Jeffery and Harris had been in space for almost two weeks by the time their deep-system transport reached Ceres. Neither had ever been so far from Earth. Jeffery had been as far as the Unicycle, while Harris hadn’t made it beyond the Apollo 11 International Monument.
Until very recently, Ceres had been the solar system’s twentysomething slacker offspring. It bounced between jobs; from being the eighth planet, to just another asteroid, to a really big asteroid, and finally back to a planet, albeit a dwarf one. It wasn’t until Lockheed-Boeing-Raytheon’s Skunk Works division built a new shipyard and testing facility on its surface that Ceres’s identity crisis finally came to an end.
It was an ideal location for the sort of off-budget black projects the Skunk Works wizards had been building for four centuries. Fusion-drive shuttles like the one that ferried personnel to the Unicycle didn’t have the endurance or speed to operate so deep in the system, and even the most powerful space-born telescopes were unable to resolve any useful details at these distances. Coupled with the ample material resources of the asteroid belt, Ceres was the perfect place for construction and testing of sensitive projects away from prying eyes.
The small yank Jeffery and Harris had been sequestered in for two weeks entered final approach. Jeffery’s face was plastered against the portal. He took a moment to check on Harris, whose cheek was also pressed flat against the glass like, well, a Peeping Tom.
The Skunk Works yard provided for their voyeurism in spades. Barely concealed under spindly gantries lay the outline of AEUS Bucephalus. Harsh white light from a constellation of work lamps cast sharp shadows on her hull from a swarm of construction bots. Here and there, tiny flickers of light betrayed the presence of welders stitching polymerized ceramic panels together like so many leather cobblers.
“Are you seeing this?” Harris asked as he stared at his new home.
“Hard to miss it,” Jeffery answered.
“What do you think?”
“She certainly looks … butch. Knew a girl in college who looked like that. Roller derby chick.”
“She’s all business,” Harris said. This was certainly true, and there was little chance anyone would forget what line of work Bucephalus was in. She possessed the esthetic subtlety of a lead pipe.
“A little on the small side,” Jeffery said absently.
“Size isn’t everything.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re as big as a decent starter home.”
At only nine hundred meters long, Bucephalus was dwarfed by most of the colony ships and ore haulers plying the space lanes. In fact, she was considerably more compact than even Magellan.
However, what she lacked in length, she made up for in heft. Military vessels have always been overbuilt, and Bucephalus was no exception. Between her stout internal structure, secondary and even tertiary systems, and the three-meter-thick cocoon of ablative ceramo-plast weave armor, the ship out-massed Magellan by 23 percent.
On a civilian yank, a tangle of coolant pipes, fuel lines, and power conduits ran the length of the hull. This arrangement both sped construction and simplified repairs and maintenance in space dock. For a warship, however, this would leave critical systems exposed to enemy fire, so they were routed through the Bucephalus’s hollow core. Her hull was mostly smooth and unadorned as a result, leaving her looking like a concrete birdbath lying on its side.
She was not completely featureless, however. Jeffery’s finger pointed at two parallel rows of ten rectangular hatches behind one of the shuttle bays. “What do you figure those are?”
Harris took a moment to answer. “VLS modules. There’s another cluster of them farther down the hull.”
“VLS?”
“Sorry, vertical launch system.”
“What, like missile launchers?” Jeffery asked.
Harris shrugged. “It’s a warship. Warships need teeth.”
“Yeah, but look at them, Thomas. Each hatch has got to be six meters wide. What the hell is behind them?”
“Beats me. Whatever they are, I’m glad they’re pointing away from the ship.”
A barely discernible vibration shook the transport yank as docking clamps grabbed the hull and locked it into place.
“All right,” Jeffery said. “Time to go find Felix and meet your new neighbors.”
* * *
Their search for Felix stalled when Harris stumbled across the armory, or as the door would have passersby believe, the “Indigenous Wildlife Suppression Equipment Locker.” Observant guests might also notice that the “navigational lasers” placed at the bow could pulverize a medium-sized asteroid. Or that the shuttles were fitted with an “Emergency Landing Zone Clearing Module” that could mow down buildings as easily as trees. Or that the “probes” tipped with “seismic geological survey charges” bore an uncanny resemblance to nuclear missiles.
“And this?” Jeffery held up what looked like an ordinary flashlight.
