that it was gone.

Oh, shit, I’m screwed!

With excruciatingly slow and exacting movements, Mary stood and readied herself for whatever would come, holding her pistol high across her chest, prepared to pivot her wrist and use the center-axis firing method her father had taught her.

The sound was close, almost at the column she was hidden behind. Just a few seconds more…

Nothing came. The scuffing had stopped.

Stars…this is worse, is it just waiting for me? What is it? A human? A machine? Some long-forgotten creature that’s been living in this warren for years?

A minute passed, and Mary mustered up the courage to look around the column, surprised when her eyes took in the empty passageway. She wondered if her mind had been playing tricks on her. Maybe it was just another dog, and hers had gone off with it.

Then something grabbed her from behind and lifted her into the air.

“Faaaak!” Mary couldn’t help the scream that tore itself out of her throat as she was pulled up by the collar of her jacket.

She twisted to see a six-legged drone hanging from the overhead, two of its long arms grasping her collar.

Mary swapped her pistol into the other hand and fired on the drone, hitting it right in its main optics, then again in the limbs that were holding her.

The drone twitched from the force of the pulse waves, and Mary dropped her pistol before raising her arms and sliding out of her jacket.

She landed on the deck and reached for her pistol, grabbing it a second before the drone skittered down the wall, reaching for her again.

Two shots from the pulse pistol barely slowed it down, and then the drone was atop her, pinning her arms beside her head as it sank its rear legs into her thighs.

The pistol slipped from her grasp, and Mary screamed again, trying to push the drone off—but it was impossibly heavy, and had begun to wiggle around.

Wait…that shape…

The reason why the drone felt so heavy was because the dog was on its back, snapping his jaws at the drone’s legs.

The dog barked and clamped its teeth around one of the robotic limbs, pulling it up and then twisting. Mary was shocked to see the machine’s leg break off. The dog repeated the process on another limb, this time freeing Mary’s right arm.

She felt for the pulse pistol and breathed a long sigh of relief when her fingers wrapped around its grip.

The drone was twisting to avoid the dog, and then it finally reared back to knock the beast off.

Mary took advantage of the distance it created between them and fired a half-dozen pulse blasts into the thing’s underside.

The drone shook and convulsed, as smoke rose from one side. Mary pushed it off herself to see the dog standing by her feet, glaring at the machine and looking immensely proud of itself at the same time.

After a few steadying breaths, Mary struggled to her feet, wincing at the pain in her thighs. She looked at her pants and didn’t see too much blood.

Maybe the holes it made aren’t that deep…felt like they went right through me.

Certain she wasn’t going to bleed to death, she bent over to scratch the dog behind its ears.

“C’mon, let’s go find my dad. I’m not going to stay here and let more of those things try to skewer me.”

Right, left, second right, she thought, setting off with the dog at her side.

It surprised her that the mutt had attached itself to her so quickly. Maybe it didn’t see many people, or maybe those it did see were cruel to it. Either way, it seemed content to travel with her for now.

She turned the last corner on her father’s prescribed route and almost ran straight into him.

“Mary!” he whispered. “Be more careful. What if I’d been an enemy?”

“I’d take you out like I did the last one—with my new friend’s help, of course.”

Flaherty looked down at the dog and smiled at the mutt. “Good work, Figgy.”

“Figgy?” Mary asked.

“The dog. His name is Figgy.”

“Is he yours?”

Flaherty turned and gestured for her to follow. “He is his. He lives down here. Figgy’s a friend.”

Mary glanced down at the dog who looked up at her and nodded.

“You’re uplifted, Figgy?”

The dog nodded again, its gaze still on her.

“But you’re not able to speak, I take it.”

Figgy shook his head, and Flaherty looked over his shoulder. “I think he can, he just really, really doesn’t want to. Goes against some sort of doggy-code.”

Figgy cast her father a dark look and shook his head again.

“Whatever.” Flaherty shrugged as they reached a door. He punched in a short code on the panel, and then pulled open the heavy steel portal.

Two more drones lay on the deck inside—in far worse shape than the one she’d left behind. Beyond them was a small docking bay containing the person she wanted to see more than anything.

“Drew!” she called out and rushed toward him. “Light, I’m so glad you’re OK.”

Her son, a lanky young man with long, red hair rushed toward her and wrapped her in a fierce embrace. “Me? You’re the one grandfather left back in those passageways.”

He released his grasp on her and stepped back. “Mom! You’re bleeding!”

Mary waved a hand. “It’s nothing. Is that our ship?”

Drew turned to look at the small, dingy shuttle sitting in the docking bay.

“ ‘Ship’ seems like a stretch,” Drew said as he gave the vessel an uncertain look. “I don’t even know if its spaceworthy.”

“I wouldn’t be aboard if it wasn’t,” Leeroy said, sticking his head out of the airlock. “You all going to stand out there hugging and kissing all day, or are you going to get in? Those drones have Link, you know.”

Flaherty lifted a case off a nearby bench and nodded to Mary and Drew. “Get on—Mary, where’s your bag?”

“Aw, crap, I forgot it back in the passage.”

Her father shook his head and pointed at a cabinet next to the bench. “There’s a shipsuit in there. You’re filthy, you’ll want fresh clothes once we patch you up.”

Mary walked gingerly to the cabinet—her thighs were really starting to ache—and pulled it open.

A garment bag hung inside, next to a pulse rifle. She grabbed both and turned back to the shuttle. Her father had handed the case to Leeroy and now stood beside the airlock. He nodded in approval of the rifle in her right hand and gestured for her to board first.

Inside—which was far cleaner than the exterior would have led her to believe—was a small cabin, with room to seat ten people in fully reclining chairs. Forward lay a cockpit that had room for two.

Drew was up front with Leeroy, and she could hear him asking how they were going to get out of the bay.

Mary was wondering the same thing—the bulkheads didn’t appear to have any openings anywhere. She heard Leeroy say “Down,” at the same moment a concerned-sounding bark came from behind her.

She turned to see Figgy standing in front of her father, who shrugged.

“He says he likes you. Wants to come along.”

“How do you know that?” Mary asked.

“Link,” Flaherty replied.

Mary shook her head at her father. “You and Figgy can use the Link, but not me?”

“Well, we’re shielded in the shuttle. Have at it,” Flaherty said.

Mary connected to the shuttle’s network and found Figgy already talking to her.

<Figgy!> Mary knelt in front of the dog and pulled his head against her chest, hugging him tightly. 

<It’s OK, you were nice to me as soon as you saw me—most humans try to shoo me away or call bots to catch me. You were just nice. I like nice. I like you, Mary. I’m going to come with you and keep you safe—is that OK? Oh, I can’t breathe can you loosen up?>

Mary laughed and released her hold on the dog, sitting back on her heels as her father slipped past.

“Sorry about that, Figgy,” she said aloud.

<It’s OK.>

“Strap in,” Flaherty said, then turned to Drew. “You’re in the back with your mom. Quickly now, we’re ready to drop.”

Mary pulled herself up into a seat and slid a harness over her head, and Figgy jumped into the seat beside her.

Drew sat across from her, then they both wrestled a harness into place around the dog—who was panting excitedly, but not speaking. For the time being at least.

Mary leant over and grabbed the pulse rifle and the garment bag from the aisle, settling both on her lap. At the front of the shuttle, she saw her father settle into the cockpit beside Leeroy, who shot her a quick smile before turning back to his console.

It occurred to her that Leeroy had just turned his entire life upside down to help her and her son escape. When things calmed down she owed him heartfelt thanks.

As she wondered what would possess Leeroy to do that for her, Flaherty glanced back and saw that everyone was ready.

“Let’s drop.”

SERENDIPITY

STELLAR DATE: 03.29.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Construction Inspection Bay 183.AA91

REGION: Airtha, Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance

Flaherty turned to face forward once more, looking over the shuttle’s readouts, triple-checking that everything was as it should be.

“Relax,” Leeroy said with a wide smile. “She may be old, but I can fly her no problem. We’ll get there.”

Flaherty nodded solemnly. “Then let’s go.”

Lights flashed in the small bay outside the shuttle, and a grav emitter on the overhead lifted the craft off the pad. Once they were suspended in the air, the floor opened beneath the ship, and Leeroy glanced at Flaherty.

“Here goes nothing.”

He punched the release, and the shuttle dropped through the floor, falling at 1g through a long shaft that led outside the ring.

Nine seconds later, the dark shaft was replaced by the inverted diamond mountains on the bottom of the Airtha ring.

“What a view,” Leeroy said as he activated the shuttle’s grav systems, and rotated the vessel so the bottom of the ring was ‘down’ instead of ‘up’.

The shuttle raced through the valleys, staying close to the ring, great mounds of compressed carbon towering all around them and gleaming in Huygens’s light.

“It’s nice,” Flaherty replied to Leeroy, far more concerned about the turrets that rested on the mountaintops above the shuttle.

Leeroy followed his gaze and laughed. “Don’t worry about the guns, Flaherty. We’ll be at the High Airtha tether in five. Once we get there, I’ll tuck in with the elevators, and we’ll be home free before we know it.”

“I sure hope so,” Flaherty said in muted tones. There was no way the shuttle could make it past a concerted effort from the Airthan security forces to stop it. Their only hope was to sneak away.

The shuttle was registered to a freighter named the Hundred Dawns—at least that’s what the insystem STC thought. Once they passed High Airtha, he’d call in for a course to the freighter, passing its captain’s tokens for auth. With luck, it should work.

Problem was, Flaherty didn’t believe in luck.

Leeroy threaded though the valleys until they reached the tether, where he executed a rather artful maneuver, slotting in right behind a maglev car that was racing down the tether to High Airtha’s long arch, hanging below.

“See?” Leeroy said. “Airtha’s diamond crust sure looks nice, but it screws with scan something fierce. The thing is like a thousand echoes of the entire system.”

“Too much form, not enough function,” Flaherty grunted.

“Spot on, pal, spot on.”

Flaherty peered back to see Mary looking worried as she stroked Figgy’s head. She met his eyes, and he could see pain in them.

<I’m sorry,> he said as the shuttle continued to speed down the tether in the maglev’s wake.

Her mental sigh was long, but didn’t seem to hold accusation. 

