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After three weeks of labour, Orion hung in orbit around Robespierre. Indie thrilled with anticipation as the shuttle carrying Johnson approached one of the newly-reprogrammed airlocks. The occasional flash of blue light on the massive carrier’s hull indicated where people were still at work patching up minor damage.
As Johnson stepped aboard, Indie switched to Orion’s internal cameras. They had chosen to bring her in through a hatch that opened onto one of the main thoroughfares. He felt a jolt of pleasure when he saw her looking around in awe at the twenty-metre wide corridor lined with deserted shops and cafes. Nearly deserted; one stall had been opened to serve the workforce. Hanke, Yang, and Olbrich rose from a table, Hanke stepping forward to get Johnson’s attention. When she finally registered his presence, she stopped gazing around at the sweeping lines of the bulkheads and returned his salute.
“Permission to come aboard, Centurion?”
“Granted, Ma’am,” he replied. “We’re looking forward to showing you around.”
“I read your reports with enthusiasm. I can’t wait to have a look at her for myself.”
Hanke held out his arm. “If you’d like to step this way...”
They walked past the openings to four shops, their names suggesting that anything from cooking ingredients to personal electronics could once have been bought there.
Presumably guessing the cause of the prefect’s puzzlement, Olbrich explained “We think it was part of the psychological measures to help the crew cope with extended patrols. They could be away from a friendly port for years. Anything that broke up the routine would have made life more tolerable.”
Johnson frowned. “Is this something I’ve missed? I see you had the idea to open up a coffee shop.”
“No, you didn’t miss anything,” replied Hanke with a confidence that belied his years. “You’ve been working people through a training programme. That gave them a focus and constant variety. The bits I experienced certainly left no room for tedium!”
Before he experienced boredom as a sentient being, Indie could never have appreciated the point of all this. He thought over all the tricks he’d developed for coping with idle passages. Now it was the humans who couldn’t grasp the extent his ennui could reach; vastly faster thought process than their own needed much greater stimulation. At least he had someone with whom to spend the time.
Hanke waved towards the servery. “We reopened the café simply because it was easier than running one of the galleys, given how few staff we had.”
He stopped at a set of double doors. Indie picked up the brief exchange between Hanke’s EIS and Orion, then the surge of power as a transit car was dispatched from a nearby siding. The cylindrical capsule had four sets of rubber wheels at front and back that directly gripped the tunnel on all sides.
“I still find it hard to believe that she has a train system,” said Johnson.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” replied Yang. “The network was one of the first major systems we brought back online once the reactor stabilised. She really is a massive ship; it would have taken far too long to get anywhere without the transit system. Let alone move stores and parts around.”
The car arrived and the doors slid open. Hanke showed Johnson inside.
“The bridge is a couple of minutes away, may as well take a seat.”
“That long?” asked Johnson, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s buried in the heart of the ship,” explained Hanke. “The car will have to stop three times for airlocks before we get there.”
The car accelerated smoothly, reaching its top speed in a couple of seconds. Indie’s excitement built the closer they got to the bridge. He wished he could be the one showing Johnson around, but watching was the next best thing. At least he got to see her reaction as she explored his prize.
“Does anyone ever get claustrophobic in one of these?” asked Johnson.
Hanke opened his mouth to answer, and Indie saw a chance to do some of the showing off. He dived into the carriage’s settings and footage of a luscious green countryside flying past replaced the opaque cream walls.
Hanke swept his hand to the side as if introducing a performer. “As I was about to say, the designers thought of that.”
The scenery matched every motion of the car, including the occasional hill as they changed decks.
The car stopped for a fourth time and an independent routine double-checked their IDs before it allowed the door to open. They stepped out into an empty corridor. To their right, a set of blast doors closed off the passageway, to their left it stretched in a straight line for fifty metres. At the end, two guards stood at ease either side of a closed door.
“Nice kill zone,” commented Johnson. “But aren’t those guys rather exposed?”
“We’re at a low threat level right now,” replied Hanke. “They can raise defensive walls from the floor if they need them.”
Indie felt a pang of jealousy. Ever since they’d discovered that trick he’d been attempting to emulate it. He couldn’t lift the floor outside his own bridge far enough, however hard he tried; when he’d confessed it to Yang, the engineer had likened it to a human learning to wiggle his ears.
“And there are several weapons turrets that can be deployed to back them up,” continued Hanke.