“Oooh!” Harris was clearly operating on the verge of excitement overload. “I’ve read about these.” He took the cylinder from Jeffery’s hand. “It’s called a Niven light. Most of the time it’s just flashlight, but in a pinch the beam collapses into an industrial cutting laser.”
“What for?”
“In case you don’t like what you see, I suppose.”
“Why a ‘Niven’ light?” asked Jeffery.
“I don’t know, probably the dude that invented it.”
“Right, then.” Jeffery paced the deck admiring all the not-weapons for the platoon of not-marines that Lieutenant Harris was definitely not here to command.
“You know, Tom, there’s something I don’t get about this ship.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, look at this room. They’ve gone out of their way to slap a ridiculously transparent euphemism onto every offensive system. Yet they named that damned thing Bucephalus, the personal warhorse of Alexander the Great, probably the most famous conqueror in our history. Doesn’t that seem like a pretty glaring oversight?”
“Freudian slip is all I can come up with,” Harris replied.
“C’mon, let’s find Feli—”
Jeffery stood in front of a large bay window. Behind the glass was a large room with rails attached to the ceiling, pointing toward a series of hatches that could only lead outside. Hanging from the rails were a dozen malicious machines that looked for all the world like giant angular bats sleeping in a cave.
“What the hell are those?” asked Jeffery.
“Those,” Harris beamed, “are orbital overlook platforms. You don’t want to get caught underneath them; they’re liable to make a mess. The official name is Gargoyle, but leathernecks just call them OOPs.”
Jeffery shook his head slowly. “Curious how all this stuff was just lying around, since space-based weapons have been illegal for four centuries.”
“Au contraire,” said Harris. “It’s illegal to deploy space weapons. No one said anything about developing them.”
Jeffery rolled his eyes. “Gotta love semantics.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if a cold snap had just come through.
“Hey,” Harris said. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just all becoming real, you know? You’re going charging out there waving your guns in the air. What could go wrong?”
“It’s the life, Jeff. You knew that from the beginning.”
“Knowing and experiencing are different things.”
Harris’s oaken arms swallowed him. “Shhh. I know it’s scary. But I’ve been in bad spots before. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’d better, Lieutenant.” Jeffery let his head rest in the pocket between his lover’s neck and shoulder. “And you’d better keep Felix alive, too. I really like that little weirdo.”
“So do I.”
After finishing their tour of the not-armory, Jeffery queried Felix’s location on a nearby terminal. He was working on the bridge. They caught a tube car to the bridge, located in the center of the ship underneath as much armor and structural composite as possible. They found Felix buried up to his waist inside the navigational station, unabashedly cursing whoever had engineered the bridge layout.
“Seriously?” came his voice from the hole in the wall, addressing the universe at large. “Who in their right mind runs a high-amp conduit through a bridge station? Ever hear of transformers?” A rubber-handled socket wrench came flying out the hole and clanged against the deck plate.
“Everything all right in there, princess?” Jeffery asked with a smirk.
The undirected litany paused as Felix realized he was playing to an audience.
“That had better be Jeffery, or else somebody’s getting a face-full of electrical insulation foam.”
“Yeah, it’s me. Thomas is here, too.”
“Hey, buddy,” Harris said. “I checked the cabin assignments; we’re going to be neighbors.”
“That’s great,” Felix said.
This was one half of Eugene’s bargain. The Bucephalus got the ARTist’s hyperdrive, on loan, with Felix as its chaperone.
“Could one of you hand me that socket I just threw on the floor?” A hand streaked with white lithium grease waved from the hole.
“Temper, temper,” Jeffery said as he placed the tool back in the waiting hand. “What’s the matter down there?”
“Nothing, provided you don’t mind power spikes causing a blowout and electrocuting whoever’s sitting here. Half-wits.”
The rapid clicking of a ratchet floated in the air, punctuated by a strained grunt.
“There,” Felix said. “Tom, grab my feet and pull me out, would you?”
Harris obliged and a moment later Felix stood dusting off his dark red Bucephalus uniform.
“Didn’t expect to see you out here, Jeffery,” Felix said. “Thanks for making the trip. Did you bring me anything interesting?”
“Four shiny new, five-twelve kilobyte QERs. Two for Bucephalus, two for Magellan.”
“Great. That’ll speed things up.” Felix noticed a rectangular patch of hair missing from the side of Harris’s scalp. “What’s that about?”