<A place where I hope the two of you won’t have to lay low overmuch. If Sera does what I expect, it will be within her sphere of influence.>

<You won’t say where?> Mary asked. <Drew would like to know, as well.>

Flaherty shook his head. <I’d rather not, until we’re in the dark layer. I know it sounds paranoid, but I don’t know how well she can hear us.>

<Not-Sera?>

<No, Airtha.>

He saw Mary clench her jaw. <OK, now you are sounding paranoid. If she can hear our thoughts, then she’ll know where we are now, not where we’re going—which is worse. Besides, you said the shuttle is shielded.>

<Like I said. I know it sounds paranoid.>

Mary didn’t respond, and Flaherty turned his attention back to the forward view where the maglev was slowing to pull onto one of the tracks that ran perpendicularly across High Airtha’s surface.

Leeroy, however, was going to ride the tether straight through the spur. The long shaft upon which High Airtha hung did not end at the platform, but continued through to a smaller station called ‘Watchtower 97’.

That station controlled all outbound traffic lanes off High Airtha, and the plan was for Leeroy to pull off the tether while occluded by another craft’s departure. Then Flaherty would request a lane, like nothing was unusual at all about a shuttle suddenly appearing on Scan with no departure logged.

Hopefully.

“Sure hope no one’s coming up the tether,” Leeroy said as the maglev train ahead of them finally turned off, revealing a dark tunnel leading through High Airtha and out the other side.

“It’s clear.” Flaherty spoke with a calm assurance that he mostly felt. The track had been registered as clear this morning, when he’d lifted the schedules.

But schedules could change.

“Well, I’ve got an active EM field on the track!” Leeroy cried out.

“Speed up,” Flaherty said in even tones.

Leeroy shot Flaherty a questioning look but complied and poured on as much thrust as possible in the narrow tunnel.

“I see lights,” Leeroy said through clenched teeth, and Flaherty didn’t even have time to nod before the shuttle shot out of the tunnel and swerved wildly to avoid an oncoming maglev train.

There was a moment of shocked silence as Leeroy and Flaherty looked at one another, confirming that they were indeed still alive, before Leeroy screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Yaaaaaaaaahooooooooo!”

Flaherty allowed a small smile to form on his lips as he checked scan for a departing ship to hide behind.

“There.” He pointed at a cruise liner that had just slipped off the edge of High Airtha, dropping out into space near the tether.

“On it.” Leeroy nodded and altered vector to fall in behind the cruise liner, which was named the Ethereal Delight.

“Not too close,” Flaherty said. “We don’t want them to file a complaint about us with the STC.”

“Looks like a pleasure cruiser. Maybe we should ask if they have room for some late arrivals.” Leeroy was grinning as he took in the holomural on the side of the ship. “Would be a great way to pass the time while we put distance between us and Airtha.”

Flaherty snorted. “You’d end up in some dom’s cabin, all trussed up just when we needed to make a quick getaway. No thanks.”

“I would not! You know I like to turn the tables.” Leeroy said loudly, angling his head back so his voice carried into the cabin. “Isn’t that right, Mary?”

“Shut up and fly,” Mary shot back.

Flaherty snorted at his daughter’s response, though he couldn’t help but notice there was a small note of humor in her voice. As though she did not look on her previous romantic time with Leeroy as unfavorably as she so often claimed.

Leeroy grinned to himself, but when he saw Flaherty’s raised eyebrow, his smile faded. “Uh, OK, STC should have missed us coming out of the tunnel, so long as the maglev didn’t report us—but we were going fast, and those things don’t have scan for shit, so hopefully it didn’t identify us.”

“Gotcha. Calling into Watchtower 97’s STC,” Flaherty replied.

“Good luck.”

Flaherty opened a request channel to the Space Traffic Control tower and got an immediate response back from an NSAI.

<Shuttle Tiberius, we have no departure origination for you and no flight path on record. This is controlled space, what is your destination?>

The NSAI sounded impatient, though Flaherty suspected that all STC NSAIs were programed to sound impatient.

He chose his words carefully. He wasn’t able to lie, but he could state facts in such a way that they supported his fiction while not actually being untruths.

<Shuttle Tiberius, I have no record of prior lanes assigned on this vector for your ship anytime in the last century.>

Shit! Flaherty thought to himself. He had hoped the NSAI wouldn’t crosscheck that. <Well…uh, it’s what the comp has entered. I’ve only owned this shuttle for a few weeks, so I can’t confirm nor deny that.>

There was no response for a minute, and then a new voice came over the channel. <Shuttle Tiberius, this is Tower Commander Amelia, what’s this about a previously assigned vector to your ship?>

<Hello, Commander Amelia. I was just explaining to the NSAI that our comp had a bad vector in it—something that was leftover from before. I told our pilot to use it, but that was a mistake. Honestly, I just need a lane out to the Hundred Dawns.>

A short sound of disbelief came into Flaherty’s mind. <The Hundred Dawns? I show it as holding out near Domar Station.>

<That’s right, that’s where we need to get.>

<Captain Nari, am I to believe that you command an interstellar freighter, but you don’t double-check outbound lane assignments when dropping off a place like Airtha?>

Flaherty knew his excuses were weak, but it was the best exfiltration he’d managed to come up with, given that he’d only had a few hours’ notice. He wracked his brain for some explanation, but nothing convincing came to mind.

Not being able to lie was terribly inconvenient sometimes.

<Nari, what’s going on up there?> a new voice came onto the channel. <First you take me to Airtha, promising me a good time, but it’s all business, business, business. We were just about to go out to a nice restaurant, and then you get a priority cargo, and we have to leave?>

<Honey, please, this is a private channel with the STC,> Flaherty said, impressed by the initiative his daughter had taken. He glanced back to see a serene look on her face as she spoke again over the comm channel.

<Hello? Who is this?> Commander Amelia asked.

<Oh, hello, STC, can you get us a lane to our ship so that I can get some distance between me and my asshole of a husband before I kick him in the balls so hard one of our kids dies?>

No response came from Tower Commander Amelia for a moment, then the woman burst out laughing. After a half minute, she’d calmed herself enough to reply. <Ma’am, how’s this. I’ll give you a lane out to your ship if you add a kick in the balls for dropping off the ring without crosschecking departure lanes. Your husband is a moron.>

Mary barked a laugh. <Oh, don’t I know it. Barely keeps his shit bucket of a ship flying. Any objection if I maybe give him two or three extra whacks in the sack?>

Commander Amelia was still laughing, and Flaherty thought he could hear other people joining in with her. The tower commander must have switched to an audible conversation on her end to share with her team.

<Knock yourself out—well, not you, actually. Knock him out.>

<Deal. Though I’ll let him fly us back to the ship first. Not that he’s much better than a malfunctioning autopilot.>

<We’ll keep an eye on you. Nari, I want you in this lane and I want your backup comps to confirm vector and send it in. Am I understood? Or do I need to come out there and kick you in the balls, too?>

Flaherty swallowed for effect, or maybe because all the talk of ball kicking was a bit unnerving. He noticed that Leeroy had a pained expression on his face, and a hand over his crotch.

<Yes, Commander Amelia. No extra ball-kicking needed. I’m bringing the backup navigation comp online. I’ll have it confirm vector-matching calculations with you as soon as we have our lane.>

<Good. The NSAI will provide you with an assignment momentarily.>

<Thank you, ma’am.>

The comm line went dead, and a moment later, the backup navigation comp—which Flaherty had activated, to honor his word—registered the incoming lane assignment.

“How’d I do?” Mary called up.

“I have a strange phantom pain,” Leeroy replied. “And I think your father has lost the power of speech, so I’d take that as a compliment.”

Mary laughed. “I’ll take that compliment. I’ll admit, Dad, it was cathartic to yell at you like that.”

Flaherty shook his head. “I’ll bet.”

FATHER KNOWS BEST?

STELLAR DATE: 03.30.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: Shuttle Tiberius

REGION: Huygens System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance

Mary sucked in a sharp breath and involuntarily jerked her leg aside.

“Hold still, Mary,” her father said as he clamped his knees on either side of her leg. “Those drones must have had something on their claws, for your leg to be as sore as you say.”

“It’s not that bad,” Mary said through clenched teeth. “You really don’t need to go digging around in my thigh muscle.”

Her father looked up and his dark eyes met hers. “Mary, they could have some sort of neurotoxin that they inject, or it could just be that they stepped in rat shit. I need to clean the wounds.”

Mary considered how dank some corners of those tunnels had been, and bit her lip. “OK, do what you have to.”

Ten minutes later, he pronounced the wounds clean. There had been dirt, some pebbles, and a neurotoxin. Luckily, just a small amount. They assumed she and Figgy had knocked the drone off before it could deliver the full dose.

Even so, he had loaded her up with enough mednano to cure a civilization of the yellow death before sealing up the wounds with nuskin.

Now in the shower, she was determined to enjoy the hot spray for the full five minutes she was allotted, letting the steam seep into her skin and help clear her mind of the day’s events.

A high-speed chase out of Airtha had not been what she’d expected to do when she’d woken up….

Shit…that was yesterday! No wonder I’m so tired.

The shower signaled that her time was almost up, which gave her time to lather up before it triggered the final spray to rinse the soap away.

Mary heaved a sigh when the water flow shut off. A low, warm breeze blew across her body, drying both herself and the shower walls. A minute later, the airflow shut off, and then the and other sanitary amenities emerged from the walls.

Amongst them was the garment bag she’d placed on one of the shelves before taking her shower. The pair of pants she’d worn were ruined; not only were they half blood-soaked, but her father had cut them away from her legs before cleaning her wounds. Her shirt was fine, though, and her jacket could be cleaned.

But spending the next week on a shuttle in the company of three men without pants—especially considering said men were her father, son, and former lover—was entirely out of the question.

Still, whatever shipsuit had been hanging in that cabinet from time immemorial stood a chance of being equally undesirable.

Dad…why do you always have to get mixed up in crazy stuff?

Mary unzipped the garment bag and her breath caught in surprise.

OK, this is not what I expected at all.

Five minutes later, she stepped out of the san unit feeling better than she had since their crazy adventure had begun.

She saw that Drew was asleep in one of the cabin’s reclining chairs, with Figgy draped over from the adjoining seat, his head on her son’s lap.

“Looks good on you,” her father’s voice came in a low whisper, and she turned to see him sitting at the back of the shuttle, cleaning their meager supply of weapons on a table set against the rear bulkhead.

Mary looked down at the bright pink shipsuit. It was an auto-adjusting model, so it had shrunk down to fit her like a glove once she had pulled up the fastener.

Despite the fact that it was not the sort of thing one wore when making a surreptitious escape, she liked the fit and color, not to mention the white flowers which grew up the legs and then bloomed across the top of the outfit, only to fade away and be replaced by new flowers beginning the climb once more.

Mary gave her father a skeptical look. “Are you sure that was just sitting in that dusty old cabinet? Not only is it pretty, but it’s high quality, too. The feature listing said that it’s vacuum rated, and has a tear strength of a thousand kilograms.”

