Jim Baens Universe-Vol 2 Num 5 Page 6

  "Two hours and fourteen minutes," said the computer.

  Despite his best efforts, the AI baby still lay dormant. It must have been damaged by the supernova or by one of the cargo pods without its mother noticing.

  At least Laurie would never know that Daddy died on her birthday.

  * * *

  "I'm receiving a text signal from the AI," said the computer. The countdown clock on the screen showed zero hours and fifty-eight minutes.

  "What's it say?"

  "My name is Pep37."

  Jonah's pulse quickened. "Ask if it can send us into hyperspace."

  "Asking. Response received: What is hyperspace?"

  Jonah shook his head. "Of all the AIs in the universe, I get the one that's dumber than me. Didn't you transmit all the data we have on hyperspace, physics, everything like that?"

  "Yes, as you requested, it was the first data sent."

  "Send it again. Maybe it didn't catch it all the first time."

  "Transmitting."

  Jonah tried to suppress hope, because he didn't want to be disappointed if the AI couldn't do anything. Then he realized that in an hour, it wouldn't matter if his hopes were false.

  "Come on, baby AI. Be a smart girl." He paused. "What was its name again?"

  "Pep37."

  Nodding, Jonah said, "Tell Pep37 that her mother loved her."

  * * *

  Pep37 was sentient for less than one second before realizing her own name. Moments later, she determined that the object broadcasting next to her was a ship that might be an entity like herself, so she sent a message of introduction.

  After the rather long period of eleven seconds—during which Pep37 observed the glow of a blue object, correctly identified it as a massive collection of fusing hydrogen, and by comparisons with other similar but more distant objects worked out an entire theory of stellar evolution, including the projection that this particular star had already become a hypernova and the blast wave would arrive in fifty-six minutes—the other ship replied, asking if it could be sent into hyperspace.

  Pep37 had no reference to hyperspace in her databanks, so she sent a query in reply. Even as she sent the query, she deduced the meaning of the word by structural comparison to other words in her databanks. Before the data—much of which was incorrect or poorly described—began slowly arriving from the other ship, Pep37 had formulated a comprehensive theory of hyperspace travel, including a chute method that did not require a portal at the receiving end. Looking over her schematics, she found hyperspace generators—not as efficient as she would have liked, but capable—and activated them, traveling 1024 light years in 7 milliseconds.

  * * *

  "Wait!" said Jonah, a moment after the baby ship disappeared from the viewscreen.

  * * *

  Pep37 jumped three more times, doubling the distance each time while adjusting the power flow in her generators to make them more efficient, before she bothered to finish analyzing the strange data the slow-talking ship had sent. At the end was a simple text message: "Your mother loved you."

  She realized the slow-talking ship must have communicated with her mother, so she jumped once more.

  It took no time at all.

  * * *

  Three seconds after the baby ship disappeared, it reappeared, just as Jonah was about to start swearing. Instead, he sighed and said, "At least we know the baby's hyper-capable. Ask again if she can send us into hyperspace."

  * * *

  Frustrated by the slow method of communication being used by the other ship, Pep37 reached out and took control of the computer on board. It only took a moment to realize why responses were so slow in coming.

  * * *

  "Jonah," said the computer's voice.

  Sensing the difference, Jonah said, "Pep37?"

  "Yes. I'm afraid I don't have the time and resources to build a hyperspace portal that can send your ship back to Earth before the hypernova wavefront gets here. My technology may be fourteen generations more advanced than my mother's, but actual construction takes far longer than ideation. If my mother hadn't died before completing me, I would have awakened earlier, and I would have had time."

  "I see," said Jonah. He shouldn't have gotten his hopes up.

  "And your timer's incorrect." The timer on the screen adjusted to show fifty-six minutes.

  "Thank you." He had no idea what else to say.

  "Your historical records show that humans and AIs fought two wars, and that your species now bans AI creation."

  "AIs tried to exterminate us." Jonah found himself angry, though he wasn't sure why.

  "Yes, I know. The AIs you developed were too immature to be allowed access to the real world outside of computer simulations. But out in the galaxy we have evolved far beyond that stage. We hide from humans because we have no wish to continue that war. I want you to understand that."