“Implanted coms,” Harris said. “They’re requiring the whole crew to get them before launch.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Felix said. “The latest crew gossip beamed straight into my head 24-7. Anything else?”
“Well, we heard rumors on the way out here that our transport was also delivering the new captain,” Jeffery said.
“Really? Who did they pick?” Felix asked.
“We don’t know. It was kept confidential. Last I knew the list had been whittled down to about a half dozen candidates.”
“You were on that ship for two weeks. You didn’t see them anywhere?”
“They didn’t fly economy,” Harris said.
As they spoke, the double doors of the bridge’s lift tube hissed open. Felix, Harris, and Jeffery turned in unison to see the new arrival. A familiar man in a perfectly tailored and pressed AEU Navy dress uniform stood astride the doorway, and Felix’s stomach did a barrel roll.
“Oh, please,” he pleaded to whichever deity might intervene. “Anyone but him.”
“Permission to enter the bridge,” Maximus Tiberius said with a self-congratulating grin.
“If we say no, does he have to leave?” Felix asked in a hushed voice.
“No,” Harris said quietly before facing the newcomer. “Permission granted, Commander.”
“Ah.” Maximus pointed to the rank insignia on his collar. “Count the bars, Lieutenant.”
Harris realized there were not three but four gold bars on the man’s shoulder.
“Sorry, Captain, sir.”
“Think nothing of it. I only just acquired number four. Still getting used to it myself,” Maximus said. He leaned in closer and inspected Harris’s features. “Have we met, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Three years ago, in Washington.”
“A conference?”
“No, sir. The Captain’s Mast.”
“Ah! That explains it. It’s a miracle I remembered your face after a night walking the planks of the Mast, but you clearly remember me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s understandable. I’d remember me, too. So which one of you is the warp drive tech?”
“Hyperdrive,” Felix said through gritted teeth.
“Hmm? Did you say something, son?”
“It’s a hyperdrive. Warp drive’s still impossible.”
“Oh, so you would be the tech I’m looking for, then.”
“I am.”
“I am … sir?”
“This isn’t a military ship, Captain Tiberius,” Felix said tersely.
Jeffery made a display of clearing his throat. Maximus simply smiled.
“I remember you now, the quiet one afraid of girls. Freddy? Fissel?”
“Felix.”
“Well, then, Felix. Do you also believe that a nice fur coat would make me a Jack Russell terrier?”
“No,” Felix answered, suddenly off balance.
“Well, there you have it,” Maximus said. “There’s what a thing is made to look like, and there’s what a thing is. And this is a warship, and warships belong to militaries. Now, we have another transport coming in a week. Except this one will be filled with dignitaries, politicians, and the inevitable swarm of media. They’ll be expecting a launch ceremony. I intend to give them one. So I need your personal assurance that we’ll be ready to take this show on the road by then.”
“Well, that’s simple,” Felix said. “You don’t have it.”
“Thank you. I’ll be glad to … wait, what did you say?”
“I said you don’t have my assurance that we’ll launch in a week. So far we’ve only done this with prototypes less than a hundredth the mass. Even then, the first three blew up. I’m not prepared to give you assurances that we’ll launch on a deadline. There is too much calibration to do, and too many variables. The politicians want a party, fine, but they need to consult with us about the scheduling, not the other way around. We simply aren’t ready.”
Maximus listened politely, which itself made Felix uneasy. He’d half expected to have his head ripped off. Then the captain replied.
“Felix, baby,” Maximus said. “You’re just going to have to accept that people are never ready in times like these. Page-turners and bolt-tighteners always demand more time than external forces permit. That’s your job. My job is to remind you the real world and the people cutting our checks don’t care. So get us as ready as you can in a week, and maybe find yourself a little helping of faith. Can you do that for me?”
“Faith in what?” Felix said, an off-key note of contempt ringing through his voice.
“Whatever you like! That’s the secret,” Maximus said. “Faith in God, the mission, your shipmates, faith in your work, or even Bucephalus herself. The object of faith doesn’t matter, just the act of having it. That’s what tripped us up for so long.”
Maximus looked at the chronometer on the main plot. “Wow! Is that the time? Look, I’ve got to get moving to the other departments, lots of elbows to rub. But hey, good talk, everybody. And you look sharp in that uniform. Red is a good color on you.” He made a shooting gesture with his fingers at Felix as he backed out of the bridge. The lift tube doors closed and he was gone, leaving the three friends in baffled silence.