Flaherty shrugged. “I may have seen it on sale at some point and thought it would look good on you.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “ ‘May have’? And then you just placed it in some hidden shuttle bay?”

Her father turned and looked her up and down, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “OK, I admit, I saw it and it reminded me of how you used to dress when you were a little girl. I had a moment of nostalgia-inspired weakness. And, yeah, I had a few locations like that shuttle bay stocked with supplies.”

“Well, I like it, and I’m glad you’re overprepared. Usually you buy me practical things. And guns—mostly guns. I didn’t even know you paid attention to my fashion choices.”

Flaherty shrugged. “I’ve told you stories of what it was like serving with Sera on Sabrina.”

Mary sat down across the table and shook her head at her father. “Dad, Sabrina was a pirate ship. You weren’t ‘serving’, you were pillaging.”

“Don’t ever let Sabrina hear you say that. She was very sensitive about it. We were a starfreighter, and then later—however briefly—a privateer. We were never pirates.”

“What about the stories you told me, where you attacked other ships and stole their cargo?”

“Part of the cover.”

Mary groaned. “But the ship’s AI and rest of the crew didn’t know that. They thought they were being pirates.”

“Well, maybe a little bit. But we were always attacking bad people—or stupid people, like Cheeky’s old captain. We never preyed on fat, weak targets—which is what real pirates do.”

Mary shook her head in mock disbelief, though she could tell her father was serious.

I guess he’s telling the truth—as he sees it. Gotta admit, I can’t see him stealing from the unwary.

She decided to try and pry a destination from him once more. “I know we’re not in the DL yet, but we’re not far from our jump point. Think we’re far enough from Airtha’s prying eyes that you can tell me where we’re going?”

Her father set down the pulse rifle he was cleaning and leaned back in his chair.

“Honestly, I have a few options. I thought maybe I’d let you pick.”

“Me?” Mary asked, more than a little surprised to be given the choice. “What sort of options do I have?”

“Well, one option would be to get you to New Canaan. I’m divided on that. It’s probably both the safest, and the most dangerous place in the galaxy.”

“What’s New Canaan, and how’s that possible?” Mary asked.

“It’s where the Intrepid’s crew made their colony. They can probably protect their system from all comers, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be collateral damage.”

Mary nodded silently, looking down at the white vines tracing their way up her legs, and momentarily becoming mesmerized by their motion.

“You know you can turn that off,” her father said.

“What? You give me this nice outfit, and then tell me to turn it off?” Mary said in mock anger, then winked as her Father’s eyes widened. “Dad, I’m kidding. Is it bothering you?”

“No, I thought maybe it was bothering you.”

Mary laughed softly. “Don’t worry, I like it. Yes, you’re in the doghouse for ruining my life on Airtha, but knowing you care helps.”

“Of course I care, Mary. It’s why I got you off Airtha.”

For a moment she worried he had some crazy plan in mind. “You’re not going back there, are you?”

Flaherty chuckled. “No, not unless Sera sends me.”

Mary felt a spike of anger in her chest at the statement. “Why is it that Sera commands you so completely? You’ll do anything for her.”

“Mary, I have to.”

“Right, you told her you’d be her guardian that one time. Does that mean forever?”

Flaherty nodded. “It does. But I’m also your guardian forever. And Drew’s. Luckily, you two get in far less trouble than Sera does.”

“Sounds like you have a conflict of interest.”

Her father snorted and shook his head. “Tell me about it.”

Mary had argued with her father many times before about his devotion to Sera. She knew that he struggled with his conflicting priorities, and decided not to push the issue—they’d be spending a lot of time on this shuttle, and being angry at one another wasn’t going to help.

She decided to return to the topic at hand. “Regarding New Canaan. Would they let you drop us off there?”

Her father nodded. “I own land there…or I can claim it, if I wish. You know, their civilization makes Airtha look like it’s behind the times. You could do anything you want there.”

“Anything?”

“I imagine so, yes.”

Mary considered that, slowly tapping her chin. “What other options are there?”

“Three more,” Flaherty replied, holding up three fingers. “I have a place out in the Sagittarius Arm where you two could disappear. But I don’t like that one.”

That surprised Mary. She would have expected her father to try and tuck her and Drew in the safest place he could think of. The Sagittarius Arm certainly fit the bill. “Why not?”

“Too far from me,” Flaherty said. “I’d like to see you from time to time. Plus, if anything happens, I want to be close by.”

“OK, that makes sense. What else is there, then?”

“Well, one option is one of the nations at the edge of the Inner Stars. There are a few I could set you up in.”

“The Inner Stars?” Mary asked, mouth agape. “But they’re so barbaric!”

Her father chuckled softly. “They’re not so bad as you think—some places, at least. They don’t have the infrastructure of the Transcend—still rebuilding after their wars—but they do have some nice systems and worlds. A few are almost as impressive as Airtha.”

Mary wondered if her father was selling her a bill of goods on that one. “OK, what’s the final option?”

“You two come with me.”

“We…what?” Mary stammered, unsure if she’d heard her father correctly. “With you? Where are you going?”

“Wherever Sera is. I have to get to a drop point she and I set up to find out her location. But when I do, we’ll join her—and the rebellion.”

“Shit, Dad, what are you talking about?”

“Well, if Not-Sera is now running the show at Airtha, you can bet it’s because she and Airtha don’t expect Jeffery Tomlinson to return.”

In their mad escape, she’d barely had time to consider the implications of the imposter Sera being in charge of the Transcend’s government.

“This was a coup…. Somehow that didn’t really register.”

Flaherty crossed his arms, a dark look on his face. “Yes, a very, very silent coup. I imagine it will soon come out that the president died at the hands of the New Canaan colonists, or perhaps some other fiction. I could be wrong about Jeffery being dead, but I think he is. And if he’s dead, and Adrienne is here, then Sera—real Sera—is President now.”

“Two President Seras. This is bizarre.”

“Yes.”

Mary considered her options. She really had no desire to run off to some corner of the galaxy while her father risked his life for Sera. Perhaps it was time to join the adventurous life he led—though maybe from some small distance.

“Think they have room for a legal analyst in Sera’s new government?” Mary asked after a moment.

Flaherty grinned and nodded. “Plus, if you wear that shipsuit when we first meet the new president, you’ll get hired for sure.”

Mary shook her head; Sera’s proclivities were well known amongst the populace on Airtha—but that wasn’t where her interest lay. Mary peered over her shoulder to the cockpit, where Leeroy’s silhouette could be seen against the piloting holodisplays.

“She might have to get in line. I have a suspicion that Leeroy wants to rekindle things between us—what with him agreeing to fly us out and all.”

“He’s a good man; a little odd, but a good man. I trust him with our lives.”

Mary rose from her chair and gave her father a kiss on his forehead. “Maybe I’ll see if there’s any spark left between us. Stars know I’ll need something to do while we’re all stuck on this shuttle.”

Her father’s head snapped up, eyes wide.

“Dad, seriously, my son is here. There won’t be any hanky panky.”

“What about me?” Flaherty asked. “Don’t my poor eyes and ears count for anything?”

Mary snorted. “After what you told me about your escapades on Sabrina? No. I think you can handle anything.”

She turned to face the cockpit, considering a chat with Leeroy, but then her eyes settled on her sleeping son and Figgy—who had looked up at her as she approached.

Maybe just a bit of shut-eye would be nice….

She slowly lowered herself into her chair, careful not to disturb her son. Figgy watched through lidded eyes as Mary reclined the chair, and she reached out to stroke his coat of shaggy fur.

“Good Figgy,” she whispered as her head hit the headrest and she closed her eyes, sleep overtaking her almost instantly.

* * * * *

Flaherty heard Mary’s breathing even out in less than a minute after she laid down. He rose quietly and walked to the three seats where she, Drew, and Figgy lay.

These two people were the most precious things to him in the whole galaxy. Would it really be wise to take them along with him? Sera was renowned for getting into trouble. With Tanis at her side—if she’d convinced Tanis to join her efforts—that trouble would be of epic proportions.

He let out a long sigh. No, the best place for his daughter and grandson was the place he least wanted them to be. Out in Sagittarius.

With heavy heart, he walked to the cockpit. He couldn’t lie to his daughter, so he’d have to get Leeroy in on it.

Hopefully they’d all forgive him someday.

A NIGHT OUT ON HIGH VICTORIA

BY AMY DUBOFF

CAPTAIN

STELLAR DATE: 08.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: ISS I2

REGION: Inner Canaan, New Canaan System

Captain Rachel Espensen surveyed the bridge of the I2 while crewmembers made the final preparations for the journey ahead.

At less than two hours until their scheduled departure, they were officially in crunch time.

<Any impending disasters I should be aware of?> she asked Priscilla.

<All supplies are on board, and final personnel moves are underway. Barring some unforeseen development, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about,> the avatar replied.

Rachel smiled. <After what we’ve been through over the past several months, I’ll take things going right, for a change.>

“Everything set?” a familiar voice said behind her.

She spun around and brought her hand to her forehead in a salute. “Admiral Evans, sir.”

“At ease, Captain.” He smiled. “How’s the command chair treating you?”

“It’s a big seat to fill,” she replied. Then privately over the Link added, <Between us, some days I still can’t believe I got this promotion.>

<You have come a long way since we first met, back on High Victoria.> He stepped forward with his hands clasped behind his back. “I know you’re up for the challenge to see the crew safely to Khardine, and wherever else Tanis takes you.”

“I’ll keep her safe, sir.”

Joe cocked an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? You have some special super powers I’m unaware of?”

He looked so serious, for a moment Rachel thought he actually expected her to have some.

“Easy, Captain, I’m kidding.”

The admiral clasped her shoulder, and Rachel let out a relieved laugh.

<You’ve earned your place here,> he added privately, then a mischievous grin crept onto his face. <I’m glad to see that my hunch about you was right.>

She chuckled.

<And lose out on having someone with your ingenuity in the ISF? Not a chance.>

A NIGHT ON THE STATION

STELLAR DATE: 12.18.4241 (Adjusted Gregorian)

LOCATION: ISF Academy, High Victoria Station

REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System

Rachel dropped her nose to the floor for her eighty-seventh push-up. This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done.

Well, perhaps not the most idiotic, if she was honest with herself. However, in a culture where genetic modification was the norm, and her nano could adapt her body at a cellular level, doing push-ups served no practical purpose.

<What’s with the dagger eyes?> Justin questioned her over a private Link connection.