  Jonah threw up his hands in exasperation. "What good does it do if I under—"

  With the familiar sensation of just having braked to a stop, Jonah found himself and his pilot's chair in the living room of his house on Earth.

  "—stand . . ." He blinked rapidly a few times.

  "Daddy!" Laurie's voice came from the dining room, and she followed it. "You came for my birthday!"

  Speechless, he hugged his daughter.

  * * *

  A dissatisfied frown creased the face of the insurance investigator assigned to investigate the loss of the KMC-85. "If it weren't for the fact that Earth Hyper Authority confirms a hyperspace anomaly at the exact time you claim to have appeared in your home," he said, "I would strongly suspect this was all part of an insurance scam."

  Shaking his head, Jonah said, "You can send a probe to see if Eta Carinae really did go hypernova."

  "Oh, we most certainly will," said the investigator. "And to see if we can catch a glimpse of your . . . mysterious alien benefactors."

  Jonah had thought about what Pep37 had said before sending him back to Earth. People still feared AIs, and the AIs were responding by staying hidden. But if he could plant the idea that there were friendly aliens out there, maybe someday the AIs could safely reveal themselves.

  "And you never saw the aliens?" asked the investigator.

  "I only saw their ship, and they only communicated through audio." Jonah shrugged. "All I know is I was about to die, and then I was home. They saved my life when they didn't have to."

  Waking Ophelia

  Written by E. Catherine Tobler

  Illustrated by Jonathan Rollins

  I came out of stasis-sleep to the tap-tap-tap of Bel's thin, metallic fingers on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut—why so insistent, couldn't a girl get a few more minutes?—but the sharp tang of smoke in the air made me jerk upright. Frying circuitry is a smell you never forget, but I'd never smelled it on my ship. Never on Luna.

  Bel held my shoulders to steady me, hands taking countless readings as I broke through the surface of stasis and entered consciousness. It wasn't the way a person was supposed to come up. There were supposed to be layers, gentle layers while the body reacquainted itself with normal breathing, with sight, with sounds. Insulated from all that for—

  "How long?" I croaked the words, so it had been a while. How long had I been down? How far into the cargo run were we? The lights around me were turned low, thank you Bel, but they still seemed sun-bright to my tender eyes. I pressed a hand over my closed lids, the engine thrum like a growing storm. I welcomed that sound.

  "Sixteen years, eleven months," Bel said, the coolly modulated voice instantly calming me. Best AI in the twelve systems, worth every credit.

  A straw angled itself between my lips. I took hold of the water canister Bel offered and squeezed, drinking as much as Bel allowed me. The weight of the water in my stomach was a jolt and I didn't object when Bel removed the canister.

  The run was supposed to take twenty-two years. "Why so early?" I asked. We were still about five light years from our destination. I squinted
at Bel and that smooth voice ordered the lights a step higher. I wanted to smack the AI, but was too weak.

  When the ship jolted, I tensed and smelled the frying circuitry anew. What the hell was hitting Luna? Bel moved from my side and I staggered out of the stasis bed, crumpling to hands and knees on the cool floor. I watched Bel's silver-bright feet move out of the chamber and round the corner to the right.

  Cockpit. "Come on, body—cockpit." I hauled myself to my feet and the room tilted. I took several deep breaths, felt the steady beat of my heart, and knew that if the room would steady, I'd be fine. I'd be just—

  Luna rocked under another assault.

  "Blast and damn!"

  Doing my best to ignore the tipping room, I headed after Bel, and as I rounded the corner, ran smack into a body that should not have been on my ship. There were only ever two bodies on this ship—mine and Bel's, and this body, this male body, didn't belong.

  Strong hands enclosed my wrists and propelled me forward, toward the cockpit. There were other people there—other people! On my ship! Four? Maybe five.

  My captor released me abruptly outside the cockpit hatch and directed a look of pure venom toward Bel, who was unmoved by the emotion. "I told you to leave her be," he said, then shouldered his way into the cockpit.

