Osprey chronicles comple.., p.32
Osprey Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 32
Jaeger pursed her lips.
“Look, Tiny—”
Jaeger growled, and Toner put up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry…but listen to me. I know what’s going on. I get it. You ignore me and Seeker’s suggestions because, well, he’s not one of us, not yet, at least… and as for me. Well, I wouldn’t trust me either. I was built to fight. To take risks. To be impulsive. It’s cool you mostly ignore our input. Understandable. But this time, you’re wrong. Shit goes sideways and your plans fail, then your backup plans fail…that’s where I come in. I’m the backup to your back-ups. Take me with you.”
Jaeger considered this. He was right. He was the best backup to her backups. A grenade to use in the most fucked up of situations. She nodded. “OK. But no talking.”
“You know I will.”
“I do,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I do. Just try. OK?”
Toner nodded. “I still think this is a bad idea. We should just carry on ignoring each other.”
“So what, then?” Jaeger sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You’re not wrong. But you’re not right either. We can’t just sit here forever.”
“Hey. I’ve said it before.” Toner lifted his eyebrows. “Let’s go plant a flag on some little tropical island on Locaur and get busy. Build ourselves a tiny little empire ruled by the golden-eyed queen and her vampire consort.”
“You and Seeker…” Jaeger grimaced. “Again, you’re not wrong. But you’re not right either. If we do that, then we’re no better than the fleet we left behind. We need to do this right. Besides, I suspect you’re only suggesting it to replay this weird fantasy of yours.”
Toner shrugged. “What else is fantasy for?”
She shook her head. “We can’t settle on Locaur without permission. You know that. Humans have always had a bad habit of doing that, and it leads to a lot of misery. We can’t start those old nasty habits all over again. I won’t allow it. We need to be better.”
“Come on. Art’s people love us. They won’t care if we ask for one measly island.”
“It’s not just them, Toner, and you know it.” She sighed. “As much as I wish it were. The Overseers have an established presence in this system. Like it or not, they’re the alpha-dog. If we want to build a permanent home, we’ll need their blessing, too.”
“And this is how you want to get it? By ringing them up out of the blue and offering them the general location of the Creeper base?”
“It’s a start. Once we can get a face-to-face meeting with them, the real talks can at least begin.”
Toner let out a dramatic shudder.
“What? We’ve got escape routes planned if things get violent.”
“Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping through team meetings. The jet packs are cute, but what if they get confiscated at the door?”
“Then we fall back on Initiative Seven.”
“Ah, right.” Toner leaned back in the love seat, picking at something between his teeth. “Initiative Seven. How many times did we practice that one in the simulation?”
“Nineteen.”
“And…how many times did we survive?”
“Well, you survived seven.”
“Hah. No, no.” He waggled a finger at her and hopped to his feet. He went to the kitchen and pulled a pouch of something red wiggly out of one of the storage cabinets. “I didn’t survive any times. I got blasted out into the cold vacuum of space seven times.” He came back to the lounge, ripping open a corner of the pouch. He tilted his head back, squeezing the slurry into his open mouth. It was too thick and chunky to be blood.
Or, at least, entirely blood.
Jaeger gagged on the tangy, metallic scent of pureed liver.
“Shut up. I don’t bitch about your cookies and cinnamon rolls.”
“You absolutely do.”
“Anyway.” He drained the last of the pouch and dropped it next to the recycling chute. Not in the chute. Just next to it. “Out of nineteen practice rounds, I get exploded in twelve, and in seven of them, I merely get blasted into space for that thing—” he pointed at Baby “—to save me. My frozen, dormant corpse hauled home by two tons of farting tardigrade.”
Baby lifted what passed for her head in Toner’s direction and let out a low growl, her face-hole dilating to show extra teeth.
Toner jumped away from her with a high-pitched yelp. “See? It hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.” Jaeger scratched Baby’s pebbly skin. “She just won’t put up with your bullshit. You said it yourself. Dormant. Not dead. You can survive in cold vacuum.”
“You can’t.”
Jaeger flushed. “I survived the simulation.”
Toner stared at her.
“Once.”
Toner continued staring at her.
“Okay,” she mumbled. “I almost survived once.”
“Right.” He plopped back onto the love seat. “And I almost fucked the Queen of England, once. Where’s my crown? This isn’t grade school, kiddo. There are no participation trophies. Survival is graded on a pass-fail basis only.”
“Your concern is flattering.” She reached across the coffee table and patted his knee. “But I’ll be fine. If you’re too chicken to come with me, I get it. It’s a scary universe out there.”
Toner glared at her.
She smiled blithely.
“Fine,” he snapped. “Send your stupid message. Charge off into the lion’s den. Depend on me to save your ass again.”
“Oh, do I have your approval now?” Jaeger held up her computer, fighting back a grin. “That’s fortunate because I sent the message three minutes ago.” She tapped the emblem on the shoulder of her flight suit and mouthed, “I’m the captain.”
Toner threw his hands in the air, tilted his head back, and wailed. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
“Stand aside,” Occy cried, appearing at the mouth of the access tunnel. “The noise they make will cause Baby to awake!”
