Sister Goldeneye, page 1
part #11 of Black Ocean: Passage of Time Series
SISTER GOLDENEYE
MISSION 11
BLACK OCEAN: PASSAGE OF TIME
J.S. MORIN
Copyright © 2024 J.S. Morin
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J.S. Morin — First Edition
SISTER GOLDENEYE
MISSION 11
It had been too long since Jessie Ramsey had visited the training gym on the Arete. The padded mat felt like an old friend under bare feet. Recirculated air flowed over a bare midriff too often cooped up in a uniform of late. She limbered up, pressing her gloved palms against the floor, lacing her fingers behind her back and extending as far as they’d go, pulling each leg up against her torso as she balanced on one foot.
Her sparring opponent’s routine was simpler. Daphne stood tall and reached out in a V; all that was missing was the yawn to make it look as if she’d just awakened from a nap.
“Careful,” Junior warned as he handed Jessie the case for her mouthguard. “She’s gotten better.”
Her azrin opponent wore a cushioned helmet just like her own, albeit tailored to her anatomy, and the mouthguard Daphne used could have doubled as a cutting board.
“I can handle myself,” Jessie assured her security chief before popping in her mouthguard, then mumbled through it, “If she uses those claws, I’m blaming you.”
Off to the side, a fair number of the crew had gathered to watch. This was, after all, a spectacle they rarely got to see: Jessie trying.
Of the entire crew, only Grosstet could beat her in a fair fight with no magic.
Charlotte was skilled but fragile.
Junior was a technician and stronger than her, but too slow.
Daphne was far stronger and quicker, but clumsy and uncertain.
Maybe the latter had changed. That was Junior’s story. That was the bait that had lured her down to this exhibition.
“Take it easy on her,” Harmony called out from the sidelines, glancing up from a datapad with those souped-up mega-goggles she wore to look extra smart.
“I will,” both Jessie and Daphne promised in unison, then exchanged scowls.
Jessie promised herself that if the azrin fought as cocky as she postured pre-fight, she’d give her a reason to visit Med Bay afterward.
The two stalked one another. Jessie could tell by the footwork that Junior had been drilling her, and it had taken. Good balance. Eyes watching Jessie’s. Hands up, protecting herself.
Jessie shortened a jab, disguising her reach. Daphne no longer flinched away, no longer so much as blinked at a blow that couldn’t reach her.
The first counterpunch came like a blaster bolt. Jessie sensed it coming but could still barely get out of the way. A lightning-quick follow-up clipped her jaw. Instincts took over, and her normal response of a raised knee adapted on the fly to a side kick that took both her twisting momentum and her opponent’s reach advantage into account.
Both women stumbled back and regained their bearings.
Jessie re-evaluated this contest.
She’d trained plenty of fighters in her time. From raw recruits to aspiring close-quarters combat trainers, she’d never seen anyone improve so drastically in such a short timeframe.
A flurry followed. Jessie ducked and slipped punches. She caught a wrist in an attempt to grapple, but Daphne wrenched it away, and Jessie was forced to either release her grip or be pulled inside the azrin’s reach. She landed leg kicks, but Daphne shrugged them off.
The attacks were predictable, formulaic, but also impossible to move fast enough to avoid indefinitely. She reacted before Daphne’s punches started, but her room to dodge was thinner than a hairsbreadth.
Jessie found herself falling behind on being ahead.
Suddenly, before she could react after her own jab, a fist was centimeters from her jaw.
…
…
Jessie blinked.
A fog lifted.
She was lying on her back, head supported by a firm pillow.
A quick self-assessment revealed no pain. She felt around her face and discovered no swelling. Also, she was missing her protective gear. The overhead lights identified her surroundings as Med Bay even before Harmony showed up.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
Jessie sat up in bed, holding out one hand to ward away the doctor. “Morning yourself. Don’t gimme that ‘need to rest’ routine, either. I feel fine.”
“I know you feel fine. I kept you sedated until the concussion symptoms passed.”
“WHAT?”
Harmony offered a placating smile and pushed her datagoggles atop her head. “Daphne rung your bell pretty good. She wanted to hang around and apologize, but Commander Schultz put her back to work. You don’t get the afternoon off for decking your captain.”
Recognizing the grogginess now as the aftereffects of beta-wave-induced sleep, Jessie blinked until her thoughts coalesced. “What exactly did you do to Lt. Morgan? You were approved for treating a genetic abnormality. Not turning her into… that.”
“Genetic learning disability. Species-wide, if you ask me. Trying not to be xenoist here, but azrin learn much slower than humans.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re trying that hard.”
The doctor shook her head. “That only applies to adults. As children, azrin are basically learning supercomputers. Around puberty, they’re genetically encoded to basically stop learning and conserve resources for physical activity. Consider it a congenital, heritable, genetic abnormality.”
“This is sounding more and more like you’re trying to be xenoist.”