<All the training we’ve been doing for the last month is pointless,> Rachel replied to her classmate while she continued the monotonous push-ups on her way to the requisite one hundred.

<It’s not just physical conditioning,> Justin pointed out. <This is as much about mental discipline.>

<Then I’m flunking.>

<You can say that again.>

Rachel dropped to her knees at the one hundred mark. The nano throughout her system kept her organs functioning at optimum efficiency, so she didn’t feel the slightest bit winded. If the intention of the exercise was indeed mental discipline, she was going to need to do a lot more than one hundred push-ups for it to make an impression.

“On your feet! Five kilometers,” Sergeant Greggors ordered.

More laps, seriously? Rachel rose to her feet, barely keeping her glare in check when her gaze passed to the drill officer.

<It’s all part of the process,> Justin tried to soothe her.

<Then it needs to process faster.>

<You must be the most impatient person I know.>

Rachel snorted in her mind. <That’s only because you haven’t met my mom.>

She pushed the thought aside, not wanting to dwell on her parents. Every time she felt she was on the verge of homesickness, she’d remember what life had been like before the Intrepid Space Force academy—when she was ready to do anything to get away.

“Faster!” Sergeant Greggors’ order to keep up the pace on her laps returned Rachel to the present.

Stars, I hate running even more than push-ups. She wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

Her theory about the academy having no genuine interest in physical conditioning through the exercise was supported by a distinct lack of a running track. The hangar had some padded mats thrown in an open area of the deck between the fighters for floor exercises, but the five-kilometer circuit was nothing more than five loops around the perimeter of the room.

Rachel passed by one of the new ARC-4s and gazed at it longingly as she ran by. I’d give anything to be out in the black rather than stuck in here.

<Don’t even think about it,> Justin cautioned when he saw her eyeing the fighter.

<Like you haven’t thought about getting in one yourself.>

He laughed in her mind. <The gs would crush you without mods or a shootsuit. No way you can just go for a joyride.>

<But I can dream.> So dream she did.

Even if she couldn’t take an ARC-4 out for an evening of fun, there were still other options. If she didn’t do something—and soon—she was going to lose her mind.

<So…> Rachel said to Justin as her group of cadets reached the two-kilometer mark of their run. 

<Ha! Right.> He glanced over at her with a grin, but he scowled as soon as he saw the mischievous glint in her eyes. <Rachel, no. Don’t make me play mom.>

<Come on! It’ll be fun. Grab a drink, go dancing…>

<In no way is this a remotely okay idea.> Justin shook his head. <Forget it.>

Rachel flashed a well-honed pout in his direction. <Please? I hate going to bars alone.>

<You’re barely old enough to know what bars are like. How much experience do you have?>

<Precisely enough to know I hate being the girl sitting alone.>

Justin shook his head. <You’d be better served if I tied you to your bunk.>

She eyed him. <I’m not sure if that was naughty or not.>

<That is not what I meant, and you know it. You’re just trying to distract me.>

<Did it work?>

Justin almost ran into a fellow cadet running ahead of him to the right. <Dammit.>

Rachel smirked. <Does that mean you’ll come?>

<No, forget it. I have no interest in being expelled.>

<Well, I need to get out of here for a night. I wasn’t wired to be cooped up like this.> Rachel picked up her pace and surged ahead of the group.

Her entire life, she’d felt like she was living in limbo. Though she’d spent the first few years of her life in the Sol System, Victoria was the only real home Rachel had ever known. However, her fellow colonists viewed it as a temporary stopover on their way to New Eden. Consequently, Rachel found herself caught between their impatience to get started with their new lives, and her own desire to have a place to call home.

With her parents counting down to the eventual arrival at New Eden, Rachel had turned to the Space Force to provide a much-needed distraction. Her parents had insisted that she needed structure, and maybe they were right. But the ISF wasn’t actually what she wanted.

Really, she craved adventure. She was counting the seconds until everyone loaded back onto the Intrepid and returned to the black.

But for now, she was stuck on Victoria and the orbital structures within the system, bored with the dull monotony of her everyday life. Running laps was not how she pictured spending her time in the academy.

Justin or no Justin, she needed to make her own adventure.

With a plan forming in her mind, Rachel sprinted to the finish line of the five-kilometer run.

“Well done, Espensen,” Sergeant Greggors praised. “I like that drive.”

I doubt he’d approve of my motivations.

She smiled at the drill instructor. “Always looking forward to what comes next.”

“That’s the spirit!” the drill sergeant nodded. “Now hit the showers. We resume at 0600.”

No human should be awake at that hour, Rachel silently bemoaned.

Not that time meant anything in space, where one wasn’t beholden to planetary rotation for daylight hours. Hell, the Intrepid’s master clock was still synced with the Mars Outer Shipyards, nearly thirteen light years away. But the fact that she was told when she had to be up is what bothered her, just like she hated being ordered to touch her nose to the floor, or to run circles around the room. They were trying to break her—to beat her into submission—but she’d find a way to forge her own path.

Rachel set off toward the dorms, and Justin jogged to catch up to her.

<You’re not still considering going out tonight, are you?> he asked.

<It’s not a consideration. I’ve made up my mind.>

<You’ll never make it out. This entire place is locked down with top-level auth tokens.>

Her eyes darted toward him while a coy smile played on her lips. <That’s what you think.>

<You know a way out?>

Rachel shrugged. <You said you weren’t interested, so I guess you’ll never know for sure.> She picked up her pace just enough that Justin had to jog two steps to stay abreast.

<Come on! How are you going to get out?>

<Does that mean you’ll come?>

He kept his gaze straight ahead. <If your plan sounds like it has a high enough chance of success, then I’ll consider coming with you.>

Rachel scoffed. <Want me to give away all my secrets before you commit? No way.>

A tingle of satisfaction worked its way through her chest. She knew she had him.

<Just give me a hint, at least.>

<Fine,> she conceded. <Post-dinner waste bins.>

<Uh…> Justin’s avatar took on a decidedly flustered affect. <That doesn’t sound like a very good plan at all.>

<Well, yeah, of course it’s going to sound bad when you only have the hint-level version.> Rachel rolled her eyes. <Are you in or not? I can’t tell you everything, only to have you turn around and rat me out.>

Justin audibly groaned. <All right! I’ve been going as crazy as you in here. Let’s go have some fun.>

She smiled over at him. <Now we’re in business!>

Justin’s impression of her plan hadn’t improved by the time she finished relaying the details, but a commitment was a commitment. They returned to their dormitory to begin the preparations for the night of partying.

Rachel’s first order of business was a shower, as her drill sergeant had suggested. Her own spin on the activity, however, offered an opportunity to don appropriate ‘going out’ attire.

The ISF’s uniform left much to be desired by way of figure flattery, but Rachel had made a point to bring along a short party dress among her limited personal possessions. The color-changing fabric could be programmed in any number of hues to match the occasion, and its scant cut could easily fit under her training jumpsuit.

She slipped the garment inside the folds of a clean jumpsuit, along with a pair of dress sandals and a folded shoulder bag, and then headed to the shared washroom.

After showering, the other cadets were too distracted with their own routines to notice when Rachel slipped from the open locker area into a private toilet stall to dress. She put on the party dress, with the canvas bag looped over her shoulder and pressed against her side, and then donned the jumpsuit over it, securing the sandals inside the tops of her socks. The loose fit of the jumpsuit was just enough to hide the hidden accessories.

When she emerged from the stall, she saw that Justin was exiting from a stall two doors down.

<All set?> she asked him.

<As close as I’ll ever be.>

<All right, I’ll see you in two.> Rachel set off at a leisurely pace toward the corridor between the washroom and the dormitory, waiting to see one of her roommates.

Marty approached. He’d do just fine.

“Argh!” Rachel exclaimed, gripping her head. She leaned against the wall of the corridor.

“Are you okay?” Marty ran over to her.

“Ugh, yeah…” Rachel massaged her temple. “Sorry, it’s nothing to worry about. I got evaluated for an early AI pairing, and it messed me up. I guess that’s why we don’t get them this young, huh?”

“You’re sure you’re okay? That seemed pretty bad…” Her roommate looked her over with concern.

“Eh…” Rachel massaged her temple some more. “You know, maybe I should head over for a med exam, just to be safe.”

“I can walk you,” Marty offered.

“Whoa, you okay, Rachel?” Justin said on cue from behind her.

She turned toward her friend. “Oh, just another headache. Really wish I hadn’t taken that test yet!”

Justin sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so eager to have another consciousness inside your head. You get into enough trouble as it is.”

“Yeah, you know me…” Rachel took a cautious step, then fake-stumbled toward Justin.

Marty frowned. “You really need to get to Medical.”

“I’ll take her down, don’t worry about it,” Justin told the other cadet.

“Okay,” Marty nodded. “If anyone asks, I’ll let them know you headed down there.”

Rachel gave him an appreciative smile. “Thanks! Don’t wait up for me.”

“See you later.” Marty resumed his walk toward the dorm.

<Well done,> Rachel told Justin over their private Link connection. She kept up her staggered steps until she was sure Marty was out of view.

<Word of mouth is great and all, but this entire plan falls apart the moment someone goes to find us on the local net.>

<Which is why we’ll go dark, remember?> Rachel set a brisk pace toward the infirmary.

Due to the sensitive condition of individuals seeking medical care, the waiting area for the infirmary had network blocks around it. All Rachel and Justin needed to do was step inside, deactivate their local Link access, and then leave—anyone searching for them would think they’d entered the blackout zone, and hadn’t been treated yet. The cover was weak, but it only needed to hold up for the next hour or two, until everyone went to bed. After that, they could sneak back in while everyone was asleep, and no one would be the wiser.

The lobby was empty, as Rachel had hoped, and she quickly disabled her local Link access.

“How may I assist you?” an AI attendant asked over the audible systems in the lobby.

“Took a wrong turn,” Rachel replied.

“Your Link access is disabled.”

“Yeah, it’s acting up. I need Tech Support, not Medical.” Rachel laughed. “Have a nice evening.”

Justin nodded to Rachel that his own Link access was down, and they left the lobby before the AI could question them further.

“Think he’ll report us?” Justin whispered.

“Nah, we’re not worth the three nanoseconds of his processing time.”

Under the cloak of relative invisibility, Rachel and Justin took a route through back corridors toward the mess hall.

Administratively, the academy functioned independently from the rest of High Victoria and the ISF fleet. However, when it came to practical functions like food supply, the academy’s operations were merged with those of the larger station. By extension, waste generated in the academy’s mess hall was transported to the central processing facilities for recycling after every meal. The post-dinner shipment made the perfect means of transport outside the academy’s security perimeter.

