Twilight Serenade, page 15
part #6 of Earth Song Series
“You’re going after them, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“You’re going to be pretty close to having that baby,” he warned her.
“Yeah, about that.”
“Oh no, you didn’t!” She chuckled and could imagine him shaking his head. “Cherise is going to tear you a new one when you get back. How did it go?”
“It was tough,” she said, “but better than having the baby show up as a young adult.”
“I bet.”
“And I had help. When the Squeen showed up, they brought an old friend.” She patched the call into her stateroom. Even over the sound of Mindy’s cries of hunger, the voice was recognizable.
“Hi Ted,” Aaron said.
“We figured you were long gone, son.”
“Never count me out.”
“Still, Minu, I imagine you have your hands quite full. Wouldn’t it be better to come home and go out later?”
“We had another run in with that battle rider, Ted. The number of ships out here is increasing. Lilith is certain many of them are new. You know what that means?”
“Sounds like we kicked over another howler nest,” Ted said.
Minu found the logic hard to argue with. “I want you to convene the Council and explain what we’re doing. I anticipate we’ll be out here several extra months, at a minimum. I’m pushing up one of the plans and pushing another back.” She spent several more minutes explaining her ideas.
“Got it. What about the baby? Are you going to tell me if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“No,” Minu said. “I can’t ask you to keep the fact that there’s a new Groves a secret, but I am going to keep its sex and name to myself. Maybe it will lessen the blow to certain parties.”
“Or really piss them off.”
“I’ll take that chance,” she said. “I’ll be in touch after we’ve evaluated the next ghost fleet.”
“See you soon, Ted,” Aaron said over the cries.
“He’s right,” Lilith said after the call was over. “Aunt Cherise is going to kill you.”
“She wouldn’t do that. She won’t get any more kids from me to play with.”
“Seems weak, Mom. She’s a female of breeding age and could make her own babies.”
“It’s not that simple.” Lilith looked at her curiously, but Minu didn’t elaborate. She didn’t think it was the time to discuss alternative lifestyles. “I’d better get back to the stateroom before Mindy kills Aaron.”
“That is unlikely.”
“Can’t fool you,” Minu chuckled. “Let me know when we’re in sensor range of the ghost fleet.”
Minu left Lilith to run the ship and went to join the rest of her family. As soon as the door to the compartment opened, Mindy’s wails of protest hit her like a wave. “Wow, she’s really wound up!” Minu said.
Though she was only two weeks old, she turned her head at the sound of Minu’s voice and immediately stopped crying. “Guess she’s hungry,” Aaron said and handed over the squirming baby. Minu cradled her in one arm, and Minu grunted before happily beginning to nurse.
The MI told them it could produce a near perfect synthetic milk for the baby if Minu was busy. Even Minu had been surprised by her own reaction to the suggestion. The MI had never offered again.
Using the instantaneous quantum communicators, Aaron began accessing data from Bellatrix, downloading exabytes of records from Groves Industries, as well as general news and goings on. “The climate is getting worse,” he mumbled as he read a news report.
“Kal’at and Bjorn should be almost finished with the tech demonstrator project for the deep space radiance shields,” she said.
“You didn’t do much with the company after I disappeared.”
“I didn’t need to,” she said. “None of the projects required my attention. You put good people in charge. But I bet they’ll be happy to see you.”
“We had our first off-world sales,” he noted.
“Who to?”
“The Capdep bought three,” he said, remembering seeing them in the Squeen fleet, “and the Kovu bought one.”
“I’ve never seen a Kovu,” Minu said.
“Big lobsters with hairy arms?”
“Oh, right,” she shuddered.
“And some interspecies consortium bought 10.”
“That’s interesting,” she said. Mindy wasn’t sucking any more. Her eyes had drifted closed, and she was just about out. “Who represented them in the deal?”
