Space is huge. I mean really, really huge. You may think it’s a long way down to the…Okay, alright, that shtick has been done before, and done by someone a lot more amusing than me. But Mr. Adams was right. Space is almost unimaginably vast. Even in our own little corner of it, here in the Orion Arm and parts of the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms, there are hundreds of thousands of star systems, if not millions. Not all of them are inhabited, but many of them have resources, usually minerals and ice water, which can be mined.
Keeping the Salik confined on their homeworld and eight colony planets is therefore a galactic-sized headache. Any direction, right or left, front or back, up or down, can be a direction in which secretly built Salik ships can flee. Thousands of star systems are technically within their reach…but that’s not counting the interstellar void between systems, and the vast volume of space itself, which is really, really, really huge.
We therefore took great pains to destroy their fleets at the end of the war two centuries ago, and even greater pains to monitor their colonial and homeworld star systems in great depth. Instead of trying to monitor the vast depths of the interstellar void, we took to monitoring the resources that they would need to rebuild. We knew some ships would slip through the tiny cracks around their worlds, and sail merrily through the vast cracks away from their home systems, but we did our absolute best to monitor for any signs of enemy activity and brutally destroy all such vessels when we found them.
Our standing orders were also to bring back any evidence of secret Salik bases located far outsystem. Evidence was to be found, and the bases destroyed with extreme prejudice by a massive coalition of Alliance forces. Which meant it was standard operating procedure to board enemy vessels wherever and whenever possible, once they were disabled. Even for a crew as small as the Audie-Murphy’s.
~Ia
JANUARY 7, 2494 T.S.
NUK NUKLIEL 83 SYSTEM
The Audie-Murphy had two small boarding pods. Technically, they also doubled as the ship’s escape pods. That meant, when they were launched, they immediately broadcast a broadband distress beacon, both on several lightspeed wavelengths and on at least three hyperrelay bands. It guaranteed that someone would be coming by in a few hours to see why the pods had been launched, a necessary precaution when space was so vast.
It was also the most dangerous thing Ia and her crew could do, since launching the pods meant risking being shot at by the supposedly disabled Salik vessel ahead of them. Only when a commanding officer was certain the ship was disabled did they risk launching the pods. Sometimes they were right and landed safely. Sometimes they were wrong. The casualty rate was 80 percent for a reason, though this time Ia and the others were fully suited and sealed, just in case something cracked open the small boarding vessel.
This time, they were crammed four to a pod, with Ia, Tamaganej, Higatsu, and Nguyen in one pod, and Chief Petty Officer Kendric with Privates Doolittle, Quangyan, and de la Soleza in the other pod, all members of the Murphy half of the crew. This time, Ia was the only one who was relaxed inside her suit. She knew—she had made sure—that all of the alien ship’s weapons systems had been disabled, plus she had directed the gunners to hit the ship hard enough in the right spots to disable their self-destruct capacity.
Instead of fretting, she reviewed known ship schematics for this general configuration, and for known Salik databank units, using her heads-up display to pretend like she was studying for the coming encounter. Swaying against her restraint sockets, Ia listened to the thump and buzzing hiss of the pod sealing onto the ship’s hull, and then cutting into it. Like so many other things, modern ceristeel technology had been denied to the Salik, but their own version of hull armor was still quite tough.
Giving the others the thumbs-up with one servo-glove, Ia moved to the airlock door and slipped through, with Nguyen right behind her. A twist of the controls activated the cutters, the heavy, mining-quality laser drills that sliced into the ship’s hull. With their bodies wrapped in p-suits inside their jointed armor, the eight members of the boarding team would be fine if the Salik ship depressurized. The Salik might or might not be alright, depending on whether or not they had donned their own suits in the aftermath of the battle.
Nguyen passed her the buzzbomb cannon. Fitting it to the port in the center of the door, Ia hooked her helmet’s HUD to the pod’s external cameras. The lasers were still drilling, circling around and around on their oval track. Finally, a faint clannng rippled into the pod from the other ship as the pistons pushing on the hull shoved the layers of armor plating and bulkhead into the depths of the Salik vessel.
Ia pulled the trigger on the cannon, pulsing it four times. Four orbs spat down into the alien vessel. The first one exploded in a pzzzt of sound and light, a stunner grenade that flashed its electrosonic pulse through the cabin beyond the opening she had made. The second through fourth flew down, bounced, and rolled off under self-control, automatically seeking out live bodies to pulse a second wave of sonic shocks.
Unhooking the cannon let in a hiss of steam. The heated vapor didn’t do anything to her mechsuit, so Ia ignored it. She passed the launcher back to Nguyen with a murmur through her external speakers. “We could’ve seriously used these on board the Liu Ji, back in my old Marines Company. They would’ve made boarding pirate ships a lot easier.”
“Let’s trade places, sir,” he offered, lifting his chin behind the half-silvered curve of his inner faceplate.
“Why?” she asked. She turned her attention to the controls for the airlock door.
“Sir, you shouldn’t go in first. Leave that job to a Marine,” he stated.
“I am a Marine. Even if I wear Blues these days,” she amended. “Either way, I am the boarding officer for this little party.”
The door hissed open, swinging and pivoting almost like a rolltop door in order to give them the clearance to enter. More steamy air billowed their way, though not as saturated as before. Nguyen touched Ia, the rubberized tips of his servo-fingers gripping her arm plates.