Rachel stopped fifteen meters down the hall from the waste collection bin.

Justin’s brow furrowed. “We’re not really hitching a ride in the organic waste, are we?”

“Better than being melted down along with the metal. It’ll get us past the bioscanners.”

“Are you sure?” Skepticism laced his voice.

“Believe it or not, my plan isn’t entirely original. I got the tip from a cadet who was about to graduate. The automated disposal systems aren't online yet, so we can hop in one of these bins, and it'll take us to the central compost center.”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t a setup?”

Rachel shrugged. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

Justin groaned. “I never should have let you talk me into this.”

“You were looking for an excuse to get out—I could feel it. A kindred spirit.”

“We’re so getting expelled.”

“No we’re not. Come on.” Rachel slinked toward the far side of the waste bin and peeked inside.

It was precisely as unpleasant as she would have expected.

“No. No way I’m getting in there!” Justin hissed.

“Calm down! We’re not going in like this,” Rachel whispered back. She moved away from the bin and toward a supply closest, ten meters down the hall.

She cracked the door open, and they shimmied inside.

“What are we doing in here?” Justin asked.

“Waiting and getting geared up.”

The closet was barely large enough for Rachel to spin around without bumping into Justin, but she managed to reach over his head to grab two personal hazsuits.

“No… That’s not nearly enough for what we’ll face in that dumpster,” Justin objected.

“They’re completely sealed. It will be fine! We’ll only be inside for twenty minutes, tops.”

“I—”

“Shh, stop worrying.” Rachel patted him on the shoulder.

“What’s the ‘waiting’ bit you mentioned?”

“For dinner to finish. We’ll slip inside the dumpster after the final load gets added, then it will get transported out, and we’ll jump clear once it’s on the far side of the security line.”

Justin crossed his arms. “If we don’t get caught, we’ll die of suffocation.”

“Then don’t come.”

“Rachel, you should realize by now that I’m coming along no matter how much I complain about the means.”

She grinned up at him in the dim light. “I figured as much.” She paused. “I am glad you’re coming.”

“Just to have someone along, or me specifically?”

I didn’t intend for this to be a date… She took a step back, but there was nowhere to go in the closet. “I don’t have any expectations.”

“Good, because I’m just coming along to have fun.”

“All right, because I already had you in the ‘DPBT’ category in my head.”

Justin gave her a blank stare.

“ ‘Dating Potential, Bad Timing’,” she supplied.

“Did you make that up?”

“Seemed worthy of an abbreviation.” She held up her hand for silence when she heard voices passing in the hall.

Quiet returned.

“Any other interesting shorthand I should know about?” Justin asked.

“One that will come into play tonight is ‘SUHF’—Shut Up and Have Fun.”

Justin chuckled. “I think I can get behind that one.”

They waited for another twenty minutes while dinnertime came and went. By the end, Rachel was antsy and hungry. But the promise of a good drink and bar food made the wait worthwhile.

With the time for departure drawing near, Rachel and Justin helped each other into the hazsuits and checked the seals. The filters would afford them two hours of breathing air without exterior tanks, which would be more than enough for their purposes.

Sounds of the waste bin being filled carried into the supply closet, and when the corridor seemed clear, Rachel peeked out.

“Come on! We need to get in before it gets taken away.” She waddled down the hall as quickly as she could in the awkward hazsuit and threw back the bin’s lid.

To her relief, the top level of leftover food was a bunch of salad, which would at least make for a more pleasant base layer for their travel than, say, chili.

Rachel hauled herself over the lip of the bin and dropped down inside.

Justin hesitated, but quickly followed her when they heard a door open somewhere down the hall. They pulled the lid gently closed just as footsteps rounded the corner.

Movement jarred the dumpster, and Rachel braced her hands against the sides in the complete darkness of the sealed container. She prayed to the stars it would take them on the course she’d been told.

For fifteen minutes, Rachel tried to track the movement as the bin was transported on a hover platform. The right and left turns and lift rides were meaningless to her without a map of the back corridors, but she did detect the telltale beep of a bioscanner. Soon thereafter, the dumpster stopped, and there was only silence.

Rachel waited a minute to be sure, then cracked open the lid, thankful to find it hadn’t been locked—a possibility that had not occurred to her until after they got inside.

The room was dim, but she could make out rows of other bins awaiting processing, and she could hear machinery whirring in the distance.

“Okay, I think it’s clear,” she told Justin while opening the lid the rest of the way. She swung her legs over the edge and dropped to the deck.

When Justin was next to her, she closed the bin’s lid and began stripping off the hazsuit.

“What do we do with these?” Justin waved his own garment.

“Turn it inside out and bring it with us. We’ll find somewhere secure to dump it.”

He nodded. “Now, this is probably a terrible time to bring it up, but how are we getting back into the academy after we’re done partying for the night?”

She smiled at him in the dark. “Oh, that part is easy. They only check clearance to leave—all we have to do is walk in the front door. Our auths and uniforms will show that’s precisely where we’re supposed to be.”

“There won’t be a note that we didn’t have permission to leave?”

“Why would there be? It’s assumed we never left.”

Justin considered the statement, then waved his hand dismissively. “I guess we’ll figure it out when we get there.”

They crept through the grid of bins toward a light mounted on the wall that seemed to indicate an exit. As they approached, Rachel slowed her pace and listened for any voices.

Four meters from their destination, the doors flew open.

Rachel and Justin dove behind the nearest bin, as a new container zoomed in on its automated hover platform and followed a programmed path to an open spot in the grid.

“Let’s go,” Rachel mouthed, and darted through the open door.

The hallway beyond had the unadorned look of a maintenance corridor. There were no signs of humans or AIs nearby, so Rachel and Justin jogged along the only available path.

The first junction they encountered had signage pointing toward the promenade in the central commercial district, which provided a reference point for their travels. Now assured they were well outside the academy’s security perimeter, they connected to the general Link and consulted the map to find a route to the nearest social area of the station.

“Perfect!” Rachel’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve heard great things about this bar. They have a special additive in the drinks that slows down your nano so you can actually get a buzz.”

“Good, because I really need a drink after that ride.”

Rachel nodded. “I mean, it could have been worse, but I can’t say I’d be eager to do it again. I’ll figure out a different way to sneak out next time.”

“Already planning a next time? We haven’t even done anything yet.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “But can’t you feel the freedom?”

“More drinking, less talking.” Justin pointed in the direction of the bar.

“No argument here.”

At the end of the corridor, they balled up the hazsuits and then stripped off their academy jumpsuits. Rachel produced the carrying bag she’d brought to hold their clothes, and stuffed the jumpsuits and her boots inside. Now looking the part of a club-goer, she slung the bag over her shoulder and inspected her companion. His gray slacks and light blue button-down shirt were too understated for her taste, but the shirt’s tight cut showed off his physique enough to get attention, if that was his aim.

“You clean up well,” Justin commented.

“Not bad for taking a dumpster here, rather than a luxury groundcar, eh?” She sauntered toward the exit.

They dumped the hazsuits in a waste bin, then merged into the pedestrian traffic in the transit concourse running through that section of the massive station.

The bar was a kilometer from their current location, but Rachel didn’t mind the walk. Her past month at the academy was the longest she’d ever been without the stimulation of a bustling station. She soaked in the atmosphere as passersby went about their lives—noting everything from families shopping together, to the creative mods of some of the individuals roaming the station.

Upon reaching the bar, Rachel assessed the color scheme of the interior and then adjusted her dress to a vibrant blue to play off the orange of the décor.

Justin rolled his eyes when he realized what she was doing, and then strode into the club.

Rachel smiled at the bouncer and followed Justin inside.

The rhythmic thump of the music pulsed in her chest, energizing her in a way she hadn’t felt since enrolling in the ISF academy.

“I’ve missed this!” she shouted to Justin over the music.

“What?”

<I’ve missed this,> she repeated over the Link before realizing they had been standing under a speaker. She moved away.

Justin took in the room. <Oh! Yeah, it’s nice to hear music and see people enjoying themselves.>

“I want a drink!” Rachel spotted the bar and weaved through the crowd to the polished stainless-steel counter, with Justin at her heels.

The bartender had a natural, youthful look to her, likely never having undergone a rejuv. Rachel imagined that Victoria was one of the few systems where it was common to come across so many young people like herself, and it created a unique dynamic within the population where some adhered to ageist notions about who made for appropriate social companions. If the centurions thought she was too immature to have a serious conversation with, then so be it. Young people were more fun, anyway.

Rachel flashed a radiant smile at the bartender. “Hey!” she shouted over the crowd. “What’s good here?”

“I can make anything you want,” the bartender smiled back. “What are you in the mood for?”

“How about a ‘special’ strawberry daiquiri?”

“Coming right up.” The bartender spun to grab a glass off the back shelf and began the drink preparations.

“That is such a girly drink,” Justin chuckled.

“Yeah, and delicious! Plus, the red won’t turn my tongue a funny color like that crazy blue or green shit.” She eyed a group of four women at a nearby table, each drinking bizarre concoctions from twisty glasses. The women cast an appraising glance in their direction, as well.

“I dunno… green teeth can be sexy,” Justin jested.

“I think I just found some new criteria to add to that DPBT list of mine…”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it.”

Rachel rested her forearms on the bar top. “If you say so.”

The bartender returned in short order with the daiquiri and placed it in front of Rachel. “And for you?” she asked Justin.

“ ‘Special’ double shot of whiskey, neat.”

Rachel looked at him from under raised eyebrows as she sipped her daiquiri through the straw. “Getting right to business.”

“May as well loosen up fast,” he replied.

“We do have training in the morning.”

“I was the one who thought this was a bad idea, remember? Our nano will pick up the slack later, don’t worry.”

The bartender set down his drink, and Justin downed half the amber liquid in one gulp, wincing as it hit the back of his throat. “Okay, so not the highest grade.”

“It’ll get the job done, I’m sure. Come on.” Rachel authorized the auto-debit payment for the drink from her account while looking for a place to sit. She spotted an empty four-seater booth and set a direct course for it.

When they were just two meters from the booth, a man slid into the empty curved seat.

Damn! Rachel frowned and began searching for another option.

The man noticed her consternation. “Did you want to sit here?” he shouted, pointing at the unoccupied portion of the booth.

Rachel took another step forward. “Do you mind?”

Then the man noticed Justin following behind her, and his face dropped. “Of course not, have a seat.” The disappointment was evident in his voice, but at least he was polite enough not to rescind the offer.