“Veelox,” he said, getting up to take Mindy. Minu watched her husband lovingly tuck the sleeping baby into the crib, placing a gentle kiss on her head and snugging the blanket around her. Minu smiled as she thought about how much she loved him. He was going to be an incredible dad.
“Veelox also represent the Traaga, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes,” he said. “How soon do you need to be back in the CIC?”
“I suspect Lilith can handle flying the ship without her mother watching,” Minu said.
Lying next to him a bit later, kissing and enjoying their time together, Minu kept touching his beard and giggling. “What did you do on that Squeen ship all those weeks?
“Want me to show you?” he asked, a mischievous grin on his face.
“We’re approaching the ghost fleet,” Lilith’s voice announced over the PA system.
“There’s your answer,” she said and kissed him passionately. “We’ll have time later, I’m sure.”
“Sex between the stars,” he winked.
“That’s how we started,” she added.
“I remember.” Aaron smiled at her. “I’ll always remember that first time.”
“Me too. Would you get the baby sitter set up?”
“Papa on the job!” he said and saluted. The babysitter was a blue crystalline bot from the Kaatan, specially designed by Lilith; its only purpose was to watch over and protect Mindy. Should the ship experience combat, it would protect the baby with a force field and evacuate her, if necessary. Lilith assured them it would take the ship’s destruction to harm the little girl.
She gave him another quick kiss and jumped into the shower for a super quick rinse. Five minutes later, she was dressing, and Aaron took over the shower. The babysitter clung to a wall over Mindy’s crib. The ship had already fabricated new uniforms for her, and they fit perfectly.
Minu pulled on her boots and ran a finger down the magnetic seals just as Aaron was getting out of the shower. “See you in the CIC,” she said. He waved. She put on the equipment belt that held her uniform’s helmet, and she was off.
The door to the command center was open, and Minu transitioned from gravity to null gravity naturally. Hidden gravity controls moved her next to Lilith where her control station appeared.
“Any sign of trouble?” she asked her daughter.
“None, Mom.” Temporary displays surrounded Lilith as she did her usual, graceful ballet, controlling the craft. “Using the other ships’ sensors, I’ve swept to the limits of our range. As far as I can tell, no starships have passed through this region for at least a year. Beyond that, it’s impossible to tell.”
“Are the ships there?”
“We’re beginning a sensor sweep. As they are dead, there will be no infrared or other energy emissions. They’ll be very difficult to identify.”
“Thus, the reason they’d be here a thousand eons later,’ Minu said. “Still, it would be good to know.”
“With the battle rider out there and the T’Chillen becoming increasingly stealthy and sneaky, I’m still concerned. I plan to have the Eseel take stations as far out as is practical. They’ll be powered down, except for sensors. That should give us plenty of warning.”
“Excellent idea,” Minu beamed and reached out to give her daughter’s arm a squeeze. Lilith turned and smiled. Since Mindy was born and her epiphany about love, Lilith was really coming out of her shell. Aaron was back, she had a new baby, and this? Minu felt like her heart was going to explode.
“I have the first sensor pings,” Lilith announced, and the data started to appear on Minu’s console, just as Aaron flew in. He gave Minu a thumbs up so she would know Mindy was taken care of. She looked at him and winked, and they exchanged smiles.
“Hello, Father,” Lilith said. Aaron gave her a peck on the cheek.
“I’m just completing my sensor sweeps,” Lilith told them. “I have 22 distinct signatures.”
The Fiisk trailing in their wake angled away to widen their sensor sampling. Twenty-two little blue points appeared in a rough cluster on another display. The center of the sphere shrank, and the area around it expanded exponentially.
“Perimeter scan underway with the assistance of the Eseel gunboats,” Lilith told them. The sphere continued to expand until the cluster of blue markers merged together to become a single, tiny, almost invisible, point of light. “No other contacts within sensor range.”
“What do you and the Fiisk CI think is the best course of action?” Minu asked.