Baby lifted her head and added a sonorous bellow for emphasis. Toner jumped and spun, startled by the boy’s sudden appearance.
Jaeger fell back in her recliner, laughing as Occy joined them in the lounge. “You never should’ve read him A Midsummer Nights’ Dream,” she told Toner. “He’s going to be reciting laps around you.”
“Come on, kid.” Toner waved Occy closer. “Start your stupid movie. What is it we’re watching again? Toy Story?”
Occy’s frown turned into a glare. “Monsters.”
Toner nodded. “All right, all right. But I get to pick the next one. I want you to swear on it.”
Exhausted after a long and exciting day following a long and tedious series of missions, Jaeger kicked back in the recliner, her hand resting comfortably on Baby’s head, as the overhead lights darkened and the Pixar logo appeared on the screen.
As the movie continued, she took delight in Occy’s muffled giggles. They might be facing enemies in unchartered territories with no place to call home, but somehow his laughter made it all worth it.
Two hours later, the others had gone to rest, and Jaeger lay in her darkened bunk, staring at a smaller screen.
The little girl in the holo-journal shone golden and bronze in the light of some long-forgotten Midwestern sunset. The skirts of her gingham dress fluttered as she kicked and rocked on the porch swing, her head thrown back into the embrace of the woman in Jaeger’s mirror.
It was a bad song, they sang together. Atonal, barking staccato, cheesy lyrics.
I would fly five billion miles.
The woman and the little girl on the screen were laughing, and it was a sweet enough song to lull Jaeger to sleep.
Something glowed brightly, casting long shadows over the mess of Jaeger’s quarters. She blinked, roused at some unknown hour.
Her vision cleared and she shot upright with a gasp, clutching her blankets to her chest.
“Virgil! What—what are you doing?”
A young man in a brown tweed suit stood in the center of her small quarters, shining with light and faintly translucent as he studied the disheveled mess of Jaeger’s open cabinets. He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at her.
Jaeger glanced at the speaker-projector combo mounted to her ceiling. She had seen this hologram projection before. It was the visual interface for the ship’s AI, though to her knowledge, Virgil never used it.
“Virgil? Are you all right?”
“We have received your message.” The hologram lifted its chin and stared at Jaeger. The voice coming through the speaker was reedy and thin and not at all familiar. “The council wishes to meet with you immediately.”
Jaeger blinked, then spluttered as realization dawned on her. This wasn’t Virgil. The Overseers had an AI powerful enough to patch into and override Virgil’s system. She had seen them do it once before. “You—you hijacked my AI to tell me that?”
Not-Virgil cocked his head.
Jaeger bit back a few less-than-diplomatic words and forced her voice to calm. “I see. Send us the time and location, and we will be happy to meet with the esteemed council.”
“The destination is already loaded into your shuttle’s navigation computer. You may bring one companion. Please depart immediately.”
Jaeger started rooting around in her sheets for her personal computer. “All right,” she said tightly. “We will do so. Thank you for the prompt response.”
Without so much as a nod of acknowledgment, the projector light flickered, and the hologram vanished, leaving Jaeger blind in the utter darkness.
She scrambled to get dressed.
The speaker blurted. Virgil’s voice, normally mild and bland, returned with an edge. “Captain, when you meet with the Overseer council, could I trouble you to pass along a request from me?”
Jaeger clambered into her flight suit and snapped on her utility belt. She already knew where this was going. “Fire away.”
“Tell their AI that the next time it wishes to override my autonomy circuits and invade my system without permission and forewarning, it should instead download its entire persona into a toaster and have someone throw it into a lake.”
Jaeger winced. She’d have to find a more diplomatic way of making the request, but as captain, it was her duty to protect her crew from violation.
Not to mention, if the Overseer AI could hop in and out of the Osprey on a whim, it did not speak well of their security protocols.
“Will do,” she promised as she threw the hatch to her quarters and climbed up into the lounge. “It’s not okay for them to treat you like that. Send a ship-wide announcement, please. Have everybody meet me in the docking bay immediately.”
The docking bay echoed with the urgent wailing of a wordless alert siren. Toner leaned out of the back of their restored shuttle as Jaeger jogged up the catwalk. “Are you sure about this? Also, God, Virgil, I get it! Turn that thing off.”
The siren continued its reverberating peal as Jaeger hopped into the shuttle cargo bay beside Toner. She caught his eye and shook her head. “Virgil’s pissed. Let it blow off some steam.”
Toner scowled and turned toward the shuttle cockpit.
Occy and Baby lurked in the back of the shuttle cargo bay. Jaeger shook her head, waving them both toward the door. “Absolutely not. This isn’t a family field trip. Just me and Toner were invited.”
“In a minute,” Occy whined. His tentacles flickered over an exposed circuit board in the back of the shuttle. “I’m not done running the updates.”
“You’re stalling,” Jaeger snapped. “We’ll be fine, I promise. We’re only going to talk. Nobody is going to get captured and executed.”
“Or tortured!” Toner called, unhelpfully, from the cockpit.
Jaeger shot him a glare. “Or tortured. Come on, Occy. Baby. It’s time to go.”