“Then let an enlisted meioa go first, sir. It isn’t right our leader should risk herself as the first one into the enemy’s ship,” he argued.
“Duly noted, Private, but denied. I lead from the front,” Ia told him. Ducking into the opening, she climbed over the still-hot edges of the oval. The sensors on her mechsuit boot soles flared their temperature warnings at the edges of the heads-up display shining off the inner curve of her faceplate. A blink-code slid her thick-silvered blast plate into place, and a shift of her servo-arms pulled her HK-114 mechsuit-sized laser rifle to the front of her armored body.
Static swept across her faceplate display, pulsed from the stunner grenade on the floor inside the cabin. By the time it cleared, she was inside. From the trio of lidded tanks lining three of the walls—or rather, two and the remains of the middle third, which had been crushed by the falling chunks of hull and overhead storage lockers—this was some sort of crew quarters.
Ignoring the debris, Ia stepped over it and slapped the sucker hand over the controls for the cabin door, lifting on the buttons to open the panel. Rolling through as soon as it hissed wide, she pointed her rifle both ways down the corridor outside. Nothing and no one. The stunner bombs bounced out the door and rolled down the hall, occasionally flashing electrosonic shockwaves, which, like stunner rifles, would disrupt the neural networks of just about any form of life that used electrical signals. Ceristeel absorbed most of the shockwave, but the sensors built into her mechsuit fuzzed a second time with another brief moment of static before they cleared.
Still, her suit’s scanners, upgraded for Blockade work, showed no other life-forms nearby. No stray sounds, no Salik-shaped heat signatures, with their distinctive, ostrich-backwards knees and rear-facing flipper-feet, nor their pseudo-tentacle arms with the four, supple, sucker-covered ends. She flicked on her comm with another blink, triggered by the sensors picking up the focal point of her gaze flicking over the command options hovering around the edges of her faceplate display.
“This is too quiet. They’d know where we latched on. We should be facing resistance. Heads up, people. Petty Kendric, report.”
“It’s too quiet here, sir,” the noncom replied over her headset. “We emerged in a storage locker just off the hangar deck, but there’s no sign any of them tried to get to the courier to flee.”
“Did you say courier?” That question came from Salish, back on board the Audie-Murphy.
Ia knew what was coming. She let First Petty Kendric reply, since he was the one who “knew” for sure.
“I’m staring at what looks like a hyperspace nosecone on the pointy end of a Salik—”
“Shakk!” Ia swore into her headset mike. “All units, get to the bridge! I repeat, get to the bridge!”
She took off at a sprint, startling Nguyen and the other two. They lumbered after her, rattling the deckplates with the weight of their halfmech. Snatching up the nearest stunner ball without crushing it as she ran—no mean feat in the bulk of a mechsuit—she confirmed her course from a light skimming of the time-streams.
“Lieutenant, report!” Salish snapped.
“It’s a suicide ship, sir,” she stated, skidding around a corner and slapping the sucker hand over the controls for one of the ship’s emergency stairwells. “They must have been carrying navigation data on either the location of a secret base or the coordinates for a rendezvous. That’s why there’s no resistance; they’re holed up somewhere, either dead or killing themselves off to ensure they can’t be interrogated. Our best chance is to hope they haven’t completely slagged the relevant data consoles.”
As soon as she got the door open, she pulled off the device and clanged down the steps. The Salik version of feet—backwards-pointing flippers on ostrich-like legs—weren’t exactly adapted for using ladder rungs, which meant there was plenty of room for her halfmech suit to charge down two levels. By the time she reached the right door, Private de la Soleza’s voice rang over the comm channels.
“I think I found the bridge, sir! Something just shot at me!”
“All units, converge on de la Soleza,” Ia ordered, more of her attention on getting the stairwell door open than on either her scanners or the timestreams of who or what was attacking the private. The ball in her grip pzzzzted with another wave of stunner energy, but the brief fuzzing of her sensors didn’t matter. The who or what wasn’t far away; within moments, they reached the right cross-corridor, one with a pair of gun turrets mounted on the ceiling outside two sets of mirror-image doors.
Swinging her gun up into position, Ia fired, slicing through the power conduits feeding both lasers. One of them managed to swivel around in time to take a potshot at her, but the blood orange bolt merely scuffed her armor. Without missing a beat, she turned to her left and started lasering through the seam sealing the double doors together. Nguyen joined her, while de la Soleza and her partner Doolittle used their own HK-114s on the double doors opposite.
One set of the mirror-image doors would lead to a shallow storage locker; the other would lead onto the real bridge. Ia knew which set were the real doors. Tamaganej from her left and Higatsu from her right pulled out pocket crowbars from storage compartments on their thighs. Jamming them into the glowing-hot crack she and Nguyen had made, they flexed their synthetic muscles, prying the doors apart. On the other side, Quangyan and Kendric started to do the same.
The moment the opening was barely big enough, Ia tossed the stunner grenade through. Just in time, too; it went off on the other side of the glowing door edges. A smattering of static sparkled across her heads-up display. It didn’t stop her from bringing her rifle back up into position…nor did it stop the deadman switch from triggering on the grenade in the limp grip of one of the stunned Salik inside.