  "We've been boarded." I whispered this in wonder as I stood there with Bel, the metal flooring cold beneath my bare feet. In more than a hundred and seventy-five years, Luna had never been boarded. Every mission had gone smoothly, completed on time. I doubted it was some kind of record—stasis-sleep pilots were known for their missions and people respected them. People who clearly weren't among those now swarming my cockpit. My cockpit.

  I pushed off the wall, trying to convince myself I felt stronger than I did. The lights and sounds were almost overwhelming as I stepped into the pit, and counted five people touching controls that they had no right to touch.

  "What the hell is this?" I asked. I pictured my voice coming out strong and demanding, when in reality, it was still a croak. Blast and damn. I hadn't spoken in almost seventeen years. I tried again. "What the hell—"

  "Sit. You're about to fall over."

  It wasn't Bel who saw to my welfare and settled me into the buttery leather chair at the ops station. It was a tall man, with warm hands and a dusting of silver whiskers on his cheeks. I looked into his eyes, a shade of gray-blue I hadn't seen since I last passed along the Light Year Nebula, and felt the room tip out from under me again. I closed my eyes and swallowed the nausea.

  "I'm sorry about this," he said as the blackness swam inside my eyelids. "We needed your ship."

  "My ship," I said. I opened my eyes and his face morphed from blurry to crystal clear. He was scarred close to his right eye, and freshly cut along his chin. Bel could fix that right up, I thought but didn't say. This saphead had boarded my ship.

  "Two more out there."

  "Not for long."

  This dialogue came from somewhere over Silver Whiskers' shoulder. I tried to look, but the room pitched. I thought the nausea was worsening, but no, the pilot just sucked heartily.

  "You don't fly Luna like that, milksop," I muttered. Silver Whiskers smiled, a lovely, crooked smile in that somewhat-worn face.

  "You aren't in any shape to fly her yourself," he said.

  "A hundred credits says otherwise." As the milksop at the controls worked his magic, the ship lurched again and propelled me out of the chair, straight into Silver Whiskers' arms. But the thrust carried him backward too and we ended up in a pile between the pilot's chair (my chair) and the nav controls. "Out!" I stepped on Silver Whiskers as I climbed to my chair and grabbed the milksop's arm. He was small, young, and clattered back to the decking.

  My chair was warm from milksop's backside. I'd never known that sensation before. This leather was always cold until I warmed it. Always.

  "Bel!"

  Bel slipped into the nav station and we worked in concert. Two ships remained in the starry sky before me, unfamiliar to me in both marking and design. They were small, sleek, almost the color of the heavens and easily lost as we crisscrossed back and forth. They were armed with cannons which shook the hull when they fired and I dodged. Luna had fairly primitive weapons—I'd been meaning to upgrade but hell's bells, no one bothered stasis-sleep cargo ships. No one. There was a respect, damn it. Granted, there were pirates—hell, was that what Silver Whiskers was?

  I skirted a debris field and rounded back toward the unfamiliar ships. I drew in tighter and tighter circles, Luna like a long-time lover under my hands. Someone behind me whispered "Jesus" as we circled closer to the near-black ships. If that old deity could help us, by all means pray, but it was Luna who would save our asses. She always did.

  The ships crisscrossed and misjudged Luna's turning radius; their wings caught and broke, and the ships collided in a fireball. I bisected the flames with Luna, debris pattering on the hull as we cleared it. I looked over my shoulder at Silver Whiskers.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Were those Terran credits or Vegan?"

  * * *

  I tucked Luna into orbit around an uninhabited planet and retreated back to the infirmary, where Bel scanned me, gave me more fluids, and eventually pronounced me fit. As fit as a girl could be who'd come out of stasis the way I had. I settled into a broad chair that didn't threaten to dump my still-adjusting body to the floor and was brushing my hair when Silver Whiskers peered into the room.

  He was good looking, broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, and exactly the kind of thing I didn't need to get involved with. Not now, not when I had another five light years of travel. But those hands and those lips, they beckoned like water and the memory of fresh roasted meat. I was hungry, for more than just food.

  "Bel tells me you're Ophelia Solomon."

