With Blaze’s statement ringing in the air, the moment was broken and Rissa hopped down to the ground. She gave Serenity another tight hug. “Happy Birthday,Serenity.”
Serenity blinked in surprise. It wasn’t his birthday, was it?
A quick check of the calendar with Aide’s assistance told him that it was indeed his birthday. Well, Thomas Rothmer’s birthday, but that was close enough. He didn’t really need to celebrate the day he chose his name, after all; that was the same as celebrating the beginning of the Tutorial. Thomas Rothmer’s birthday was as good as any other date. He was Thomas Rothmer, after all, even more than he was Vengeance or the Final Reaper.
He still had Rissa.
“So your surprise visit was a birthday present and you wanted to keep it secret until my birthday, is that what you’re telling me?” Serenity could feel a silly grin make its way across his face. She still should have talked to him about it, but at least she’d had something of a reason not to. The fact that she’d clearly come with Blaze helped, too.
Rissa’s expression shifted to one that was doubtful, or maybe concerned? Serenity wasn’t sure which. “Not exactly? I did have everyone wait a couple extra days so that we’d get here on your birthday, but that’s not your real birthday present.”
Oh, Serenity recognized the expression now. They’d dated for long enough that he’d seen it before, often at exactly this time of year. It was the “guilty but I don’t regret it” expression he’d seen her give when she got him an extremely expensive gift that she knew he’d like but that he’d never have agreed to pay for. He had no idea what it might be; there were very few things that truly seemed expensive anymore, and most of them weren’t things he’d be interested in.
“Okay, then, what is it? Or where is it?” Rissa definitely wasn’t carrying anything and neither was Blaze.
Well, not anything beyond their usual gear. That did mean that they each had a space-expanding bag; Rissa had one of the Tutorial backpacks that still somehow worked, probably because it hadn’t been used much, while Blaze had a far lighter bag he kept on his belt. It had an odd opening that wouldn’t have made sense in a real bag, since it was larger than the bag itself, but that made perfect sense for the quality of bag Blaze carried.
Whatever gift Rissa had brought was either small enough to fit in one of the bags or wasn’t with them right now. They could certainly have left something outside if they wanted to, even if anyone hadn’t traveled with them. Serenity’s guess was that it was probably small; carrying big things got awkward quickly, and it was a long trip from Earth to Berinath.
Rissa grinned and turned to Blaze. “Invite Ita in, and Jenna. I think everyone else can stay outside for now. Oh, Diane will need to handle Jenna.”
At this point, Jenna’s nanny Diane was nearly part of the family anyway. Blaze and Ita were also close. “Did you bring Raz, too?”
Raz was probably the only person other than actual family that Serenity would have invited to a birthday party that hadn’t yet been mentioned. Oh, if he held the birthday party on Asihanya or Aeon or even Zon there would be others, but he wouldn’t expect people to cross worlds just for a party. That applied to Serenity’s parents as well as Rissa’s father, as well; they would have a much harder time leaving Earth for weeks than Raz would.
Once both Ita and Jenna were in the room, Rissa grinned and reached into her backpack. She pulled out a box covered in wrapping paper that Serenity could only describe as metallic blue. It was fairly dark yet somehow shone, reflecting a surprising amount of light. The present was probably about eight inches on each side and four inches tall. Serenity had no idea what it was. He couldn’t immediately think of anything he wanted that would end up in a box that size.
Rissa clearly thought he’d like it, so Serenity tried to be positive about it. If nothing else, he should like the fact that she gave it to him, whether he liked the present itself or not.
Serenity turned it over in his hands but didn’t shake it. Yes, it was probably packaged to be safe to transport over the distance from Earth to Berinath, but the last thing he wanted to do was break it. He’d know what it was momentarily.
He slit the tape at each joint in the package with his claws. A subtle shift like that was getting easier and easier the more he practiced it, so he was trying to incorporate them into his everyday life. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t think of it when it was important.
With the tape broken, the paper slipped off the package as a completely separate piece. Before it landed on the floor, Serenity caught it and shifted it to the table next to the door, the table that usually held food when he ate in the suite. Inside the paper was a thin white box. Serenity slit another piece of tape that held the top closed and lifted the flap, only to find that whatever was inside the box was carefully cushioned and wrapped in tissue paper.
Serenity set the box on the table and pulled out the only object he found. It filled the box nearly completely and seemed oddly shaped; he couldn’t tell what it was before he removed the paper.When he did, all he could do was stare at it. He couldn’t think of a single world where he’d want a scale model of a spaceship.