Ignoring the bloody, smoldering pieces smacking into the doors, the bits that spattered down her armor, Ia crouched a little, aimed carefully below the Salik-style overhead screens dotting each workstation, and fired. The acid poured over the data cubes beneath the navigation console ignited in a rush of light and heat. The flames burned swiftly, extinguishing themselves as they used up the available oxygen in their vicinity.
“Whoa,” Nguyen muttered over the open comms. “What’d you do that for, sir?”
“They use a corrosive acid to destroy their memory banks, but the acid is highly flammable,” Ia stated. She waited while another stunner-pulse from the grenade rolling around on the floor fuzzed her heads-up view, then stepped onto the bridge. “I tend to play the Audie-Murphy’s logs for past encounters before falling asleep. With luck, I’ve saved enough of the units that the higher-ups can extract something useful. Commander Salish, I don’t know how many of the Salik are still alive elsewhere, but I think we have four prisoners here. Um…maybe three. I think one of them is bleeding to death.”
“I’ve already received a pingback on the hyperrelays,” Salish promised her. “The TUPSF Kaiwinoka is on her way to give the enemy a tow back to base. They’ve also promised to bring a spare set of starboard insystem thrusters for the Murphy. Thank our lucky stars, that’s the worst of the damage we sustained. Stay on board the enemy ship, Lieutenant, and do your best to finish securing it. Don’t hesitate to make a run for the pods if it looks like things are going southward. I’ll be keeping the Audie and the Murphy separate until the Kaiwinoka arrives, just in case they have a few crewmembers stashed away, waiting for a chance of sabotage.”
“Understood, sir,” Ia agreed. “You heard our fearless leader, meioas. Strip and zip the prisoners, and haul them out of here. I want them duct-taped to a bulkhead outside and unable to do anything but hang there and breathe in ten minutes flat—and yes, I do mean that literally. Strip ’n zip, and strap ’em flat!”
A ragged chorus of “Aye, sir” answered her command, both locally and over her headset.
“Be careful and scan each one before you move them,” First Petty Officer Kendric ordered. “Some of these sons of squids have a bad habit of lying down on a deadman’s switch, particularly if they think they’ll be stunned. The moment you turn them over—boom!”
“Don’t count on your armor protecting you, either, if you’re close enough to turn ’em over,” Ia added in warning, backing up the noncom. “No one buys a star out of carelessness, today.”
JANUARY 9, 2494 T.S.
BATTLE PLATFORM MAD JACK
SIC TRANSIT
“So, how was your first week?” Bennie asked as she came back from the caf’ dispenser. Once more, she was stuck in a small office attached to her quarters, though at least they were larger than the ones back on the Liu Ji.
Accepting the mug of hot liquid, Ia shrugged. “Not bad. I’m getting some respect from the crews of the authorized ships we’ve boarded, and we’ve caught three that weren’t authorized. Well, exploded, disabled, and boarded.”
The redheaded chaplain curled one leg under the other as she settled in her cushioned chair. A wry smirk curved the corner of her mouth. “The way I hear it, you earned your nickname again.”
Ia shook her head, sipping at the slightly bitter beverage. “Not really. It was just a small amount of spatter, this time. Mostly down the midline. The bridge doors weren’t open very wide when the grenade went off.”
Blowing on her own mug, Bennie shrugged. “Any nightmares from it?”
“Not as far as I know. Besides, everyone on my side lived,” Ia pointed out. “That’s the best nightmare deterrent I can have. The techs might be able to get useful navigation data out of the banks we salvaged. I won’t hold my breath, but even if they just have a series of slightly more detailed starcharts for several systems, that’d give them a place to start looking. The really disturbing thing, though, is that someone gave them OTL technology.”
Bennie nodded. “Oddly enough, I’m not surprised. If they dug a giant tunnel under the surface of their worlds, sealed it and removed the atmosphere, they could launch ships into hyperspace that way. It would make the most sense as to how they could come and go without being seen.”
“The stress of a wormhole tunneling through a planet could show itself as a series of microfaults and microquakes, giving them a possible way to locate it…” Ia gave up and shook her head. “Eh. That’s speculation better left for better heads in the military to mull over.”
“How are your crew doing? Are they giving you respect, yet?” Bennie asked next. “Or are they giving you a hard time?”
Ia blew out a breath. “I find myself wanting to be short with them sometimes. I try to hold it back, though; it’s not their fault.”
“Oh?”
The single word held a wealth of inquiry. Not once did Ia forget that the woman across from her, friend or not, was a trained psychologist as well as a spiritual advisor, and a Department of Innovations–assigned watchdog. Slouching a little, Ia rested her head on the high, padded back of her own chair. “I served with Ferrar’s Fighters for several tours of duty. Some of them came and went, but…we knew each other by the time I was put into a position of great authority—being a corporal-ranked Squad leader doesn’t count. I’m talking noncom, real authority.
“I just have to remind myself, I’ve only served with these soldiers a week or so,” she finished, shrugging.
What she really meant was, I precognitively remember serving with them already, but I have to remember that I haven’t actually done so in reality, yet. But Ia didn’t say that to Bennie. As much as she liked the older woman, as much as they were friends and Bennie was her confidante, there were certain things she couldn’t yet say.
“So long as you realize this, rein in your temper—what little temper you have,” the chaplain teased dryly, “and treat them fairly, they’ll come to respect and follow you.” She sipped at her mug of caf’ for a few moments, then frowned softly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have an…air of command about you. No, not command…”
She fell silent for several seconds, thinking it over. Ia gave her the peace to do so. Finally, Bennie shrugged.