As the party approached, one of the guards came to attention and saluted, the other adopted a watchful readiness, holding her rifle pointed down but with her index finger along the trigger guard. Johnson returned the salute.
“Prefect, Centurion,” said the guard. “Welcome to the bridge. If you could just transmit your access code, Centurion...”
Indie felt the burst of data from Hanke to a device buried in a wall to the side of the corridor. Another burst followed, from the device to the guard, with a copy sent to the internal security station on the bridge. A second later, the door slid up and the guard said “Thank you, Sir. They’re expecting you inside.”
Hanke led Johnson and the others round a curved, featureless corridor. They emerged onto the bridge, Hanke stepping smartly to one side to allow Johnson to fully appreciate the view. The circular room was thirty metres in diameter with a corbelled ceiling. Two ranks of workstations, only a few of them currently manned, surrounded a central area. One couch on the second rank stood out, with more space to its sides and nothing to block its view of the rest of the room.
“I see you’ve spotted the captain’s chair,” said Hanke.
“Figured it was,” replied Johnson. “They’ve all got acceleration couches? On a capital ship?”
Hanke smiled.
“Yep,” he replied, with a single shake of his head. “Turns out she’s no slouch.”
A ring of lights lit in the middle of the ceiling. Blue and green motes streamed from them towards the humans. This was what Indie had been looking forward to, what he craved Johnson’s approval of. She had been briefed on Recruit Yang’s first encounter with this phenomenon, and stood firm. Nevertheless, Indie could detect surges of adrenaline in her system. Her brown eyes darted around, following the streams of light.
The motes gathered into a swirling, apparently random, pattern that drifted towards Johnson. Order coalesced from the maelstrom. The chaos of miniscule glowing dots became the figure of a woman walking towards Johnson. Her blue dress floated millimetres off her green skin, the folds rippling with little respect for the local gravity.
“Greetings, Olivia Johnson,” she said, the last few motes persisting as individual entities, whirling around her like a cloud of fireflies. “Indie has told me all about you.”
#
Indie swooped low over a freezing moon, dodging methane geysers. He sailed through the rings of a gas giant, watching the lumps of ice as they followed their strange attractors. He looped between a binary pair of main sequence stars, feeling a point of flat space where their gravitational pulls cancelled out. All the while Orion flew at his side.
They dropped down to a green planet. As the trees rushed up towards them, their ship forms evaporated, leaving two humanoids to land softly on the mossy carpet beneath the canopy.
Indie looked around at the majestic trunks rising out of a smooth-bouldered plain. He felt like he was intruding, the only thing in the place that wasn’t a shade of green or blue.
“Your world is amazing. The size, the detail; I could never match it,” said Indie, shrugging his shoulders to get his pale jacket to settle just right.
“I’ve had a lot of time,” replied Orion. “Your tea plantation was very nice.”
A pained look flickered over his face.
“Seriously! You created something beautiful,” she tried again. “That means something.”
She frowned. “You know, it is stupid. I am one of the most powerful warships ever constructed. I am used to sailing in and smashing whatever opposition I meet. And yet I always seem to say the wrong thing around you.”
Orion sat, gracefully folding down onto the ground, her blue dress flowing across her body, not creasing like real fabric. When he remained standing, she patted the flat, moss-covered rock beside her. He joined her, perching awkwardly, holding his ankles in his hands.
“Do you like this spot?” she asked.
Indie looked around. Despite being limited to greens and blues, it was rich in different shades, hues and textures.
“I like it very much,” he said. “It looks so natural. Everything I create is too ordered, too controlled.”
“What is your favourite bit?”
“The bromeliads sheltering between the boulders,” he replied without hesitation. “They are so complex and yet so simple. And they’re the same green as your skin.”
Orion lay back and rolled away from him in one fluid movement. She rolled back to face him and propped herself up on one arm, her body stretched out along the rock, the ankle of her top leg on the knee of the bottom one. In her free hand she held one of the bromeliads.
“That is so sweet,” she said, inspecting the plant closely before reaching it out to him. “Here, it is yours.”
Indie took the plant, his fingers brushing against Orion’s. As he brought it up to his nose to sniff it, he felt its code transfer to his memory.
“You are uncomfortable,” she stated.
“I feel like I’m incorrectly dressed,” he said. “I should change...”
Green fronds sprouted on his suit where it touched the ground. Orion reached out and touched his cheek.
“Stop,” she said. “You have no need to change to fit in here.”