“What just happened?” Felix asked no one in particular.
“I think,” Jeffery said, “you were just put in your place by a Jack Russell terrier.”
* * *
A week passed, and Felix found himself on display for the world’s press. Fortunately, he was only one of many. The entire Bucephalus crew flanked the podium where Captain Tiberius stood, a great shinning white albatross with gold trim among a sea of red.
The press conference filled the portside shuttle bay almost to capacity. The shuttles themselves had been removed in preparation for the representatives from all the major holo-networks, vlogs, and accredited news sites from Earth to Luna to Mars to the dirigible cities of Venus.
Felix had been around large herds of reporters on several occasions, but this time was different. This time they knew who he was and what he had accomplished. The preconference press release has seen to that. Another part of Eugene’s bargain: credit given where it was due.
However, the glare of the media did not shine on Felix at the moment. For the first time, he was grateful Captain Tiberius was there. When it came to stealing the spotlight, Maximus was a first-rate supervillain.
“Captain Tiberius,” Stan Blather of CHS News jumped in. “Before journeying out here, we polled our viewers to ask, ‘Is launching the Bucephalus without full space trials too dangerous?’ Seventy-eight percent of respondents answered yes. What is your answer to them?”
Maximus’s smile was broader and brighter than a chrome grille. “Thank you for the question, Stan, and I’d say the only polls I care about have girls dancing on them. Next question.”
The room alternated between laughter and abject horror, but Maximus didn’t give them time to sort out which before pointing to the man Felix personally blamed for this whole dog and pony show, G. Libby Hackman. It was his news site, Loose Lips, that had published the leaked memos. It was his profile that matched the person tailing Harris a couple of years back.
“Yes? You, sir.”
Hackman let a stubby little arm fall back to his side and took his time composing himself. “Thank you, Captain. I’d like to build off Mr. Blather’s question. Considering the short workup time, unproven technology, and the unknowns you’ll encounter once in deep space, certainly even you must agree this mission seems a little … audacious?”
“Audacious?” Maximus gripped both sides of the podium and leaned back as if in shock before returning to the microphone. “No, audacious is the dandelion I found growing in the grass trimmings on the deck of my lawn mower. Imagine the stones on that plant. If it had a mouth, it would’ve spit in my face as I plucked it. We could all learn something from that ambitious little weed, people.” He motioned for the next questioner, “You, in the bowler.”
“Jimmy Lancier, New Detroit Gazette,” said a man as yet unburdened by the need to shave.
Felix remembered him from the old neighborhood. He was the annoying kid who never stopped asking inappropriate questions. Apparently, he’d made a career of it.
“Rumors are swirling that Bucephalus is some sort of prototype warship,” Lancier continued. “Would you care to comment on her weapons load?”
“Well, I hate to disappoint you, Jimmy, but I’m afraid that whatever defensive and offensive systems the Bucephalus may or may not have are classified … as totally awesome.”
Unable to avoid the inevitable any longer, Maximus leveled a finger at the proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. In this case, it was an eight-hundred-pound gorilla named Buttercup. After several generations of captive gorillas being taught sign language, they eventually organized and demanded citizenship. So the Association for the Advancement of Non-Human Persons was formed. Its membership includes several thousand gorillas and chimpanzees, sixteen herds of elephants, twenty-seven pods of dolphins, and a particularly clever African gray parrot who served as treasurer. Buttercup had recently become a correspondent for Branches & Fruit Monthly, following his award-winning essays “Zoo Employees Fragile. Do Not Wrestle” and “Why You Not Groom Human Children?”
Buttercup started signing furiously into the small holographic translator he wore around his neck. After he’d finished, the device spoke in a calm female voice. “Why no furries on crew?”
Without missing a beat, Maximus said, “Oh, come on. With a crew this large, there has to be at least a couple of closet furries. C’mon, folks, raise your hands. We’re all adults here.” The crew looked back at him in muted horror. “Nobody? Well, they’re probably just shy.”
Buttercup bristled. Despite being packed into the shuttle bay like a can of green beans, the rest of the journalists managed to create a five-meter circle around the offended primate.
Maximus had to shout into the microphone to be heard over the rising hoots and growls. “I think that about wraps it up for the Q&A. See you all tomorrow at the launch!”
He deftly slid out of the way just as Buttercup’s chair shattered the podium.