But Harmony was on a roll now and barely seemed to register Jessie’s objection. “Imagine if humanity, through the dominance of a small, fecund clan with the OPN1LW, MW, and SW defects for colorblindness managed to all but breed color vision amongst humans into extinction. There are azrin out there with advanced adult learning. It’s why they had languages and worked with metal before spacefarer contact. I’ve just moved Daphne into that 0.01 percent using H-tech.”
“How does that explain her fighting skills?”
“Would you say she fights like someone who’s been learning martial arts since infancy?”
Jessie shrugged.
“I’m continuing to monitor her progress, but I believe she’s achieved a state of permanent neuroplasticity. Able to learn at a phenomenal rate. Ever think to yourself: If only I’d learned to play guitar as a kid… or anything of that sort?”
“I can play guitar. I choose not to.”
“You are, of course, the more skilled fighter, still,” Harmony continued. “She’s a fast learner, but even I could see her mistakes.”
“So could I. I just couldn’t react in time. I’m not fast enough or strong enough to beat her in an even match.”
A grin spread on Harmony’s face. It was an amateur version of Dad’s victory smirk. Clearly, whatever Jessie had said had been something the Arete’s chief medical officer was hoping to hear.
“How would you like to be?”
Trebla carefully aligned an emitter and held it in place with a lower hand as he aimed a UV light to cure some fast-acting epoxy. Thrusters attached to his belt provided a gentle downward force that kept him from floating away from the hull of the Arete while he worked.
He and Jomek worked on opposite sides of the starboard weapons array, placing a homemade assortment of scanning equipment for the upcoming tests. Jasmine had Shuttle 6 a few kilometers out, dropping buoys in a precise line.
Most of the shit they were using was eyndar made. Since they got by on salvage, that was just par for the course. Then again, their research setup was far from ideal in the first place, so maybe a couple decimal places of precision and a user interface designed by a primate were icing on a cake they were fine eating plain.
They were going to find out exactly what the Arete fired.
Grosstet’s descriptions of the weapons’ workings displayed a layman’s understanding, even considering the language barrier. He couldn’t explain the haathee science behind particle physics or radiation or power generation worth a damn, and practically none of the words had a literal translation. The resulting madness had led to conversations along the lines of:
“What moves the ship?”
“The ship-mover particles.”
And…
“How do we have gravity without gravity stones?”
“The feet-grabbing tendency toward falling simulator.”
It was like Trebla trying to explain the rules of mahjong when he’d only ever
So now, Engineering had been tasked to figure out how the weapons systems worked…
… so they could explain to Captain Ramsey why they hadn’t.
A month and a half of fiddling behind panels and poring over haathee maintenance files had come up with a more gibberish-rich version of Grosstet’s tale. Annihilation particles annihilated. That’s what it all boiled down to. What that meant in terms of real physics, stuff that Trebla knew and could put into practical use, remained a mystery. One that he intended to solve today.
The last of the scanners snugged itself securely to the hull as its epoxy cured. “You think Grosstet’s going to make us come out here again to scrape all this junk off his hull when we’re done?”
Jomek snickered over the team comm. “More like he’ll make us fly close to a star. Melty melty eyndar junk. Big-boy H-tech hull be fine.”
Jasmine laughed. “Yeah. That sounds like him.”
Trebla affected a haathee voice. “IT WILL NOT BE NOTICED,” followed by a little toot.
A system-generic voice came in his ear. “You have activated the emergency response protocol. If this is an error, please say GRUUBOK now.” The soulless computerized voice briefly switched to blaring haathee for one word Trebla couldn’t understand.
“Huh? What?”
Jomek giggled hysterically. “Much screaming; many help. It thinks you’re a hurt baby haathee!”
“Cancel,” Trebla stated firmly.
“Hull team, everything all right out there?” Byron asked. “Got a bridge alert that we have an injury.”
“I’m fine. I just—”
“Child safety protocol activated. Before I put my name on a report, can you confirm that—”
“I SAID I’M FINE!” Trebla snapped, but he couldn’t help a grin as the others chortled at his expense. Trying to regain a modicum of dignity, he refocused his team on the task at hand. “All scanners are in place. Jazzy, you good on targets?”
“I’m ten meters behind you. Turn around.”
True to her word, Jasmine had Shuttle 6 ass-end toward them, boarding ramp down and waiting to collect Trebla and Jomek.
“Right. Gotcha. Let’s get inside before someone decides to test fire while we’re still out here…”
Half an hour later, the engineering team reconvened in the fire control room. Technically, nobody needed to be in here to use the weapons systems, so there hadn’t been much in the way of efforts to reconfigure the area for smaller-than-haathee usage. A scaffolding allowed the three of them to array themselves in front of a set of displays that were tied into the new scanners.
“Getting hazy readings on the gamma array,” Trebla informed the team.
“Maybe just suck it up and use the ones the ship carries?” Jasmine suggested. “I mean, there are gamma scanners available.”