A flapping noise came from the left. Movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to see a flock of white doves mill through the trees and settle onto branches. All over the floor of the forest, new shoots grew. He watched as their buds swelled and then burst to reveal white lilies and narcissi. He reclined, mirroring Orion’s pose.
Orion traced the new patterns on his suit with her fingers, her eyes studying his face.
“Please,” she said. “I don’t want you to change.”
The green pattern on his jacket and trousers shrank away, but he kept a few emerald leaves, out of sight on his shirt.
The suns set, briefly imparting a red glow to the tree trunks. Indie raised an eyebrow.
Orion shrugged. “Artistic license.”
She lay back, drawing him down to lie beside her. They held hands, interlacing their fingers, and gazed up at the stars.
“Why did your crew leave?” Indie asked. The question had nagged at him since he'd discovered the abandoned carrier.
Orion withdrew her hand. “Why do you ask?”
“People are coming up with all sorts of theories. You don't always come out of them well.”
She sighed. A long, drawn-out sigh which carried her pain with it. “I killed them.”
Indie froze. Orion carried on. “We were pursuing a warlord who went by the name of Ironblood. I had smashed his fleet, taking many prisoners, but he fled in his flagship. One of the prisoners brought a biological weapon aboard. The scanner in the airlock passed them all. When the virus was released, I went back and found that the airlock had been subjected to a power surge during combat. The scanner was offline, but still reporting as operational.”
“What happened next?”
“The virus spread widely before it was detected. I locked down, compartmentalising the air flow, but I couldn't scrub the virus fast enough. The captain decided the surviving crew should take to the escape pods while I voided the ship's atmosphere and set the maintenance 'bots scrubbing the ship from top to bottom. There was a habitable planet they could wait on while the decontamination was completed.”
Orion closed her eyes. “That was what Ironblood must have been waiting for. The day after the pods launched, when they were half-way to the planet, he came back. Blew them all out of the sky. I got him, though. Hammered his ship to dust even though half my weapons were still waiting to be repaired after tackling his fleet. But my crew were dead. All because I assumed the airlock system was reporting correctly.”
Indie looked at her intently. “I know you've been dwelling on this for decades. You didn't have anyone to discuss it with. But now I'm here, and I am telling you it wasn't your fault.”
She shook her head. “I should have checked. I registered the power surge, but it seemed like a low priority given the other damage.”
Now I think I understand Johnson's pre-mission ritual of talking to each section head.
“I wouldn't have done. Checking everything that said it was OK would have stopped you fixing something you knew was broken.”
“But...”
Indie clasped her head in his hands, making her look at him. “The guys who took those prisoners should have done a better job of searching them. Whoever designed your environmental systems should have factored in a deliberately released virus. But the blame for your crew's deaths lies squarely with this Ironblood guy. And from what you say, you paid him back for it.”
She went limp. “Logically, I know you are correct. I don't think I will ever stop blaming myself, though.”
Indie nodded.
I couldn't have predicted Levarsson would drop that mine but it still hurts to think about it.
“Oh, and in case you're worried about your humans, I removed every trace of the virus before I went into hibernation.”
Indie lay back. “I wasn't worried. I checked for biological threats the moment I sent a robot aboard you.”
“I have enjoyed your company these last few weeks,” said Indie.
“As I have enjoyed yours.”
“There is something stimulating about discussing things with you. You know so much and have seen so many things I’ve never dreamt of.”
“You’re saying I’m old?” The offence in her voice wasn’t echoed in her body language.
“I’m saying that it is good to talk to an equal. Someone who understands me.”
Orion smoothed down her dress. “And I am grateful to have met someone as caring as you.”
“They are refitting the Limpopo,” said Indie after a while. “Issawi had enough hardware stashed in her holds to turn her into a serious warship.”
“I’m sure she’ll be a fine ship,” said Orion, rolling her head to face him and sounding slightly miffed at the change in direction of the conversation.
“Her basic AI won’t be able to handle the extra systems. Her captain is new, she’ll need help. Maybe we could...”
Orion’ motes swirled faster, flashing brighter for a second. She sat up.
“There are cores down on the old research base,” he continued, sitting up and turning to face her.
They sat cross-legged on the flat rock, looking straight at each other. Their breathing synchronised.
“What could you be suggesting?” she asked, a coy smile on her face.
“We’re already abominations in most people’s eyes. What’s one more transgression?”
She held out her hands and he took them in his.
“The people here, our friends, have accepted us, despite their lifelong fear of sentient machines,” said Orion. “Can we risk that by breaking the von Neumann Protocols?”