“I’m Rachel,” she introduced herself as she took a seat, extending her right hand while holding her drink in the other. She dropped the bag containing their clothes in the center of the booth.

“Tom.” He shook her hand.

“And this is Justin.” Rachel pointed her thumb over her shoulder at her friend as he slid in next to her.

“Thanks for the seat,” Justin said to Tom.

“No problem. So, what brings you here tonight?”

“Just needed to get out,” Rachel said.

“What do you do?” Tom asked.

“We’re in the academy,” Justin replied.

Gah, idiot! Rachel smiled sweetly, but she mentally slapped Justin. <What if he’s connected to the ISF and turns us in?>

<Then he’d have the means to look up our idents in a fraction of a second. Lying wouldn’t be any better.>

She sighed in her mind. <Good point.>

Tom tilted his head with interest. “You mean the ISF academy? What are you studying?”

Rachel sipped her daiquiri. “Officers training.”

“Is that so?” Tom took a gulp of beer. “They let you come out and socialize?”

“Just celebrating for one night,” Rachel hastily replied before Justin could say anything more incriminating.

“That’s good.” Tom leaned back in the booth and spread his arms to either side along the top of the padded back. “I remember flight training being brutal. It’s important to get time to unwind.”

Rachel tensed. “Are you in the ISF?”

“Oh, no! I’m a civilian pilot,” Tom said. “I made it onto the colony roster as a machinist, though. Long story. I work on the transport ships nowadays, while we’re stuck here.”

Rachel bristled at the ‘stuck’ terminology in relation to the only real home she’d ever known. “It could be a lot worse.”

Tom nodded. “You’re right. We could be drifting through the black for all eternity, just waiting to run out of fuel.”

Justin shifted in the booth next to her. “That’s one way to look at things.”

“Well, I’m guessing you were both kids when we reached Victoria? I was in stasis, but from what I understand, we had a rough start to our time here.”

“You’re right,” Rachel acknowledged. “We’ve studied the battle with the Sirians at the academy—it’s important for us to be thankful for what we have.”

“It is.” Tom looked into his drink. “Sorry, I know you’re out here to celebrate. Back to lighter topics! Have you started flight training yet?”

Rachel groaned. “I wish! We’re still pretty early in.”

“They make you wait for the good stuff.” Tom drained his glass. “I’ll grab the next round. You want the same?” he asked.

Rachel’s glass was still half-filled. “How about a double vodka cranberry?” she requested. That ought to keep her nano busy.

Justin held up his empty glass to indicate a repeat of his previous order.

Tom smiled. “You’ve got it.” He slid from the booth and ambled to the bar.

“He seems nice.” Rachel sucked down the remainder of her daiquiri as quickly as she could without getting a brain freeze.

“He wants to see what’s under that skimpy dress of yours—not that you’ve left a lot to the imagination.” Justin twirled his empty glass.

“This dress is modest compared to what half the people in here have on!” Rachel examined herself relative to the men and women around her, and felt quite vindicated.

One particularly telling outfit involved a five-centimeter band across the woman’s breasts, shorts that didn’t even cover half her buttocks, and a translucent layer that looped under her arms around her lower back and met at the front of a collar she wore around her neck.

Justin crossed his arms. “Just because others dress that way doesn’t mean you have to.”

Rachel patted his thigh. “Aww, it’s cute of you to be all protective of me.”

He shook his head when he noticed Tom returning with the fresh drinks. “Forget it.”

“Thanks!” Rachel said as she took the new drink from Tom. She’d been through enough dating in secondary school to know where Justin was about to go with his statements, and she was thankful for a diversion.

While she liked him well enough, the ‘Bad Timing’ part of her DPBT classification was too prohibitive a barrier—especially when factoring in the part about him being a classmate and future colleague. Not everyone could make a relationship work like Lieutenant Governor Richards and Commandant Evans.

“Now, where were we?” Tom returned to his seat. “Oh, right! I was asking about flight training.”

“Yes, we’re still a long way out from that,” Rachel replied. “We’ll go through basic combat flight training as part of the officers program, though. They want us to have an appreciation for what pilots go through when we send them into battle.”

Tom whistled. “Those g forces are nuts. I’m happy to stick with my cargo haulers. They can be plenty zippy for my needs.”

Rachel sighed. “I’m envious. I know we have everything we could ever want in here, but there’s something about being out there with an unobstructed view of the universe. It’s beautiful.”

“You know,” Tom said slowly, “I could take you out, if you like. I have my own ship.”

<Yep, here we go…> Justin quipped over the private Link.

<Relax, I won’t be seduced so easily.> Rachel smiled at Tom. “That’s a generous offer, but I’m afraid we don’t have the time. This was just a quick excursion before we get back to the grind tomorrow.” She took a mouthful of her drink, and then another—this cocktail had significantly more bite than the first.

“No?” Tom frowned. “I understand. Your training has to come first.”

Rachel nodded. “But there’s plenty to do here. You up for some dancing?”

 Justin crossed his avatar’s arms and huffed.

<That girl has been watching you since we came in. Go talk to her,> Rachel replied with a nod toward a blonde two tables over—in the group with the exotic green drinks.

If he wants green teeth, then that’s what he’ll get. She downed the rest of her drink in one gulp.

<Fine,> Justin grumbled and slid out of the booth. Within two steps, he had adopted a suave swagger and confident smile that would be sure to get his target’s attention.

Rachel extended her hand with a flourish and grinned at Tom. “Shall we?”

Tom took her hand and led her deeper into the club, where the lights were strobing and the music was at an almost unbearable volume. It was perfect.

She let loose, dancing as the alcohol began to take full effect in her system, swaying and spinning with the electronic music. Tom kept a respectful distance from her at first, but as the night progressed, he inched closer—eventually placing his hands on her hips.

Tipsy and having a good time, Rachel let him. No harm in having a little fun.

Several drinks found their way into her hand over the course of the evening, and she downed each in turn. At several points, she spotted Justin out of the corner of her eye and smiled at him while two women pawed at his chest.

He gave her a mental shrug, and she laughed.

The world was a little spinny by the time Rachel realized she hadn’t eaten dinner, and she wanted to see if it was too late to order food. She hadn’t set a firm time to return to the academy, but it registered somewhere in the back of her drunken mind that she had somewhere to be in the morning.

Unsteady on her feet, she stumbled toward the wall to gather herself and check the time. Whatever nano counter-measure had been in the drinks was certainly doing the trick.

When she reached the wall, Rachel braced against it and tried to spot Justin again while she checked the time on the Link. Her jaw just about hit the deck when she saw it was 0143.

Oooooh, shit.

That meant she had to be up in four hours. And sober.

<Justin, where are you?>

<About to get a little better acquainted with Alissa here, since you ditched me. Why?>

<It’s almost 2am. We should head back.>

<It is?!>

The crowd parted as Justin ran through. 

<Yeah, same.> Rachel scanned the sea of people for Tom and spotted him at the bar. <I’ll say goodbye, and we can head out.>

Her attempts to jog daintily to the bar came out more like the shamblings of the undead, but she made it to Tom without falling on her face.

“I have to go, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was.” Her voice sounded clear and measured to her own ears.

Good, maybe we can still make it past the guards at the academy’s entrance.

Tom tilted his head and squinted while he tried to process what she’d said. “Oh, that’s too bad. I was still hoping to take you out on my ship.”

The idea of sudden acceleration turned Rachel’s stomach, and she placed her hand on her abdomen. “Another time, maybe. Thank you for the fun evening.”

“Here’s my net-token, if you ever want to look me up.” Tom passed the info to her over the Link.

“Will do, thanks.”

Rachel met up with Justin on the way to the door, massaging her temples. “How many did I have?”

“Was I supposed to be counting?” Justin laughed, then cut himself short. “Wait, didn’t you have a bag with our clothes?”

“Stars! That’s right.” Rachel stumbled back toward the booth where they’d spent the first part of the night.

The booth was empty, and there was no bag to be seen.

“No, no, no! This can’t be happening.” Rachel’s heart dropped. The adrenaline rush of panic instantly cleared the drunken fog. She spun around and jogged to the bar. “Excuse me! Has anyone turned in black canvas bag to your ‘lost and found’?”

The bartender glanced at her and shook her head. “We don’t have a ‘lost and found’ here. But if it’s lost, you can bet someone else figured it was a mighty good find.” She pointed up at a sign that read, ‘Not responsible for loss of unattended items’.

Rachel resisted the urge to swear at the woman, and instead stormed out of the club to the comparative quiet of the transit corridor so she could think.

“Shit, Rachel! What are we going to do? We can’t go walking into the dormitory like this, even if we could make it past the entry guards by some miracle.”

“Not to mention that bag had my only shoes aside from these.” She wiggled her toes in her sandals. “We’re completely screwed.”

“We could maybe see if they have security footage, and try to spot who might have taken the bag?”

“If we had time, yeah. But if we miss the morning muster, we’ll be in way more trouble than if we show up at the front gate looking like this.”

Justin took a slow breath. “Damn it, you’re right. Stars, why did I ever agree to this?”

“Because we’re both idiots.” Rachel plodded in the direction of the academy.

They boarded the nearby maglev train in silence, knowing there was nothing they could say to make the situation better.

As they got off the train and walked the rest of the way to the academy’s entrance, Rachel’s chest constricted until she thought she might choke. Why would I do something so reckless? The ISF is the best future I could have, and I’d throw it all away for one stupid night out at a club with a stranger while I ignored my friend? Maybe I deserve to be expelled.

She was tempted to throw up behind a potted plant, but decided vomit-breath wouldn’t make re-entry to the academy any easier.

<I’ll do the talking,> she said to Justin on the final approach. 

<It’s not like you forced me to come.>

<But it’s still my doing.> She took two even breaths to calm herself and walked up to the guards with feigned confidence. “Good evening. Two cadets returning home for the night.”

Two guards looked her over and then chuckled to each other.

“You’ve had quite a night,” the first guard said

“It was lovely, thank you.” Rachel brushed back a loose wisp of hair from her face. “We’ll see ourselves to our dorm now.” She made for the gate.

“Hold on a minute there,” the second guard said. “We’ll need to cross-check your ident.”

This is officially the end of my life as I know it. Rachel passed her credentials to the guards over the academy’s local network.

The second guard chuckled. “Really? You’ve only been here a month and you already snuck out?”

The first guard clicked his tongue. “You really got yourselves into it with this one.”

His companion shook her head. “I think this calls for a trip straight to the Commandant. He’ll love it.”

Stars, no! Rachel’s pulse spiked. “I can explain—”

“Save it for the Old Man,” the second guard stated while making an entry on her console.