“The only words I can think of are purpose and drive. Or maybe destiny…whatever it is, it puts me in mind of the story of Joan of Arc.” Bennie shook her head, her thick braid sliding across her shoulders. “Not exactly the most pleasant of comparisons, sorry.”
Ia chuckled softly. “Here’s hoping I don’t get burned at the stake. Though my enemy right now are the Salik, and that means they’d rather eat me alive than cook me, first.”
“And how do you feel about that, as a possibility?” Bennie asked her. “You are working the Blockade, and it has been known to happen.”
Ia lifted her mug in mock-salute. “I hope they consider me eminently worthy of being eaten.”
The look Bennie gave her, taken aback to the point of dismay, tickled Ia’s sometimes strange sense of humor.
“Oh, don’t give me that look,” she chided the chaplain, chuckling under her breath. “The only way they’d find me ‘eminently worthy’ of being devoured alive is if they thought I was a major war-prize. That means I’d have given them so much grief and hell, destroying ships and capturing Blockade-runners, there’d be fewer of the frogtopus bastards around to give other soldiers hell. That kind of reputation, the one that puts me at the top of their To Be Eaten list? I can live with that, Bennie.”
“You want to get eaten?” Bennie asked her, still dubious.
That made Ia burst out with laughter. “God, no! What kind of masochist do you take me for? Ahahaha! Ha! Heheheh…heh…Oh, stars. I haven’t laughed like that in a long while…”
Bennie smiled over the rim of her mug. “Well, at least I’ve finally tickled your funny bone. You don’t laugh a lot, do you? Chuckle, yes, and other restrained forms of mirth, but laugh outright? Nooo, our Ia is far too sober and serious to guffaw.”
That made her snort with laughter. Blushing, Ia covered her nose, reducing her “guffaws” to a mere chuckle once more. Bennie grinned and lifted her mug in salute.
“Gotcha.”
Ia stuck out her tongue, then buried her fading smile in her mug. There were reasons why she rarely laughed. It was hard to be that carefree with the fate of the future looming constantly throughout her thoughts.
FEBRUARY 5, 2494 T.S.
Her older brother peered into the pickups on his end of the vidlink and frowned. “You look like hell, Sis. What’ve you been up to? That isn’t a sunburn, is it?”
Ia shook her head. “Decompression sickness. It was a sneak attack by ore smugglers. They blew a hole in my half of the ship. Everyone got into their p-suits okay, but okay doesn’t cover how the damned pressure foam expands and makes it that much harder to climb into them. We’re confined to the Battle Platform on Sick Leave while they put the Audie back together. By the time she’s flightworthy again, the docs tell me the broken capillaries will have healed. The daily goo baths don’t hurt, either.”
Despite the speed of the micro-sized hyperrifts used in interstellar communications, traveling hundreds of lightyears to the second, it still took several seconds for him to hear her side of the conversation and respond.
“Lucky you, you get regeneration goo,” he muttered. “There’s been a media storm locally on certain doctors at the hospital refusing to use the stuff on patients who ‘aren’t that badly injured’ according to said doctors,” Thorne warned her. “More specifically, on patients who are known to be particularly anti-Church.”
“And?” Ia asked, waiting to hear the most likely probabilities confirmed. She had already foreseen something like this, but the variables had created several minor possibilities. None of it would seriously change the near-future timelines, but it would be a point to be dredged back up again when it came time to sway the undecided members of Sanctuary’s population.
“They’ve stirred up a board of inquiry, and the victims are now suing in court,” Thorne told her. His mouth pressed into a grim line. “Regeneration biogels are disgustingly expensive to acquire on Sanctuary, so the doctors are arguing that it’s being saved for cases that truly need it. Except three of the victims were badly burned in a chemical fire and could’ve used doses of the goo to prevent severe scarring. They’re suing the physicians on grounds of religious discrimination and the violation of their Hippocratic Oaths. The results are…unpleasant… to look at, so the consensus is that they’ll win the sympathy vote from the jury.
“As it is, if they want the scars gone, they’ll have to have their skin peeled away from the affected areas before the biogel can be applied—the more liberal of the media services have been romping and rolling all over that part of the news.”
“How charming. I hope those so-called doctors get what they deserve. On a more cheerful topic, did you get the gift I sent for Little Brother?” she asked.
It took him a moment to catch her meaning. Raising his brows, he nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got it, along with your latest shipment of holy beads. But he’s off camping in the mountains with some friends this week. I should be able to give it to him next Tuesday.”
Camping in the mountains was a prearranged euphemism for working down in the lava tunnels. “Just so long as he’s careful. How are Mom and Ma doing?”
“Pretty good. They found a new harpist for the restaurant. Not quite as good as the last one, or the dulcimer player, but then he’s still learning how to control the picks. Their anniversary is coming up. Did you remember to ship a gift?”
Ia winced. This time, the reaction wasn’t feigned. “No, I honestly forgot. Extend my apologies and get them something nice in my name. I’ll wire some credits to your account to cover it.”
He lifted his hand into view, warding off the suggestion. “I’ll pay for it myself. What they’d really like is a chance to talk to you themselves. Uh…” Thorne looked away from the vid pickups for a moment, frowning slightly, then nodded. “In nineteen hours Terran Standard, they’ll just be waking up, locally. That’s the best time to catch them. Right now, they’re busy with the restaurant.”