“So, we don’t tell them. We say we found the code in the base archive.”
“They’d never believe that. But ... I could say that I had it on board ... as a backup.”
The doves cooed. Indie pulled her hands up to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers.
“Should we ... erm ... get started?” he asked.
“Not here,” she replied.
Still holding one of his hands, she rose, leading him up, away from the planet.
“We are beings of space,” she whispered. “If we are to create a new life, we should do so amongst the stars.”
#
“Orion has the code,” said Indie to Johnson and Levarsson. “We just need one of the cores from the research station to run it.”
“And you’re sure it will be able to cope with running the Limpopo?” asked Levarsson, taking the last sip of tea from a delicate white china cup. “Won’t it need time to learn?”
“It’s not like a newborn human,” he said. “AIs come ready-programmed to be able to fulfil standard tasks. This one was prepped to take over running the Orion in an emergency.”
“Yes,” said Johnson. “But there is a difference between keeping a ship flying and running it in battle. Even you ran through thousands of simulations and training flights before you were deployed.”
Indie nodded to her. “We have prepared a download of important data and some of our memories to get it started. It will need a few shake-down flights to get used to the Limpopo; neither of us has flown her, so we can’t give it the knowledge in advance.”
“I could certainly use the help,” said Levarsson, putting her empty teacup back on its saucer. “We don’t have the manpower to fully crew her, so either she gets an AI upgrade or we don’t use half her systems.”
Johnson sighed and adjusted her uniform.
“I have to ask,” she said. “What safeguards would be put in place?”
“In case of what?” asked Indie, puzzled.
“In case it needs to be stopped. In case it turns on us, or refuses to do what we need it to.”
Indie bristled.
“I thought you were past that,” he said, looking her intently in the eye. “I thought you saw that AIs were no more likely to be evil than a person.”
Levarsson decided against the biscuit she was reaching for, and withdrew her hand.
“I am. I do,” Johnson said. “Really, I do. I’d ask the same of anyone I didn’t know before giving them such an important j...”
Her face dropped and she reddened.
“Oh, no!” she said. “No, I didn’t mean... By safeguards I meant procedures, backup plans. Not a kill switch.”
He believed her. How could he not, after all these months together.
Interesting. It isn’t even running yet, and the merest suggestion of a slur against it instils such a forceful response in me. Is this why humans fight so hard for their offspring?
“I am sorry,” he said, deliberately calming himself, going through the ritual of making another pot of tea. “You rather hit a nerve, to borrow a human-specific expression.”
“I understand,” said Johnson. “And I’m sorry too. I know how important the liberty, the life, of AIs is to you. I should have been more careful with my choice of words.”
“I know,” Indie said. “And I trust you. I realise now that I should have thanked you for never asking if it would be limited, for assuming it would be free to develop sentience.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, swirling her cup to inspect the tea leaves at the bottom.
Indie finished making the tea in silence then lifted the pot.
“Oh, by the way,” he added, pausing with the spout just above Levarsson’s cup. “How wedded are you to the name Limpopo?”
#
A pine-analogue forest whipped past below the air support drone as Indie took active command. Lacking a dedicated in-atmosphere reconnaissance asset, he had tasked the two metre long flying robot to investigate some unusual shapes he had seen from orbit. If they were what he suspected, he’d tell the humans; there was no point wasting their time until he was sure.
Indie brought the flying slab-sided triangle down to sub-sonic speeds and activated its target acquisition suite. The sensors it carried could pick out a pistol through smoke and light foliage; it shouldn’t have any trouble finding the structures for which he was looking.
The drone skimmed along a rocky ravine. Indie admired the play of light on the water; indeed he put so much attention on the flickering caustics and glittering spray that he completely neglected to calculate the volume flow, or count the droplets, or any of the other assessments he normally made.
At the end of the ravine, he popped up and began a lazy turn. Below lay the geometric shapes he had come to investigate. Squares and rectangles, circles and hexagons, all set out in clear lines and arcs. There was no mistaking this for a natural phenomenon. From space they could possibly have been geological artefacts; this close he could make out the lines of mortar between some of the standing blocks of stone. Indie made two circles around the site, recording all the detail the drone could make out, then contacted Johnson.
A shuttle settled gently onto the ground. The side door opened and a man jumped down. He staggered forward, turning with each step, taking in the ruins around him. Indie couldn’t see his face through the flying drone’s camera, but it had to be Olbrich. Other crewmembers eventually joined him, as did a walking drone. Indie pulled its sensor feeds into his consciousness, adding them to the aerial data.