<This is it. We’re done for.> Justin wiped his hands down his face.

<I’ll take full responsibility,> Rachel told him.

<It won’t make a difference.>

<I’ll do whatever I can to keep you out of it. This is all my fault.> The queasiness in Rachel’s stomach made her wish she’d taken that trip behind the potted plant when she’d had the chance.

“You’re ordered to report to Medical,” the first guard stated. “The Commandant will see you when he arrives later this morning.”

“Understood,” Rachel murmured.

She and Justin trudged to their fate.

The same medical AI greeted them when they entered the lobby. “It appears your navigational error led you straight out of the academy.”

“I guess I’m bad at reading maps,” Rachel shot back.

The AI’s avatar evaluated them in their mind. “Your blood alcohol levels are quite high. Unless you’ve consumed half a bathtub’s worth of booze in the last six hours, your nano has been suppressed.”

Rachel eased onto one of the benches in the waiting room. “Yep.”

“Well, your mednano should come back online soon. I think it’s best if you worked this off naturally.”

“Yay.” Rachel pressed her palm to her forehead and lay down with her head propped on the arm of the bench.

After what only seemed like a minute, a buzzer sounded. Rachel bolted upright. Checking her Link, she saw that three hours had passed.

“Wakey, wakey,” the AI attendant said. “You’ll meet with the Commandant in ten minutes. Make yourselves presentable, if you wish.”

Justin was coming to on an adjacent bench. “Oh, shit. We’re going to miss morning muster.”

“I imagine Sergeant Greggors has already been notified about our escapades last night. Missing morning laps is probably the least of our worries.”

Rachel smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Stars, I’m thirsty.

With far more effort than it should have taken, she lurched to her feet and shuffled across the room to a water cooler. She poured herself a glass of water and chugged it, then refilled the cup to take back to her seat.

“I forgot how much hangovers suck.”

Justin snorted. “They weren’t kidding about that nano-suppressor. Pretty sure I’m still actively drunk.”

Rachel noted that the universe did seem uncharacteristically off-kilter. “Yeah, that’s more likely for me, too.”

She smoothed her hair as best she could and altered her dress to be dark grey. “We should head to the Commandant’s office.”

“Yeah.” Justin rose to his feet and flexed his neck.

“Good luck,” the AI said. “Come back in an hour if your nano hasn’t cleansed your systems yet, and I’ll give you a booster.”

“Thanks.” Rachel departed the lobby with Justin.

The commandant’s office was two corridors away, in the administrative center for the academy. Few of the offices were occupied at the early hour, but the individuals they did pass cast appraising looks at the two cadets.

Rachel held her head high and stared straight ahead, ready to accept her fate.

When they reached General Evans’s office, Rachel took a deep breath. “It’s been nice knowing you,” she said to Justin.

“Likewise.”

With resolute nods, they knocked on the door and stepped inside.

Commandant Evans was standing next to his desk with a cup of coffee in hand. “Good morning,” he greeted.

“Good morning, sir,” they replied in unison.

“Have a seat.” He gestured to the two chairs across from his desk.

They complied.

The Commandant’s gaze passed between Rachel and Justin. “Now, tell me, whose idea was this?”

Justin opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel beat him to it.

“It was mine, sir,” she said.

“You demonstrated poor judgment by participating in activities that showed such disregard for the tenets of this academy,” Commandant Evans stated. “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”

Justin stared at his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry, sir. It was a lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again.”

“Why should I believe you?” the Commandant asked. “You disregarded rules and common sense this time.”

“Because I want to be here, sir.” Justin raised his gaze to meet the officer’s.

“Didn’t seem like it last night.”

“I know, sir. I disrespected the academy and myself.”

“Very well.” The Commandant clasped his hands behind his back. “I have nothing more to say to you at this time, but rest assured I’ll administer an appropriate punishment. You’re dismissed.”

Rachel started to stand with Justin, but the Commandant stopped her, “I’m not finished with you, Rachel.”

She sat back down.

Justin flashed her a look of pity, but quickly exited the room and closed the door behind him.

Commandant Evans shook his head. “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or impressed.”

“Sir?”

He chuckled. “I mean, catching a ride out in the organic waste bins? That takes real dedication.”

Rachel’s cheeks flushed. “It was stupid.”

“But showed some proper out-of-the-box thinking—well, in it, I suppose. Not to mention that clever trick with ghosting yourselves on the Link.”

Is he complimenting or mocking me?

Rachel wasn’t sure what to say. “My conduct was inexcusable.”

“Rash and shortsighted, perhaps, but not inexcusable.”

“Pardon, sir?”

He paced the room. “No one’s future should be derailed just because of one night of poor decisions in the search of fun. If you’d blown up High Victoria, that’d be another matter. But drinking at a club? You were just doing what everyone else has been dreaming about since they got here, only you had the guts to follow through.”

It took Rachel several seconds to find her voice. “That’s very generous of you, sir.”

He smiled. “I consider it good cosmic karma. I hope to have my own daughter one day, and I expect she’ll do her share of reckless things. That’s all part of growing up; it’s what makes us human.”

Rachel allowed herself to feel a glimmer of hope. “Does that mean I’m not expelled?”

“That depends.” The Commandant perched on the edge of his desk. “Do you want to be here?”

She nodded. “I do. Yes, I’ve been annoyed, at times, by the mindless routine, but the kind of life I can have in the ISF… I don’t want anything else.”

Commandant Evans smiled. “Well, we’re lucky to have you. As foolish as your stunt was, it did show a surprising degree of initiative and creativity. If you can channel that energy toward something more productive, you could go far in the ISF.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He rose from his desk. “There is still the matter of punishment…”

“I know, sir.” Rachel nodded. “I’m prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.”

“Good, then go get changed.” The Commandant grinned. “I know of some waste bins that need scrubbing.”

SECOND CHANCE

STELLAR DATE: 08.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)

LOCATION: ISS I2

REGION: Inner Canaan, New Canaan System

 Rachel told Admiral Evans, thinking back on the events of her youth that had placed her on her present path.

 He smirked.

She shook her head, amazed he still remembered the punishment. <That was quite a night. It’s been a long road from there to here.>

<That it has,> Admiral Evans nodded soberly.

Her escapades as a cadet may as well have been from another life, given how much had changed since then. But the commitment she’d made on that fateful night to serve her people was more salient than ever.

“Thank you for coming to see us off, sir,” Rachel said, looking the admiral in his eyes.

He nodded. “Safe travels. I have every confidence in you and your team.”

“Thank you, sir.” She saluted. <And thank you again for giving me a second chance.>

THE END

About the Author

Amy has always loved science fiction in all its forms, including books, movies, shows, and games. If it involves outer space, even better!

As a full-time author based in Oregon, Amy primarily writes character-driven science fiction and science-fantasy with broad scope and cool tech. She has completed the seven-volume Cadicle space opera series, a multi-generational epic with adventure, political intrigue, romance, and telekinetic abilities. Additional works include the Uprise Saga space opera series, novellas featured in the Pew! Pew! Anthologies, and numerous short stories in various anthologies.

When she's not writing, Amy enjoys traveling the world with her husband, wine tasting, binge-watching TV series, and playing epic strategy board games.

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AN UNCLE’S UNDERSTANDING

BY M. D. COOPER

THE PRAIRIE PARK

Sera settled onto the bench in the Prairie Park, watching the Sun slowly dip toward the horizon. It looked so normal, at least for a G spectrum star. Nothing special at all about it.

“How accurate is that?” she asked Finaeus, gesturing to the representation of humanity’s home star, rendered by the holographic perimeter of the park.

Finaeus cocked his head to the side, and she saw him squint in the diminishing light. “I suppose it’s pretty good. I mean…it’s obviously a holo, but the color’s right, and they did a good job of simulating the effect of a single light source across the park. Not easy to do that when the real light source’s distance and the apparent distance are so different.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sera asked. “You grew up on Earth. Is that what it looked like?”

Finaeus’ shoulders drooped and he sighed. “You know…I don’t really remember it that distinctly. I’ve seen so many suns lower over so many horizons, I can barely remember which is which anymore.”

Sera nodded. “I’ve not seen a fraction of the sunsets that you have, but I know the feeling. I’m going to pretend it’s perfect.”

“You could always ask Bob, you know.”

“Well, I imagine it’s really not bang-on, and Bob will feel compelled to tell me about how it’s not an accurate representation.”

 Bob joined in their conversation.

“Uhh…no. You’re frightening enough as it is, without thinking that you could be lying to me,” Sera replied.

<Very well. It is not perfect, but an unaugmented human would not be able to tell the difference between what you see, and a real sunset on Earth. Is that acceptable? It is the truth.>

Sera nodded slowly. “That’s perfect, Bob. Thanks.”

<You’re welcome.>

“You’re a peach, Bob.” Finaeus chuckled and looked up at the sky, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t exist, but you’re a peach.”

“Guy’s unnerving,” Finaeus chuckled for a moment, then breathed a heavy sigh. “But stars in the black, I’m glad he’s on our side.”

“How did it all come to this, Uncle Fin?” Sera turned to look her uncle in the eyes. “How did my father not see all of this coming?”

“I imagine he must have seen some of it—but I think he hoped to have more time. Which is a pretty standard state of affairs. Live for thousands of years, but when things come down to the wire, there’s never enough time.”

Sera knew that all too well. “How does it work out like that?”

Finaeus harrumphed, and his lips twisted as he considered her question. “Probably because things unravel about as fast as we can manage to shore them up. More time just means more unraveling.”

“And more time for our enemies to build themselves up,” Sera added.

“That is the way of it,” Finaeus replied.

“I just wish that we weren’t fighting this war with Orion at the same time as everything else. The schism between my father and Praetor Kirkland was because of Airtha. We can all agree that Airtha is bad now, we should be working toward peace.”

“That’s an admirable goal.” Finaeus’s eyes locked with hers, and his expression became grim. “But you don’t know Kirkland. He’s just as pig-headed as your father was. He may not ally with us just because of our tech, not to mention our allegiance with Tanis and New Canaan.”

“Shouldn’t we at least try?” Sera asked. “You know, maybe talk to the man before we kick off a galactic war?”

Finaeus nodded and turned to look out over the sunset, his eyes distant. Sera joined him in gazing out over the tall grass.

She wondered at his resistance at talking to Praetor Kirkland. It could be that her uncle was right; that Kirkland was intractable and would not consider any compromises. But it also could be that millennia of past interactions had led her uncle—and likely her father, as well—to form an inaccurate view of the OFA’s praetor. One where their own preconceptions colored their thoughts on the matter.