Lilith stared off into space for a moment. “Considering the increase in subterfuge we’ve seen, I believe we should send in the Eseel as scouts while orbiting at least a light hour distant.”
They waited in the CIC while Lilith’s plan was carried out. Kal’at floated in, eager to begin the operation. He looked at the monitors with his independently moving eyes and snapped his jaws several times, a sure sign of excitement. “I sent the message you requested,” he told Minu.
“Was Var’at amenable to the idea?”
“Absolutely.”
Minu nodded and went back to watching the developing operation. Less than an hour later, they had a definitive answer as the two Eseel soared into the middle of the ancient debris field left behind by the fleeing remnants of the People’s war fleet.
“Confirmed 22 individual returns,” Lilith told them. “As the CI told us, there are six intact ships and large remnants of 16 others.”
“Okay,” Minu said and smiled. “Let’s go in!”
* * * * *
Chapter 18
March 10th, 535 AE
Deep Space, Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier
Minu floated in the void, encased in a full-scale EVA suit, with a brace of blue crystalline bots on her limbs. The Fiisk hull spread away in all directions, slowly curving into the ball of its central hull. Another week of EVA activity had made using the bots second nature to her.
Immediately after arrival, Lilith had sent a bunch of bots in with an Eseel to investigate a promising section of a ship. It looked like a nearly intact Ibeen cargo ball. A dozen of the blue bots floated over and breached the first airlock they found. The lock exploded, turning the bots into sparkling blue shrapnel that bounced harmlessly off the gunboat’s armored hull. It was booby-trapped.
Since the loss of the invaluable crystalline bots, all the salvage work had been hands on only, slow and cautious. As tough as the bots were, they weren’t sophonts. They didn’t improvise or have hunches, and just then, Minu had a hunch.
“What’s the hold up?” Aaron asked from the shuttle, floating a kilometer away.
Minu hovered five meters from the hull and considered. In addition to the four bots on her limbs, another six were clustered together like a starfish by her side, ready as backup or replacements should the need arise. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
Kal’at and Lilith had boarded the other Fiisk three days earlier. They all stayed within a few minutes’ flight of either the operational Fiisk or the Kaatan, just in case.
Boarding the first Fiisk went perfectly. They found a trap and disarmed it. They analyzed the trap and found it to be identical to the one that had destroyed the bots. Minu had been about to breach this hull—the second Fiisk—expecting the same setup, when something made her stop. Maybe it was woman’s intuition.
“Call it off,” Aaron said.
“No,” Minu replied. “I need to think this through.”
“Take your time,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. But Mindy is going to be hungry soon. We’ve been out here for almost four hours.”
“Noted,” she said. It had taken her a while to get used to the idea of leaving Mindy alone on the Kaatan with only a bot to watch her. But the machine was the ultimate baby monitor.
Minu considered the hull and the airlock again. “I’m being paranoid,” she mumbled into the dark. She was halfway through gesturing the bots forward when she stopped yet again. It was almost as if a hidden power was holding her back. “Okay, paranoid and possessed.”
She considered the wall one more time and sighed. The little holographic display on her arm received data from her suit and the bots at her command. The crystalline machines were powerful but had very limited power reserves. She’d learned to conserve them whenever possible.
She finally decided and motioned them forward, but not to the lock. She sent them to a place several meters closer to the bow. Utilizing the computer link to the operational Fiisk, she called up a schematic of the ship, located her position, found an open section between hull structures and instructed the bots to cut through.
The energy beams from the bots were nearly invisible to the naked eye. Minu only knew where they were cutting from the flashing of dualloy as it was vaporized by the intense energy.
The little bots didn’t seem to extrude projectors or move in the slightest as two cuts started and chased each other counter-clockwise, turning and moving precisely to avoid internal structures. The ending point of each cut reached the starting point of the other and stopped. Minu gestured at the cut hull section, made a fist and slowly pulled her hand away. The bots used gravity projectors to push against the hull and pulled the cut section away.