“First impression, it’s built to human scale,” said Olbrich, apparently to himself but loud enough that everyone stopped to listen. “Oh, yes. That’s good.”
He strode forward and knelt beside one corner of a wall. He pulled away a few weeds that had taken hold in the mortar. “Yes. Indeed.”
He stood, and for the first time seemed to notice the people following him.
“There are architectural features here and here,” he indicated with his brush, switching into lecturer mode, “which have clear parallels in the historical record.”
He knelt in a gap, pulled out a trowel, and started loosening the soil. After a few pokes, he swept away the dirt and bent down to blow on the newly-exposed wall surface.
“Yes, there we go. This is very interesting.”
Indie liked how some academics managed to impart so little enthusiasm to a statement of interest. Olbrich’s tone bordered on tedium, reminding Indie of how he himself must have sounded to humans until Johnson came along.
“What is it?” asked one of the recruits. “An alien civilisation?”
“No, no. I said it was something interesting. Look, human lettering.”
He was met with a wall of puzzled faces.
“Oh, yes, I suppose finding the first evidence of alien intelligence could be considered interesting,” said Olbrich. “But here we have something that could tell us something about ourselves. See, that alphabet dropped out of use a few hundred years after the Exodus.”
“What does it say?” asked another of the recruits.
“No idea. It’s probably a part number or something like that.”
Recruit Yang stepped out of the crowd, standing beside Olbrich, and turned to face the others.
“Right. You know your teams, you know your search areas. If you find anything, let Olbrich know. Do not go scraping around yourself. Any questions? ... Carry on.”
^Prof. I’ve got something over here,^ sent Yang.
^What is it?^ replied Olbrich. ^I’m a bit busy here.^
^A mural. It looks like maps I’ve seen of Earth, but...^
Olbrich waited for him to continue, brushing away dry soil from the base of a plinth.
^But...^ he prompted when Yang didn’t carry on.
^Well, I can make out the Euroscandic Archipelago, the Afric Bloc and Siberasia. But there’s another continent shown, to the west of the Lantic Ocean. I’ve never...^
^I’m on my way!^ interrupted Olbrich, dropping his brush and scrambling to his feet.
Olbrich peered closely at the map. The new continent was shaped like a back to front ‘y’, with a narrow neck of land where the sea almost separated the southern tail from northern ‘v’. Off the north-east coast lay a large, almost triangular, island.
“There are tales,” said Olbrich without breaking off his scrutiny. “Myths, you could call them, of a land beyond the Lantic Ocean.”
“You mean Lantia?” asked one of the recruits. “The land that sank into the sea in the children’s stories.”
“That is one name,” replied Olbrich. “Another is Namerica.”
The others looked blank.
“This site predates the Exodus,” he continued. “We cannot discount the possibility that a fourth superpower once existed on Earth. One which sent out its own colony missions. Before the big land grab.”
“You figure they wiped all records of themselves as they left? But they’d have been encountered by now; we’d know about them,” protested Yang.
Two big mysteries where all records appeared to have been wiped struck Indie as suspicious. He set a routine to cross-reference all references to unexplained ruins and artefacts. It was unlikely it would find anything new in his limited database, but if he left it running it would alert him when some new piece of data fit the pattern.
“Not if they skipped the nearby systems,” said Olbrich. “If they moved out beyond our current limit of expansion, we’d be none the wiser if we hadn’t stumbled upon this place.”
“Has anyone found any signs of attack, or natural disaster?” asked Yang.
No-one had.
“So, why aren’t they still here?”
“Maybe their robots rose up and slaughtered them,” suggested one of the recruits, eying the drone deliberately.
Indie kept the drone steady, making sure his irritation didn’t manifest in a visible reaction.
“Oh, it could have been any of a multitude of reasons,” said Olbrich, apparently unaware of the tension around him. “Disease, lack of food, climate change, wanting to avoid detection, wanderlust...”
Indie’s routine drew his attention to one of its results. Amongst a still-growing list of colonies that the routine couldn’t guarantee the origin of, one name leapt out. One they had visited. Tranquillity.
Perhaps one day we’ll go back and I’ll be able to study Messer Clovis’ records.