She nodded. “I’ll be up at that time anyway. It’s the Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics, and everyone in the Blockade Fleet is looking forward to seeing the displays the Gatsugi have planned for their show. I don’t know what news-Net channel you’re watching, but the ones piped out here have said they’ll be posting a chromatic scale with colormood translations to help the non-Gatsugi understand what they’re seeing.”
“Alien cultures,” Thorne quipped. “Gotta love ’em. Well, everyone but the Church.”
“How are your classes going?” she asked her brother.
“I’m just about finished with my midterm project in Integrated Delivery Systems, and I’m halfway through my graduate paper on Satellite Spaceport Systems Design. Since Sanctuary doesn’t have any moons or habitable rocks worth speaking of, I’m pretty much the only one at the college studying domeworld structures and building logistics,” he told her. “I’d tell you all about it, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. Or take up too much time on this call.”
“I wish I had time to be bored, because I’d love to hear it,” Ia confessed. “Unfortunately, you’re right, my free calling time is almost up. Pass my love to Fyfer, Mom, and Ma, will you? And keep a share for yourself?”
“Always,” he promised. “Mizzu.”
“Mizzu, tu,” she returned. “Ghin t’Fyfer sa numcha, eyah?”
“Eyah,” he agreed, giving her a pointed look, before affecting a look of remembrance. “Take care, Ia—oh, I don’t know if you heard, but the Power Pick numbers just leaped to the astronomical level. The multipliers are pushing the winnings into the trillions of credits. I think I’ll try buying a ticket myself, even if gambling’s not normally my thing. It’s always been more Fyfer’s thing.”
“Well, you know me,” Ia quipped dryly. “I don’t like to gamble. Not to mention, the odds are too high for my taste, especially with the Power Pick tickets limited to one per sentient, once it shot past the ten billion mark.”
He grinned, enjoying the secret joke embedded beneath her words. “Still, you have to admit, that’s a lot of cold, hard creds. It’s very tempting, even for us straight-laced types. Good luck, and keep your head down, Sis.”
“Always,” she promised. “Love you. Tell Mom and Ma I’ll call them in nineteen hours Terran Standard.”
She watched him reach for the controls and shut off his image, leaving her with a blank blue holding screen. Sighing, she gathered her thoughts and tapped in her account number, preparing to pay for the next call. So much for the free call. Now I need to put one through to the Grandmaster. That’ll cost a pretty tenth chit…as will wishing my mothers happy anniversary.
Her arm unit beeped, startling her. Flicking open the lid, she saw she had a vidletter waiting for her. Downloading it to the commscreen, she opened it with a tap of her finger. Meyun Harper filled the screen. The one Human she still had trouble predicting.
“Umm…hello, Ia,” the prerecorded image stated. “I miss you, and I was thinking about you…and they want me to call someone every week, something about improving morale. I’ve already contacted my parents, that was last week. This week, I thought of you. Oh, the Navy wound up stuffing me into Blockade duty midtour. Seventeen percent, I believe it was. Anyway, that’s why it’s mandatory to call someone.”
Ia quickly paused the letter. Pressing into the timestreams, she searched for signs of his presence. It took her several minutes of effort, but she located shadows of him about a third of the way around the edge of the ragged bubble outlining the Salik Interdicted Zone. Relief staged a bittersweet, ambivalent war with regret inside of her.
Don’t even pretend the two of you can do otherwise, she admonished herself. You know you’re better off staying far away from this man…
Tapping the screen, she restarted it. Better off or not, she would listen to what he had to say, because she still wanted to hear it. She just couldn’t do anything about it without risking the timestreams.
“It’s gotten a bit chaotic here from time to time, but I’m already getting recognition for my talents—look, see?” he offered, picking up an awards box, tilting it so the silver and brass flower inside flashed and glittered. “Not two weeks in, and they’ve already given me the Compass Rose for extraordinary acts of engineering. I’d tell you what it was for, but…well, you know, it’s the Blockade. Everything’s been classified down to the last millimeter out here. Or it seems like it.
“Anyway…I just thought I’d drop you a vid, let you know I’m alright. I, um…can’t stop thinking about you,” he added carefully, staring into the pickups as if he could see her eyes. “It’s not getting in the way of my work or anything, but…Yeah. Take care of yourself, alright? Remember to duck when going through airlocks, and stuff. Meyun Harper out.”
Duck when going through airlocks? Ia repeated to herself. His image gave her a hesitant smile, then the recording ended. She probed the timestreams. Ahhh…right. Duck when going through smuggler ship airlocks, got it. Not bad, Harper, not bad, she silently praised. You’re already getting the hang of this covert message stuff. Luckily for you, I already knew about the potshot in question. I promise you, I’ll duck in plenty of time.
She did not, however, compose an actual response. Ia didn’t have to be a precog to know that it would tempt her into communicating with him on a greater basis. That ran the risk of letting feelings—hers or his, it didn’t really matter—sway her from her task.
Bennie’s going to give me hell for this, she realized, wincing. The moment she finds out he called me, and learns I didn’t respond…Compared to everything else, it was a relatively small price to pay. Of course, that didn’t mean it would be comfortable to endure, not when Chaplain Benjamin enjoyed teasing her so much.
FEBRUARY 10, 2494 T.S.