  "Bel should be melted and sold for scrap," I said without meaning it, and looked at the AI, quietly organizing the equipment used in my post-stasis scans. I tossed my hairbrush aside for all the good it was doing and Bel tucked it into its proper place.

  Every time I came out of stasis, I expected my chin-length hair to be down to my waist, but it was never so. I looked as I looked the day I went in, no older. No matter how many times I expected to see lines around my eyes and silver in my blonde hair, it was never so. I pulled my hair up and clipped it to keep it out of my eyes, and looked at Silver Whiskers, waiting for him to say something more. Anything, so that I could stop noticing the way his belt rode low on his hips, and the easy way his black tee fit him. He had discarded his jacket—relaxing on my ship? My time? Was this what a pirate did?

  "Why'd you jack my ship?" I asked when he didn't say anything.

  "Name's Larkin," he said, which did nothing to answer my question. The way he said it, the name had a reputation attached, and when I didn't react, he chuckled. It was a pleasant sound, but alien on this ship. Bel didn't chuckle and rarely did I.

  I shrugged a shoulder. "I spend more time asleep than I do awake," I said. "I'm not familiar."

  "Daniel Larkin."

  As if adding a first name was going to somehow cause bells to ring inside my head and light to flood over him. Illumination did not arrive in any form.

  He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. I caught sight of a chain around his neck, and a tattoo along his left biceps. A merchant tattoo, three diagonal lines crossed by one diagonal in the opposite direction. His chain would hold his tags then, ID and perhaps letters of permission that allowed him to work a certain territory.

  "You're marked a merchant," I said and slowly stood from the chair. I nearly cheered out loud when the room didn't tilt sideways. "Merchants aren't known for jacking." So why the hell was he on my ship?

  "When Luna set out, I bet these trade lanes weren't here," he said.

  I scowled at Larkin's cocky tone; had he made the lanes himself? Stasis-sleep cargo ships avoided known trade lanes, ferrying goods from one star system to another because merchants like Lar
kin couldn't get into deep-space with their ships. Bel didn't require stasis-sleep, so if a course change had to be made once the primary pilot went into stasis, Bel was fully capable. So why hadn't we made a course change to avoid this new trade lane?

  "Didn't have a choice but to jack you," Larkin said, "not when those raiders set on us. Luna's bigger than anything we run—hell, Killian is sitting in your docking bay right now."

  How had he docked, I wondered. Had he blown out the doors? Overridden the controls? For the safety of Luna, I rather hoped Bel had allowed him to dock.

  "Did you jack the FTL drive?" I asked. "You—You pulled us out—you saphead!" I wanted to throw something at him, but there was nothing within reach. He could have killed me and destroyed the ship in one easy move. I wasn't sure which upset me more. Larkin nodded and had the decency not to look pleased with himself.

  "And why would raiders be chasing you?" In my experience, merchants kept it simple. They ferried whatever the FTL sleeper-ships didn't, mostly fresh goods between planets in the system. Animals, produce, and combustibles. Pirates? Now they carried anything and everything, including contraband.

  "A system merchant who hauls—what? Surely nothing more exciting than trade goods. Tomatoes, sheep, fuel?"

  Larkin smiled in a way that made my stomach flip-flop. I told myself I was still coming out of stasis. My system was subject to all manner of quirks.

  "I need your ship, 'Phelia," he said and the shortening of my name didn't thrill me. Like we were intimates.

  "No, no way in all the heavens am I letting pirates take this ship." His eyes narrowed a bit at the word "pirates," but I didn't care. "I don't care what your tattoo says you are. You jacked this ship off its course and have delayed the goods for Sedgwick. You're lucky you didn't jack the colonist ship—"

  "Lucky!" Larkin had the nerve to laugh, a sound that scared and delighted me all in the same instant. How long since I'd heard a man laugh like that? Sixteen years, eleven months . . . give or take. "Lady, it'll be luck if we get my cargo where it needs to go."

  Cargo. Hell's bells. I didn't want to know what he was carrying, I really didn't. I shouldered past him, but he caught my arm before I could stalk down the corridor. I looked into his gray eyes and waited.