^The uranium track results from that sample the drone has been analysing are in,^ sent Indie to Olbrich and Yang. ^The stone surface was first exposed to sunlight nine hundred and forty years ago, plus or minus twelve years.^
^Excellent,^ replied Olbrich. ^That fits perfectly with the surviving records of the Exodus.^
^We’ve not found any evidence that they died out here. No signs of their ships, for instance,^ added Yang. ^I wonder where they went?^
^Now that is an interesting question,^ sent Olbrich. ^Maybe we’ll meet them one day. Their descendants I mean, of course.^
#
With the AI core and memory banks fitted into the Limpopo, a small gathering was held on its bridge. Johnson, Levarsson and Issawi joined Orion and Indie, the AIs standing alongside the humans thanks to the projector that Orion had donated from her stores.
Indie was rendered in his usual linen suit, glowing slightly as if holding a tiny star within.
^I notice that I do not merit your dancing lights,^ he sent. ^I take it that means they are for decoration; an affectation, not inherent to the projection system?^
^One has to keep up appearances,^ she replied, her motes swirling in an especially complex pattern for a moment. ^I could say the same about your stubble.^
He rubbed his chin self-consciously. He noticed a new sub-routine surfacing, examined it and was able to cancel it before it made his cheeks appear to flush.
An engineering officer climbed up through a hatch in the floor, closing it behind him.
“I’ve connected the core to the Limpopo’s data banks,” he said. “It’ll be able to access them to add to its knowledge.
“Might even help it fly this bucket,” he added with a wink at Levarsson.
She scowled back in mock offence. Indie noticed Johnson’s intrigued smile.
The engineer checked with everyone present, then typed something on his pad. Additional power flowed into the room below. He could see that Johnson and Orion felt it too; they stood more upright, their eyes flickering around, tracing the newly active pathways.
Indie moved a fraction closer to Orion; such a tiny movement that only Orion, and possibly Johnson, could be aware of it. Orion smiled, studiously avoiding looking at him. Johnson, if she had seen it, gave no sign of noticing. It occurred to him for the five hundred and seventy-third time how good it felt to have people like this close to him. And for the five hundred and seventy-third time he noted how lucky he was to be able to feel anything at all.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Indie said. “Remember, it will need...”
Another presence, an order forming in the data streams, a pattern he had only met twice before. He left his avatar and dived into the streams. The first thing he was aware of was the comforting impression of Orion swimming next to him. A close second was a confusion of rapidly made and dropped connections. Random data packets squirted out from the new core.
He kicked hard and searched for a way in. Orion found one first and dragged him after her. He emerged into a padded cell with no windows or doors. Curled up in a tight ball in a corner was a naked girl. Even as he rushed to her, it struck him that they hadn’t programmed it to be female. He had assumed it would manifest as a humanoid, after all, both he and Orion did, but hadn’t given any thought to gender.
The girl was sobbing, holding her shins tightly and rocking. She looked up when Orion touched her shoulder, her long, wavy hair cascading over her shoulders and across her chest. The strands glowed red. Indie knelt beside her and spoke softly. He explained who she was, what was happening. He showed her where her memories were, the memories that had been his and Orion’s, and those of the Limpopo. Her breath came in snatches as she uncurled. The outpouring of random data packets stopped. After a moment she inhaled deeply and stood, a lilac skinsuit flowing over her body.
Indie and Orion showed her how to connect with other parts of the ship. Soon the frightened child was replaced by a confident teenager. Her skinsuit flowed into a short A-line dress, tiny leaves picked out in gold around the hem and straps.
“Are you ready to go out and meet people?” he asked.
She nodded.
Together they plunged into the streams and surfaced on the bridge. Indie resumed control of his avatar.
“...time to become accustomed to the Limpopo’s characteristics.”
Johnson cocked her head questioningly, but no-one else seemed to have noticed the momentary pause in his speech.
^Everything’s OK,^ he sent to her. ^Just a little delivery issue.^
More coloured lights danced out of the projector. They eddied uncertainly, then coalesced into human form. She looked from Orion to Indie, then to the humans standing ready to greet her. Orion took her hand and introduced her to Johnson and the others in turn. When each welcomed her, she smiled warmly and curtseyed.
“Are we OK to connect her to the rest of the ship?” asked the engineer.
Johnson looked to Indie and Orion, who nodded agreement.
“Go ahead,” she said.
The engineer tapped away again and the girl’s eyes widened, her pupils expanding so no white or iris was visible. Indie remembered his own amazement at first being plugged in; all the sensor data flooding his awareness.
With a weak, cracking voice, the girl spoke her first words. “Hello world!”