ATTENBOROUGH EPSILON 14 SYSTEM
It was difficult to focus on her meal. It was a good meal, too, roasted chicken, garlic potatoes, fresh V’Dan vegetables acquired from the Mad Jack’s multiple hydroponics bays, and greens from their own smaller pair of lifesupport gardens. The problem was that others had the Winter Olympics playing on both of the big primary screens lining either side of the room. Between the roar of the crowd, the action calls of the commentators, and the cheers or boos of her crewmates, it was hard for Ia to think.
“Turn the channel! Turn it!” Knorssen urged after looking at the chrono on her military wrist unit. She was almost dancing in her seat. “Turn it to the Nebula Network, channel 2! It’s almost time!”
“Shakk that, Knorssen,” Kipple joked. “You’d think you had a shot at winning the Power Pick. Besides, the rest of us are still watching the hockey game.”
“Oh, right, like your home team has any more shot at winning the gold than she has at winning two and a half trillion creds,” Yeoman Weavers called out from her position inside the galley kitchen. “I vote for the Power Pick. I bought a ticket, too.”
Several of the others broke into argument. Two were with Kipple in keeping the North American Terrans versus the Southstream Solaricans hockey game going; the rest were with Weavers and Knorssen, wanting to see the Power Pick drawing. Someone turned and jabbed at the controls on their screen, someone else tried turning it back, the volume for the hockey game was turned up, the news network was turned up, and a small scuffle broke out.
Giving up, Ia picked up her mug and cracked the heavy ceramic onto the metal dining table. Not hard enough to break it by any means, but loudly enough to cut through their fighting. “Enough.”
They sobered and quelled, returning to their seats. Flipping open her arm unit, Ia typed in the command that linked her to the Nets…and used her authority override to shut them off.
“You will stop acting like squabbling little children, and start behaving with the decorum expected of Space Force personnel. Is that clear?” she asked them in the sudden quiet filling the galley cabins.
“Commander Salish to Lieutenant Ia,” the ship’s intercom stated. “Is there a particular reason why you cut off the news Nets? I was about to watch the Power Pick Lottery drawing.”
Ia’s level glare kept anything greater than the slightest twitch of their mouths from quirking up. She activated her arm unit in reply. “Just enacting a temporary point of discipline, sir.” Closing the line, she reprogrammed the monitors and removed the block. The news Nets blossomed on both screens, albeit with the sound muted. “In honor of our Commanding Officer, we will now watch the Power Pick Lottery. The hockey game is being stored in the Net archives. You can watch the play-by-play later, Private Kipple.”
“Aye, sir,” he mumbled.
Tapping her unit, she cycled up the sound to a decorous, tolerable level, and returned to eating her dinner.
“…ion storms continue to rage in these sectors. Please consult your travel agency or local System Control Center for more details on any stellar-based delays,” the announcer stated. Briefly, the vid pickups displayed him giving his viewers a species-neutral, closed-mouth smile. Sergei Hasmapana was a familiar face for most of the Terran news-Net viewers, having held his job for the last nine years. “For your local weather, should your homeworld have any, please consult your local planetary news; just touch one of our affiliate channels listed at the bottom of your screen for more details.”
He turned his attention to the woman at his side. Unlike the male Human, who had tanned skin and dark hair reminiscent of Tamaganej, the woman had golden blonde hair, pale golden skin, and bluish-green stripes angling down over her face and the visible portions of her hands and forearms. Not many of the V’Dan still bore the old jungen marks; Kellena Var-D’junn, news anchor for Nebula News, was one of those that still did, playing on her visual distinctiveness to make a name and a face—pun freely admitted—for herself. Ia preferred the previous coanchor, but that woman had finally retired two years before.
“Coming up next,” Kellena stated, “the results and highlights from the Meioa-o’s Short Program, Freestyle Figure Skating.”
“Don’t tease them, Kellena,” Sergei joked. He turned serious once again “Yes, meioas, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. This is an unprecedented benchmark in the history of the Alliance Lottery, which was instigated one hundred seventy-six years ago last month. This month, the Power Pick Lottery has broken records left and right, with an unprecedented jackpot. We’ve had an unfortunate string of winner tragedies, compounded by a surprising number of non-winning tickets even among the Standard Draw, which is any ticket with the correct numbers for the lottery, but not selected in the correct order. These events have multiplied the jackpot winnings to an astounding 2.3 trillion credits.”
“As you know,” Kellena continued, picking up the story from her coanchor, “in order to quell ticket riots, false claims, and even murder, the Alliance Lottery Commission has instigated a ‘one sentient, one ticket’ policy for all jackpots exceeding ten billion credits. If you are not the genetically and legally provable purchaser of the winning ticket, you will not be able to claim your prize.”
“Even worse, as a reminder to everyone out there, not even a deceased person’s heirs can inherit a winning ticket, nor can they be transferred to an inheritor for a minimum of ten Alliance Standard years, or approximately eight Terran Standard years. That is, if there is a winning ticket,” Sergei warned her. “There might not be.”
Kellena mock-touched her chest, clad in a grey suit that didn’t go badly with her jungen marks. “Oh, please, Sergei, don’t even suggest that. My nerves wouldn’t be able to handle it a fourth time. I don’t think anyone could. Again, our condolences to the relatives of Trrrgul the White Tail of the Family Hwarrenn, L’Oolou of Green-Happy-Green Clan, and Mrs. Nettie Attewell. If you have a health condition that could be triggered by sudden shock or stress, the Alliance Health Organization strongly suggests that you refrain from playing the Power Pick at times like this.”