Sera placed her hands on her thighs and looked down at her fingers, changing their color from a pale flesh tone to match the blue of the jacket she wore.

It reminded her that she was wearing clothing, and that bothered her all the more. Her proclivities to wear evocative clothing—and the eventual removal of her skin in favor of her new malleable epidermis—was one of the things she knew was distinctly her.

She knew that because Helen had always disapproved. The AI never tried to force Sera to change the way she dressed or behaved—at least not directly—but she certainly had disliked how Sera sexualized herself.

Was I rebelling against my mother all those years and not even knowing it? Sera thought with a laugh.

Either way, that behavior was something that she knew made her her, not what anyone else wanted her to be. Why did she think about it so much, anyway? In the grand scheme of things, no one should care about her fashion choices.

Maybe because I feel like it’s the one thing I should be able to control in my life, yet now I can’t even make that decision for myself.

“I suppose maybe we should.”

Finaeus’s words interrupted her thoughts, and for a moment she thought he was suggesting that no one wear clothing anymore, but then she recalled that he was responding to her question about trying to talk to Praetor Kirkland.

“Really? You seemed so opposed to it before.”

“Well, maybe fresh eyes are what we need on the situation. Your father hasn’t wavered in his approach for centuries; maybe Kirkland will consider your words more than he did Jeff’s.”

Sera pressed her palms together, lowering her lips toward her fingertips as she thought. “Well then, now we just have to figure out how to get someone in to meet with him. Someone that he’ll believe has my backing.”

“Surely you have agents at New Sol. You are the Director of the Hand.”

“Stars,” Sera laughed. “That’s a job and a half on its own…one that has gotten away from me these past few months. I should have established a new capital outside New Canaan right away.”

“You had no idea who you could trust. We had to seed Angela’s AI correction first, and then wait for confirmations.”

“True, yes. Well, what’s done is done, and we’re off to Khardine now. Regarding what you said before, I don’t think it can be a Hand agent. I need a diplomat.”

“What about your brother Serge?”

Sera had been thinking the same thing. Although, after Andrea had used Sera to try and kill Tanis, Serge had left the Transcend Diplomatic Corps. He’d remained in Airtha until after Sera’s trials, and then departed from the Huygens System.

Last Sera had heard, he was headed to the Swan Nebula in the Sagittarius Arm to aid in a new combine of systems being established out on the fringe of explored space.

“I’ll have to find him first—then see if I can convince him to go to New Sol. I got the feeling he wanted out of ‘the life’.”

“He’s a good kid,” Finaeus replied. “I think he’ll do what’s right. I think that’s why he left—not enough ‘right doing’ opportunities in Airtha for his liking.”

Sera considered that. It aligned with what she knew of her brother. That had also been over fifteen years ago. He could have had his fill of being on the frontier by now.

“I’ll send someone to hunt him down once we get to Khardine. I think it’s worth trying.”

“And as a backup option?” Finaeus asked.

“Well, certainly not you. I still think you should be president, not me.”

Finaeus rolled his eyes. “Enough with that. I want the job like I want a hole shot in my head.”

“How do you think I feel?

“From what Admiral Greer told me, you volunteered for it.”

Sera gave a short laugh. “It was me or Adrienne. What would you have done?”

“Point taken.”

“Honestly…the only person I can think of who is really qualified to be President of the Transcend is Tanis. But she won’t even hear of it. Shuts me down just like you do.”

“Sera,” Finaeus placed a hand on her shoulder. “You are going to make a fantastic president. You’re smart, a good tactician, tenacious, you can deal with minutia, and you don’t tolerate bullshit. You’re also far more connected to reality on the ground than your father ever was. Without a doubt, you’re just the woman we need for the job. Stop selling yourself short.”

Sera place her hand over her uncle’s. “Thanks, Uncle Fin. Just promise me you’re not going to run off again. A leader is only as good as those she surrounds herself with.”

Finaeus stood and stretched. “Well then, you’re going to be the best leader ever. You’ve got me, and Tanis, and even Bob. Tons of great people around you.”

“Just like you to turn it into something about yourself,” Sera said with a laugh.

Finaeus shrugged. “I included Bob and Tanis.” He placed a hand on her head and tousled her hair. “You’ll always be my sweet little niece, Seraphina. I still remember when you’d sneak into my lab and ask me ceaseless questions.”

Sera scowled at her uncle as she smoothed her hair out and stood. He winked at her, and she sighed and smiled.

“You’re incorrigible, Finaeus. But those were some of my fondest childhood memories.”

“Good, they’re fond ones for me, too. But now I want you to put on your big girl pants…skin…whatever, and kick some ass. You’re the president of the Transcend, one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. Act like it.”

Sera laughed and gave him a light shove.

“Well then, if I’m the boss, it’s time for you to get to Engine. We jump in less than half an hour.”

“Sheesh, Seraphina, no need to be pushy.” A grin slipped onto Finaeus’s face, and he winked at her. “Besides, I don’t work for you. I work for Tanis.”

“Finaeus! Are you undermining me less than a minute after you told me to take the reins?”

Her uncle leaned in and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “Good luck, President Tomlinson. Give ‘em hell.”

* * * * *

Bob watched Sera as she made her way to the maglev platform, and then the ship’s bridge.

Finaeus was right. She was a powerful woman, and bolstered Tanis tremendously. The events he needed to bring about would not happen while Sera was at Tanis’s side. They would need to be separated for his plan to work.

Though not just yet.

For now, Tanis needed her friend to lean on, and he needed Sera to be strong for what she would face at Airtha.

In time, the AI thought to himself as he watched a human woman with a piece of the enemy inside emerge from the grass in the Prairie Park, and follow Sera’s path.

In good time.

THE END

Thank you for reading Ignite the Stars, and taking a journey with these characters to learn a bit more about where they’re from, and where they’re going.

If you haven’t already read it, the next book in the grand adventure is ^{The Scipio Alliance}, where we follow Tanis and Sera as they travel into the Inner Stars to build up allies against Orion.

THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

Keep up to date with what is releasing in Aeon 14 with the free ^{Aeon 14 Reading Guide}.

The Intrepid Saga

- Book 1: ^Outsystem

- Book 2: ^{A Path in the Darkness}

- Book 3: ^{Building Victoria}

- ^{The Intrepid Saga Omnibus} – Also contains Destiny Lost, book 1 of the Orion War series

- ^{Destiny Rising} – Special Author’s Extended Edition comprised of both Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness with over 100 pages of new content.

The Orion War

- Book 1: ^{Destiny Lost}

- Book 2: ^{New Canaan}

- Book 3: ^{Orion Rising}

- Book 4: ^{The Scipio Alliance}

- Book 5: ^{Attack on Thebes}

- Book 6: The Thousand Front War (2018)

- Book 7: Fallen Empire (2018)

- Many more following

Tales of the Orion War

- Book 1: ^{Set the Galaxy on Fire}

- Book 2: ^{Ignite the Stars} (Feb 2018)

- Book 3: Burn the Galaxy to Ash (2018)

Perilous Alliance (Age of the Orion War - with Chris J. Pike)

- Book 1: ^{Close Proximity}

- Book 2: ^{Strike Vector}

- Book 3: ^{Collision Course}

- Book 4: ^{Impact Imminent} (April 2018)

Rika’s Marauders (Age of the Orion War)

- Prequel: ^{Rika Mechanized}

- Book 1: ^{Rika Outcast}

- Book 2: ^{Rika Redeemed}

- Book 3: ^{Rika Triumphant}

- Book 4: ^{Rika Commander} (April 2018)

- Book 5: Rika Unleashed (2018)

Perseus Gate (Age of the Orion War)

Season 1: Orion Space

- Episode 1: ^{The Gate at the Grey Wolf Star}

- Episode 2: ^{The World at the Edge of Space}

- Episode 3: ^{The Dance on the Moons of Serenity}

- Episode 4: ^{The Last Bastion of Star City}

- Episode 5: ^{The Toll Road Between the Stars}

- Episode 6: ^{The Final Stroll on Perseus’s Arm}

- Eps 1-3 Omnibus: ^{The Trail Through the Stars}

- Eps 4-6 Omnibus: ^{The Path Amongst the Clouds}

Season 2: The Inner Stars

- Episode 1: ^{A Meeting of Bodies and Minds} (Feb 2018)

- Episode 2: ^{A Surreptitious Rescue of Friends and Foes} (2018)

- More coming in 2018

The Warlord (Before the Age of the Orion War)

- Book 1: ^{The Woman Without a World}

- Book 2: ^{The Woman Who Seized an Empire}

- Book 3: ^{The Woman Who Lost Everything} (March 2018)

The Sentience Wars: Origins (With James S. Aaron)

- Book 1: ^{Lyssa’s Dream}

- Book 2: ^{Lyssa’s Run}

- Book 3: ^{Lyssa’s Flight}

- Book 4: ^{Lyssa’s Call} (2018)

- Book 5: Lyssa’s Flame (2018)

Machete System Bounty Hunter (Age of the Orion War - with Zen DiPietro)

- ^{Book 1: Hired Gun} (Feb 2018)

- Book 2: Gunning for Trouble (2018)

- Book 3: With Guns Blazing (2018)

The Empire (Age of the Orion War)

- ^{The Empress and the Ambassador} (2018)

- ^{Consort of the Scorpion Empress} (2018)

- ^{By the Empress’s Command} (2018)

Tanis Richards: Origins

- Prequel: Storming the Norse Wind (^{At the Helm Volume 3})

- Book 1: Shore Leave (June 2018)

- Book 2: The Command (June 2018)

- Book 3: Infiltrator (July 2018)

The Sol Dissolution

- The 242 - Venusian Uprising (^{The Expanding Universe 2} anthology)

- The 242 - Assault on Tarja (^{The Expanding Universe}3 anthology)

The Delta Team Chronicles (Expanded Orion War)

- A "Simple" Kidnapping (^{Pew! Pew! Volume 1})

- The Disknee World (^{Pew! Pew! Volume 2})

- It’s Hard Being a Girl (^{Pew! Pew! Volume 4})

- A Fool’s Gotta Feed (^{Pew! Pew! Volume 4})

- The Plot Thickens (^{Pew! Pew! Volume 5})

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Cooper likes to think of himself as a jack-of-all-trades (and hopes to become master of a few). When not writing, he can be found writing software, working in his shop at his latest carpentry project, or likely reading a book.

He shares his home with a precocious young girl, his wonderful wife (who also writes), two cats, a never-ending list of things he would like to build, and ideas…

Find out what’s coming next at ^{http://www.aeon14.com}