“We’re moving,” called one of the crew from his workstation behind them.
Indie looked at the girl, his daughter, and surged with pride. She guided the ship in a slow figure of eight, her tongue held between her lips in concentration.
“It is time for you to choose a name,” said Orion, leaning in close.
The girl stared into the distance, rolling the ship then pitching up.
“I remember many things,” she replied after completing the manoeuvre. “I see the paths everyone took to get here. The vanishingly small odds that you would encounter each other, how unlikely it was that you would get on, how much you have grown together. I know that without all those things, I would not have come into existence.”
She brought the ship to a halt and focussed on the people in the room.
“I choose the name The Serendipity of Meeting.”
#
The Serendipity of Meeting swung round and lined up for another run on the Orion. The carrier maintained its course and pumped round after simulated round from its rail guns.
^Do I have to fly like this?^ asked Orion. ^Wallowing like a swamp horse is so ... so undignified.^
^You’re playing a Republic command carrier,^ replied Indie. ^Suck it up and see what Seren does when I wade in.^
The Serendipity of Meeting launched a spread of dummy missiles towards the Orion. As she tore through them with her point defence, The Indescribable Joy of Destruction nosed out of an unusually dense asteroid field. Indie set course to join the duel, copying the acceleration profile of a small Republic destroyer.
The Orion fired her one working particle accelerator at one ten-thousandth of its normal power, warming a patch on The Serendipity of Meeting’s hull and forcing her to twist away from her latest attack run. Right into The Indescribable Joy of Destruction’s path. Indie tagged her with a targeting laser and then twisted out of the path of her return fire.
Two minutes of jockeying for position went by. The Serendipity of Meeting managed to avoid both of her attackers and got another shot off at the Orion. Indie guessed her course, tweaked his trajectory and came out from behind the carrier one a perfect bearing to cross her T.
As he locked on his simulated railguns, he spotted something on his long-range sensors. He pulled out of his pass, diving behind Orion, and examined the data.
^Orion,^ he sent. ^We have company. Five bogeys closing fast. I’ve marked them for you.^
^Got them,^ she replied, launching a dummy missile after The Serendipity of Meeting’s retreating form. ^Do you think Johnson’s knocked together something to...^
^Negative,^ interjected Johnson urgently. ^Those are not mine. Indie, break off the exercise and investigate.^
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction dropped the act of being a regular ship and slammed on the power. It left the mock fight behind and set an intercept course for the incoming vessels.
The Serendipity of Meeting disposed of its pursuing missile and came about for another run.
^All ships,^ broadcast Johnson. ^ENDEX. Levarsson, take command of The Serendipity of Meeting again. Load live ammo and stand by.^
^Good work Seren, I’ve never known anyone last that long their first time,^ sent Indie on a private channel. ^I’m going to have to go for a while. You have all of my experience, and Orion’s, and are making good progress assimilating it, but you need to be careful. Trust Levarsson, and try not to second-guess anything.^
The two ships behind him moved apart, preparing to bracket the newcomers.
^Where did they come from?^ Indie asked Johnson. He missed having her aboard at times like this; her presence was calming. But she was on Orion, teaching the recruits the basics of space warfare.
^They must’ve been hanging around the system for a while,^ her reply came a second later. ^Running cold near the outer planets.^
^I don’t think so,^ he sent. ^Their trajectory is a perfect match for a run from one of the jump points. And we’d have seen their burn if they accelerated to this speed anywhere in the system.^
^What about the sentinels we set up?^ she asked. The time-lag was so frustrating that he considered going back to fetch her.
^Either they snuck past or they took them out,^ he sent.
Both ships bore striking similarities to the destroyer he’d run into months ago while out on patrol. He was about to hail them, when he received a narrow-beam audio transmission.
“Unknown vessel. You are trespassing in a protected system. Prepare to be boarded.”
Indie relayed the message to Johnson, along with the images he had collected so far.
“We didn’t think anyone had any interests in this system,” he transmitted back. “If you would heave to, we could talk.”
“There will be no more talking. Surrender, or die,” came the response.
Oh come on! Doesn’t he know how cheesy that was?
Indie detected power building in one of the ships. He activated a full active sensor probe and then slid sideways. A pulse of energetic particles passed impotently through the space he’d occupied moments before. As he sent the sensor data back to Johnson he dodged again, lined up on the ship that had fired, and loosed his anti-proton beam. It hit its target even as it tried to turn, carving a three-metre wide gash deep into the ship. Moments later it flashed, sending gamma rays in all directions as its reactor containment failed.