“For the rest of us with good hearts and other circulatory organs,” Sergei told his viewers, “let’s just hope someone gets the numbers right. The Alliance Lottery Commission has declared a temporary cap of 2.5 trillion credits to comply with the Lottery’s current maximum cap of eighty percent of lottery income, and will be reworking the jackpot progression levels to comply with the new, upcoming cap of fifty percent,” he reported. “Please remember that non-distributed Lottery earnings are used to help fund infrastructure and education systems for new colonyworlds across all the member governments of the Alliance for their first one hundred Standard years. What you don’t win does go to support a very good cause—know your limits, and contact the Alliance Gambling Helpnet if you think you may have a problem.”
“Enough with the suspense, Sergei. Tonight’s numbers will be drawn and verified by the certified examiners of the D’marid-Hastings Investment Group, as overseen by His Eternal Majesty’s Royal Guard,” Kellena stated. “We go now, live, to the Alliance Lottery Headquarters at K’Seddua, Summer Capital of the V’Dan Empire.”
The image shifted, revealing the brightly lit, tastefully appointed lottery drawing chamber. The opening speech was interrupted by Commander Salish’s voice. “This is Commander Salish. All stop for the Lottery numbers. Keep your eyes to the boards, but you can keep your ears open for this. Good luck, meioas.”
“And the first number is…13!” the unseen announcer stated as the V’Dan lottery workers fetched the first number from the tumbling balls in the archaic machine, drawn physically rather than electronically so that no accusations of code-fixing could be made.
Eight of the ten bodies in the galley groaned, though three of them looked vaguely hopeful. Knorssen shouted in glee, rising from her seat so fast, she thumped the edge of the table with her thighs. Given it was solid metal and firmly welded to the floor, she dropped back down with a grunt.
“Ow, dammit!”
“Shhh!” The mass of hushing didn’t quite cover up the next number.
“The second number is…74.”
“WOOOO!” Again, Knorssen leaped up—and again whacked her thighs. She dropped back with a twisted expression that was half grimace, half grin. Higatsu and Schumacher, seated on either side of her, quickly grabbed her by the arms and shoulders, pinning her in her seat.
The third number was announced. Tensed to cheer, Knorssen let out a wail instead. “Noooo! Noooooooo! Dammit, that was my fifth numberrrrr!”
“SHHH!”
As the others hissed, Schumacher clapped his hand over her mouth, careful not to cover her nose so that Knorssen could still breathe. Higatsu gave her shoulder a consoling squeeze. One by one, the ten numbers were drawn from the pool of one hundred possible. When the last one came up, Knorssen had only the three numbers, which wasn’t enough to qualify for even the minimum winnings. From the mutterings of the others, three numbers were the most that they had, too.
“This is the Commander to all awake hands. Do we have any Power Pick or Standard Draw winners on board? And no, I do not want to hear from those who did not win. We can hold a little pity party later. For now, I just want to know if anybody actually won anything.”
“Captain, this is Corporal Benaroya, down in Engineering. I, ah, just won four thousand credits. Or I will have won, once we get back to the Mad Jack.”
“Congratulations, Corporal. It’s not the grand jackpot, but it is still significant. Alright, meioas. Let’s make sure he gets back in one piece, so he can collect his winnings. Resuming course. Commander Salish out.”
“Oh, god,” Knorssen muttered, rubbing at her thighs. “I have deep bruises on my legs, and nothing to show for—”
“Shhh!” Kipple hushed her as the vid view switched back to the Nebula Newsroom. “They’re going to announce if anyone won!”
Higatsu rubbed his hands together, grinning. “With any luck, it’ll be someone who owes me money, and I’ll get to charge them interest for not having paid it off right away!”
Another shhh hushed him. On the monitor screens, Kellena Var-D’junn blinked, nodded at the teleprompter screen beyond the pickup cameras, and stated, “Yes…yes, we do have a Power Pick winner. I repeat, we have a Power Pick winner!”
Sergei squinted a little. “The winning ticket was registered on the Independent Colonyworld of…Sanctuary?”
Ia buried her smirk in her mug of milk, then dug into the last of her roasted chicken.
“—Which I believe lies approximately seven hundred lightyears from Earth,” Kellena quickly filled in, covering for him. “If I remember correctly, it is the heaviest inhabited M-class heavyworld, though the exact gravity escapes me at the moment. Rest assured, we’ll be running a special series of info-news programs on the winner’s homeworld later on this week.”
“Yes. The winning ticket was purchased in the city of…Our Blessed Mother? Is that right?” he asked, glancing first at his coanchor, who shrugged, then off camera for a brief moment. He gave his audience another close-mouthed smile, this time an apologetic one. “With so many worlds to keep track of in the known galaxy, please forgive us if we get any of this information wrong.”
Kellena lifted her hand. “Remember, viewers: The winning numbers will have to be verified by examinations conducted by the Royal Guard of the V’Dan Emperor and by the D’marid-Hastings Investment Group, but…yes…we do have a confirmation on the identity of the winning Power Pick Lottery ticket holder.”