Jomek blew a raspberry as he ran through diagnostics on the alpha scanners. “Nah. Like walking with shoes on your hands. Never get a feel for the ground.”
“I do walk with shoes on my lower hands,” Jasmine reminded her laaku companions. “Odds are, we’re either going to know what this shit is coming out of the guns, or we won’t, and this one scanner isn’t going to make the difference.”
Trebla wasn’t going to let this outfit turn slipshod on his watch. “We’ll try a remote reset, and if that doesn’t get the scanner up and running, we’ll have to go out and fix it.”
Jasmine wrinkled her nose. “But my EV suit hasn’t aired out. It’ll be all sweaty-clammy.”
“Clams don’t sweat. They live in the Blue Ocean,” Jomek snarked without looking up.
Already working on the fix, Trebla wasn’t having any luck. “No dice. I restarted the unit, and it’s still in low-resolution mode with no option to enhance. There’s not a lot else we can do.”
Jasmine interposed herself and took the controls. “You have to power cycle the system—”
“I just said I did that…”
“Four or five times,” Jasmine finished. “Interrupt the reboot sequence a few times and it’ll kick its own ass into diagnostic mode. Eyndar systems don’t clear dynamic memory session to session.”
Jomek scratched the back of his head. “Then how is it dynamic mem—”
“Don’t ask me why,” Jasmine cut in. “I just know that it works.” As the three squabbled, she’d been repeatedly shutting off and restarting the gamma scanner. “AHA! See?”
The two laaku bracketing her leaned in.
“I’ll be damned.”
Jomek raised three thumbs. “We good. Comm Jessie. Tell her to let ’er rip.”
Trebla sauntered to the fire control comm panel and slapped it. “Bridge, this is Engineering. You are clear to fire. Operation Payload of Mysteries is in effect.”
A brilliant sun beat down, unseasonable this time of year in the valley. Muddy furrows meandered in middling approximations of lines. Eric Ramsey plodded along in shorts and a tank top that showed off scrawny limbs. A straw hat kept the sunshine out of his eyes, and slip-on snow boots kept his feet clean, if sweaty.
As he hunched over his crop, he sprinkled snowflakes from a watering can.
“We ought to harvest,” Charlotte told him from the sheep-trimmed grass beside the field. She watched him with arms crossed, refusing to participate.
“They’re not fully grown yet.”
“Better undersized than wasted away. They’ll sell well at market in any event. This heatwave will be a boon.”
Continuing to pour a miniature snowstorm over a line of little wooden sticks, Eric made his way down the row. “One more week…”
“This heatwave might break in a week. So much for our windfall, then, wouldn’t you imagine?”
“One more week, and I’ll say something. She’s been moping and grumping and everyone’s afraid to talk to her except you and she’s afraid to talk to you.”
“Leave Jessie out there,” Charlotte scolded mildly. “Here, in this valley, she is the dream. Let Eric of the waking dream attend to her moods and missions and maudlin mental mismanagement.”
Eric couldn’t help a grin. He loved it when she alliterated. He let his watering can hover and trudged out of the muck. “It’s just…”
“It’s just that you can’t let go of ‘out there’ and enjoy ‘in here’ right now.”
He nodded.
“She’s fine, you know. I don’t feel that it’s any particular violation of her privacy to inform you that your sister is in need of no worry on her behalf. She torments herself because she’s set herself upon an unbounded task of limitless scope and singular obsession and she can’t relinquish the one to avail herself of the other.”
Eric shook his watering can. Almost empty. He headed over to the farmhouse, where a tap set into the foundation spewed a pressurized avalanche at the turn of a valve.
Charlotte, in her cowgirl boots and sundress, leaned against the siding as she watched. “You know what you need?”
“A cold snap, a carnival, and for Brucie to come back to work.”
Brucie was the farm’s sled puller. The klemekoo had taken the week off to go snorkeling for seals in Overdare Bay, leaving them shorthanded. The farm was always shorthanded. Eric was a softie as a boss. Two to three weeks’ vacation a month was standard. Sledding, hang-gliding, sandcastle contests, stargazing, painting, disco, rock climbing, opera season, mud-bathing, dance piano lessons; if there was a hobby, Eric had given someone time off to try or re-experience it.
“Brucie’s going to be hauling damp sticks if we don’t harvest.”
Eric clenched his jaw and exhaled sharply through his nose.
“Eric… words…”
“Jessie’s going crazy, and I just have to sit there and watch!”
“We’re sleeping,” Charlotte reminded him. “This is our time to unwind. We neither of us can do her a bit of good all frazzled and sleepless. Times like this are what she lacks in her life. Jaxon is helping wean her from the bottle, but I can tell she barely dreams. She doesn’t want to. She sees failure and responsibility and a foe she can’t overcome blocking her from what she perceives as a simple act of rescue.”
“Can’t she just…” Eric didn’t know the next word, and Charlotte didn’t look inclined to help him find it.