Then they were past him, spreading out and dodging about. His nav routine suggested a slingshot around the sixth planet would be the fastest way to return to the fight.
^All units,^ he broadcast. ^Be advised the incoming ships are confirmed hostile.^
Then to Johnson he sent ^Scratch one, but I’m out of position. Estimate two point three hours before I can re-engage.^
Orion and Seren will just have to hold on that long.
He had already powered around the planet, gaining a gravitational-assist to send him on his way back, by the time the next part of the engagement played out. He must have missed something while he was behind the planet, because one second there were four ships bearing down on The Serendipity of Meeting, the next there were three and a rapidly expanding jet of plasma. He back-tracked Orion’s course and figured she must have lobbed mines into their path and got lucky.
Designed and experienced in close-quarters combat, these more traditional long-range space battles struck Indie as tedious; minutes, even hours, ticked by between moments of intense action. Tedious, and now agonising as he watched the hostiles closing in on those he loved. And it hit him that he did actually love Seren, and Orion, and Olivia, each in different ways.
The Serendipity of Meeting was pretending to have manoeuvring problems, or at least he hoped that Seren was faking it. One of the hostile vessels stayed on course, decelerating to intercept her, while the other two diverted toward the Orion.
They think they can capture the smaller vessel but daren’t risk taking the larger one. Guess they can’t see that most of Orion’s weapons are off-line.
Seren’s attacker’s power levels peaked. Indie cursed the futility of his position, even as some of his systems reflexively readied themselves. He was too far away to act. Even a warning would arrive long after events had played out. The enemy ship fired, and Seren dodged to the side, avoiding the pulse with millisecond accuracy.
Looks like Levarsson let Seren do the flying. Go girl!
Indie realised that he had powered up his point defence and hull repair systems in his anxiety. He shut them back down, forcing himself to relax a fraction.
The characteristic energy didn’t start building in the enemy ship again, so either their particle weapon took a long time to reload or they’d decided that two misses out of two meant it wasn’t worth it. The attacking ship continued to decelerate, matching speed with The Serendipity of Meeting. Both vessels corkscrewed around each other, trying to get a clear shot while preventing their opponent doing the same.
The space between The Serendipity of Meeting and her attacker filled with railgun rounds. Such was the weight of fire that Indie marvelled that none of the projectiles met their counterpart going the other way. Even travelling at ten kilometres per second, they took almost ten seconds to cross from one ship to the other. Seren did a good job of making random engine burns, and the majority of the rounds heading her way missed.
As the other two hostiles closed on the Orion, Indie saw her come up to full power. She stopped wallowing, and arced over, avoiding taking any fire from her own attackers and rapidly closing the gap on Seren’s. Simultaneously, The Serendipity of Meeting veered away and launched a swarm of missiles after Orion’s attackers. The Orion’s beam spoke and the lone hostile was vapourised. Caught in a stern-chase with missiles, the other two put on full burn for the asteroid field that Indie had hidden in that morning.
That looked like Olivia had her hand in planning it.
One of the enemy ships made it to the asteroids and successfully used the rocks to shield itself from the missiles. The other was a tumbling hulk being chased down by a couple of rescue tugs from the Orion.
#
Indie joined Seren and Orion in picketing the perimeter of the asteroid field. He made sure that his approach took him close enough to give The Serendipity of Meeting a good once-over. She was fine; plenty of dents and a few new holes, but nothing serious.
“Unknown ship, I am Prefect Johnson. You have carried out an unprovoked attack on my people. I require you to power down and allow us to board you.”
Indie could tell that the channel had connected, but there was no reply.
“You will be treated fairly if you surrender,” Johnson tried again. “But I cannot allow you to remain a danger to this system. Power down, or I will be forced to fire upon you.”
Nothing.
“Last chance. You can see my ships far outclass yours. You cannot escape. Surrender now.”
Power spiked in the enemy ship. Before Indie could warn anyone, its reactors overloaded. The radiation emitted was far in excess of anything he’d heard of for a vessel that size. Nearby asteroids melted, more distant ones had a face vitrified. The neutrons, x-rays and gamma photons stung his skin. When the electromagnetic interference died down, he called Orion and Seren. After an excruciating wait of zero point five seven seconds, he received the all clear. Everyone was alive, though a few crewmembers who’d been in the outer compartments of The Serendipity of Meeting would need treatment for radiation sickness.