“But first, the Standard Draw winners,” Sergei stated, drawing out the suspense. “Sharing the Standard Draw jackpot of twenty-three billion credits are the following five meioas—”
“Oh, for star’s sake! Get to the Power Pick winner’s name already!” Petty Officer Michaelson growled, his voice drowning out the start of the five winners’ names. Knorssen was the first one to crumple up her napkin and toss it at him. Kipple, Schumacher, and two others followed suit.
“Meioas,” Ia stated crisply, cutting through their assault. “However much he does deserve that, I do have to agree with him. Now let us…Shhh!” She cut herself off, since the female news anchor was speaking again.
“Our deepest congratulations, and our sincerest wishes of continuing good health, go out to the Human winner of the Power Pick grand jackpot, Meioa-o Fyfer Quentin-Jones of Our Blessed Mother, which is apparently the capital city of I.C. Sanctuary. May you spend it wisely…and may you share some of your newfound, astronomical wealth with your fellow sentients out there,” the news anchor stated wryly. “Because I certainly didn’t win any of it.”
“Yes, good luck, Meioa Quentin-Jones, and congratulations,” Sergei stated. “I’m told it will take six days at the bare minimum to get the nearest branch of the Alliance Lottery Commission’s Power Pick Prize Team all the way out to Sanctuary, due to the great distance that must be traveled and the inherent risks of stringing that many OTL jumps in a row. Nebula News and others from among our fellow news agencies across the Nets will be accompanying them to bring you the action live…or as live as anything streaming from the far edge of the known galaxy can get.”
“Off,” Knorssen muttered, rubbing her face. Her palms half muffled her words. “Turn it off. Put it back to hockey, or whatever. I can’t stand to hear anything more about a meioa I have no hope in hell of getting to know.”
Leaning over, Kipple jabbed the controls, programming it back to the Terran/Solarican game. On the other side of the table, Nguyen did the same. The excitement of the Winter Olympics had paled a little, however.
“Wait a second,” Nguyen muttered, swiveling in his seat. He frowned at Ia. “Lieutenant, aren’t you from Sanctuary? Heaviest heavyworld in the known galaxy?”
Ah, damn. I lost that gamble. The odds hadn’t been more than 20 percent that one of them would’ve remembered that much of her background. Opening the compartment that held her dessert, a whipped pudding, Ia picked up her spoon. “That would be correct.”
“Oh, c’mon, Mike,” Kipple admonished Nguyen. “There’s bound to be a million people on her homeworld.”
“There’s barely even a couple hundred thousand, yet,” Ia corrected mildly, dipping her spoon slowly, carefully into her dessert. “It was settled less than sixty years ago, and even though the wombpods have been popping babies like mad, we don’t have that many people there, yet. We’re only just now starting on our third native-born generation—I don’t know the population numbers anymore. I didn’t exactly stop to count heads, the last time I was there.”
“But, with only a couple hundred thousand, that means there’s a chance you actually know the guy!” Knorssen crowed. “Or at least know someone who knows him!”
The hard look Ia shot Knorssen silenced the other woman. “If I say I know him, you will press and press and press in the hopes that I’ll somehow connect you to the lucky meioa, and get you a handout, Private. If I say I do not know him, you will think me a liar, and still you will press, and press, and press. Telling the truth, or telling a lie, it does not matter. My answer will be the same: silence. This subject is closed, because it has nothing to do with our mission, here on Blockade Patrol…not to mention, it could be considered a potential violation of Fatality Forty-Nine.
“The only gambling I am interested in is the gamble that I can lead the lot of you effectively enough that all of us get back home alive. But in order to do that,” Ia warned the men and women seated around her at the table, “I need you to put your minds back onto our job. Is that clear? Because if it isn’t, you need to get your heads out of your daydream-stuffed asteroids.” Her crude statement made them blink, but Ia figured it was more from the tone of her delivery than its actually content. “You cannot spend money you will not have, if you get shipped back home in a coffin.”
She swept her gaze around the table, pinning each soldier with a stern look. Half of them looked down or away just before she got to them, and the rest lowered their gazes within a second or two. Lifting her spoonful of pudding, Ia mock-saluted them with it.
“Now that we have that settled, I suggest you remind your crewmates on both sides of the Audie-Murphy that this is not only a closed subject, it is also not one I’d care to have discussed outside of our ships. I’ll remind you that the Salik get some of the same news Nets that we do, and they’ll be looking for any signs of distraction among the crews serving on the Blockade. Eyes to the boards, thoughts on your tasks, and diligence in your vigilance…though I’ll grant you that since our duty shift is over, the Audie half doesn’t have to look at the boards for the next…eleven hours, unless and until we get called to action. But the moment we do, Commander Salish and I need you to be at your best.
“In the meantime,” Ia finished briskly, “I have pudding to eat, Kipple has a hockey game to watch, and all of you will need your rest.”
Popping the spoon into her mouth, she took her time savoring the treat, deliberately showing by actions as well as lack of words that the subject was indeed firmly closed. Sighing, the others turned away, either murmuring among themselves their mutual condolences, wistfully suggesting what they would’ve done with all that money, or speculating idly on the outcome of the now closely matched hockey game.
A couple of her crew snuck glances Ia’s way, but she pointedly ignored them, calmly scraping up every last scrap of her dessert. No one was going to weasel one scrap of information out of her, particularly not regarding one Meioa-o Fyfer Quentin-Jones.