With a nudge from Jaeger, Baby ambled easily enough out of the back of the shuttle and zipped off into the cargo bay. Dawdling like only a child can, however, Occy took his sweet time re-attaching the panel. He turned his worried puppy-dog stare on Jaeger.
She grimaced and glanced over her shoulder. Toner was taking the shuttle through the power-up sequence.
She leaned in close to Occy, whispering beneath the blare of sirens. “But. Just in case we don’t come back. What do you do?”
Occy scowled. “Assume authority over the Osprey and AI,” he recited. “Leave the solar system. Activate four of the most pro-social crew members I can find and keep moving, seeking a safe place to settle. I’m not stupid.”
“I know.” She patted him on the head. “It makes me feel better. Now scoot, kid. We have work to do.”
Casting one long, reproachful look back at her, Occy slipped out of the shuttle. The door slid shut behind him, muting the distant blare of sirens.
Jaeger joined Toner in the cockpit.
“I’m not psyched that one of your backup plans outlines what to do if we die,” Toner gritted, working the control console.
Jaeger grimaced. She forgot how keen Toner’s sense of hearing was. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
Toner grunted. “Docking bay clear,” he said. “Ready to open cargo doors and depart.”
“Take us out.”
An uneasy silence fell as the cargo doors slid open. Toner piloted the shuttle out of the Osprey’s wing and into the cold black of space.
“You’re too eager to trust these people,” Toner said. He made a vague, sweeping gesture to the starfield ahead of them. “I wish I had your faith in the goodness of it all.”
“Faith is important,” Jaeger said quietly. “We have to have faith that doing the right things will pay off. Otherwise, there’s no point.” She hesitated, then admitted: “But we can’t go on faith alone. We do have something more.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“A plan.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Overseer mothership twinkled and glittered, light flashing and dancing off its delicate latticework as it slowly rotated at the outer edge of the solar system.
Toner, for once in his life, was speechless.
“God,” Jaeger whispered. She double-checked the shuttle’s radar. It was no illusion. The ship was mind-bogglingly massive. It was a manufactured, glistening snowflake nearly seven kilometers across. It dwarfed the handful of smaller saucer-ships hovering in a cloud around it. Jaeger knew from experience that each of those saucers was large and powerful enough to give Osprey a run for her money.
They looked like insects beside the mothership.
“That thing wasn’t in the system a few hours ago,” Toner said weakly.
“Nope,” she said.
“They, um. They brought the big ship to come meet us.”
“Yep.”
“Fuck.”
Ah, there it was. Toner finding his tongue again.
Something flashed on the console before them, and Toner jumped. He leaned back, drawing his hands away from the thruster controls. The shuttle arched up toward the mothership.
“I’m not doing that,” Toner said nervously.
Jaeger checked the navigation computer. “It looks like they’re assuming remote control.”
“You don’t look nearly as upset by that as you should be.”
Jaeger folded her hands behind her head as she drifted in her harness. “Look at it this way,” she reasoned. “They could smear us off the map. No question. But they haven’t.” She shrugged. “They must be peaceful. Or at least willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.”
“Or interested in knowing what sounds we make when they jam screws under our fingernails.”
Jaeger snorted. “Even if that’s the case, there’s nothing we can do about it right now. So relax and enjoy the scenery.” She swept a hand in the direction of the twisting masterwork of steel and alien metals that was the mothership.
Toner gave her a long side-eye. “Have you found the weed? Are you hiding it from me? You’re way too chill.”
Jaeger gave him an enigmatic smile. Not because she had a particular secret to keep, but because, sometimes, she enjoyed watching him twitch.
She reached over to the audio controls and played the Shire theme from The Fellowship of the Ring.
Guided by an alien hand, the shuttle piloted itself through a maze of spires and mysterious outcroppings and into the shadow of one of the glistening central pylons. Jaeger had a brief mental image of flying through a massive cityscape in a one-person helicopter. She had enough time to wonder if it was a true memory trying to bubble through her amnesia or a fantasy before the impression was gone.
Ahead of them, a black crease appeared in the pylon. The shuttle glided directly toward it and passed through a set of cargo doors that could have easily accommodated an aircraft carrier.
A shadow fell over them as they flew into the belly of the mothership, passing through a cavernous docking bay lined with all sorts of mysterious cradles and fixtures. Jaeger caught the faint motion of a distant swarm of bots, or perhaps single-person ships, buzzing around a mid-sized saucer at dock.
Beside her, Toner was sucking in deep breaths. “Toy boat.” He worked the muscles of his jaw. “Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat. She sells seashells by the seashore. She sells—”
“What are you doing?” Jaeger asked as the shuttle approached a smaller docking pylon at the very back of the bay.
“I’m warming up for a performance,” Toner hissed. “Don’t you remember those exercises I taught you?”
“Ah. Right. Toy boat.” She nodded.
Toner had insisted on a full-cast reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with props and vocal warm-ups and everything. Jaeger had gone along with it willingly enough because King Lear got depressing after a while.
There was a barely perceptible bump as the shuttle made contact with one of the docking cradles. A hiss of coolant gas filled the view screens, blinding them to the outside world.