The otherworldly blueish light cast by the bots illuminated the interior of the Fiisk. Struts, tubing, conduits, and part of a storage chamber were all revealed. The arc of the airlock she’d been about to penetrate was to one side.
“I’m in,” she announced to Aaron.
“I see,” he replied. “You’re running through the crystal bots’ power pretty quickly.”
“I know,” she mumbled. The bots on her legs detached and moved inside, laser lines reaching out to examine the structures around them. As they examined the airlock, the bots suddenly froze, their scans directed at the same point. A warning appeared on her helmet display.
“Woman’s intuition pays off,” she said.
“What is it? Same as the others?”
“No,” Minu replied, “this one is worse.” She beamed over the data showing what the bots had found. There were no explosives on the lock like on the other ships. Sensors were rigged to this lock, all leading to the Fiisk’s full missile magazines.
“Not good,” Aaron agreed. “Maybe we should back off.”
As he was talking, one of the bots opened an access panel and pushed in a newly extruded arm. A moment later, the warning disappeared from her display.
“No, we’re good.” She switched channels. “Was that you, Lilith?”
“Yes, Mom,” Lilith replied from elsewhere in the debris field. “Once you identified the trap, I disarmed it in the cruiser’s control cluster. The People who set the trap intended for it to be disarmed by others of their kind. It is a field expedient booby-trap straight from the fleet manual.”
“Thanks. Still, if this is any indication, the traps are getting more elaborate.” She glanced to where the first of the carriers floated. A dozen Eseel gunboats were moored to its superstructure. Reminiscent of the Fiisk, with five central spires running its length, the carrier had a control ball at the front and another at the rear, but the center had three large, open framework structures full of modules. “I’m worried about what they did to protect the carriers.”
“I’m sure it’s more elaborate,” Lilith agreed.
“I’m going to send the other bots to sweep the ship,” she told Aaron.
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Not the best, if they set off any of the booby-traps. But we need to save some time.”
The cluster of bots that had been waiting outside came online and darted into the ship where they split up and went in all directions. Minu hovered in the center of the hallway as the bots mapped the ship. As she suspected, the ship’s numerous airlocks were rigged, as were the landing bays.
“They had this thing set to blow,” she said.
“The Ibeen and the larger sections were barely trapped,” Lilith noted. “This Fiisk is much worse. I’m really worried about the Kaatan and the Kiile, now.”
“I know,” Minu agreed.
“Do you want to call it off?” Lilith asked. She’d seen that Minu was ready to enter the ship.
“No, not right now. We need a better plan for the Kaatan and those Kiile, though,” she told her daughter.
* * *
Minu put Mindy back in the crib and glanced at the oversized, blue crystalline bot clinging to the wall as she tucked the little raven-haired baby in.
Like all the ship’s bots, it didn’t have any visible eyes or other sensors. Most resembled a tick from old Earth with longer legs. The number of legs depended on the assigned task. It didn’t move as she worked.
“The babysitter kinda creeps me out sometimes,” she said as she sat on the bed. Aaron sat behind the cabin’s little desk with a half dozen holographic displays floating around him.
“It is a little bit creepy,” he admitted. After a day of working in the debris field, he was coordinating the inventory. Inside the Ibeen they’d entered two days earlier, a squad of bots was categorizing its contents. Once the ship was secure, they’d been left to do the job.
“What’s your plan for the rest of the ships?”
“They’ll be here tomorrow. Are you coming to bed?”
* * * * *
Chapter 19
March 11th, 535 AE
Deep Space, Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier
Minu floated in the CIC, watching the displays on her console. Lilith had always provided a synthetic floor and a place to sit when her mother visited the CIC. Humans hadn’t grown up in micro gravity; they tended to find it disconcerting. Now that Minu had weeks of real-world experience on EVA in freefall, she’d asked Lilith to dispense with the gravity effect. It seemed like a waste of energy.