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No, that wasn’t quite true. Thomas Rothmer might well have enjoyed having a scale model of a spaceship. He’d probably have displayed it on his desk at work. He’d simply never have bought one for himself. Serenity didn’t have a desk at work, since he didn’t have an office job. It could go in the living room; it shouldn’t be too hard to have Aki alter the structure enough to have a niche for it. Serenity couldn’t think of a reason Rissa would have gotten it for him.
It was really more like a spaceplane than a spaceship, clearly made to function in both atmosphere and in space, but that was where the resemblance to the old Space Shuttles ended. The wings were closer to the nose and were far longer, more like an airplane. They also seemed to have the same sort of complex adjustable surface as an airplane, rather than the heat-resistant tiles of the Space Shuttle.
The tail section was completely different from any airplane Serenity had ever seen on Earth. Instead of a tail that rose up, with a couple of smaller wing-like protrusions that were either next to or part of the tail section, it was shaped sort of like a fan. The tail reminded Serenity of a bird’s tail in flight far more than an airplane’s tail. That probably meant there had to be moving parts in there; a bird’s tail movements were important to flight, even if Serenity didn’t know how.
The tail section told Serenity that either it was an extremely odd Earth design or more likely a design from somewhere that didn’t share the same technological heritage as Earth. He was willing to bet that it was from offworld somewhere. That wasn’t what told Serenity it was a spaceship.
That was obvious from a completely different missing feature: the engines. While there were no rear-mounted rockets like the Space Shuttle, there were also no jet turbine engines on the model.
Instead, there was a series of metallic-looking rings spaced along the length of the spaceship’s body. One of the rings intersected the wings; unlike the other rings, it wasn’t circular. Instead, it ran along the wings in a curving pattern on both the top and the bottom. Serenity wasn’t certain what that was about, but it was common on spaceships of a certain type.
Specifically, the very expensive type. They were expensive because they were fast, and they were fast because they could do something Serenity had heard called “multi-portal displacement.” That was what the rings were for. It let them travel quickly to planets without dedicated spacefaring technology, planets that couldn’t provide any sort of transit assistance.
It was, of course, also common on warships for a similar reason. You didn’t want to need the assistance of your enemy to travel and you couldn’t always count on traveling only to your own worlds.
Multi-portal displacement was not the fastest method of travel. The fastest method required some sort of beacon on the destination world and traveled through some sort of not-entirely-real space. Serenity didn’t know the details; he’d traveled on spaceships as Vengeance but he’d never designed, built, owned, flown, or even worked on one. He’d only ever been a passenger and most crews didn’t talk about the details too much with the passengers any more than the crew of a cruise ship would talk about how their navigation system worked. It just wasn’t relevant.
Multi-portal displacement, on the other hand, did get mentioned because it was a way to explain how pilots could travel to planets that were off the standard routes. That could be a very good thing when you were looking for dungeons that you’d never seen before. Some planets were difficult to reach by the normal trade routes but far easier to reach by spaceship, as long as the ship didn’t have to depend on the world to be prepared for it. It was expensive but some people found it very useful for their Paths.
Serenity was certain there were many other reasons to travel to the less-traveled worlds. In fact, he could come up with a reason for himself immediately: Earth didn’t have that sort of a spaceship beacon. Lyka might, and Tzintkra probably did, but Earth definitely didn’t. Serenity didn’t think he should install one any time soon, either. At a minimum he needed to work things out with the Empire first; that would tell him a lot about what he’d need to do to defend Earth. He wasn’t interested in joining the Empire, but an alliance was not out of the question.
Serenity focused on the model again. He hadn’t even looked at the base yet, but when he did he saw a small notation that said SCALE MODEL under a larger set of letters that was clearly the name of the individual ship rather than the name of the type of spaceship.
No one would name an entire series of spaceships DEATH’S WINGS unless they were warships, and while this might be armed, it was pretty clearly more of a cargo or passenger ship than a warship.
It might, however, make a decent name for the spaceship owned by the Incarnate of Death. Serenity slowly raised his gaze towards Rissa’s face. “You got me a spaceship for my birthday?”
Rissa’s grin lit up the room as she nodded. “It’s fast, too. We left Earth a week ago and had to wait before I came to find you so that I could deliver it today. I thought about taking you there and not telling you it was your ship until we get to the rest of the presents, but this was more fun. You’ll have plenty of other presents to open anyway. Come on, everyone’s waiting on the ship. It’ll be fun!”
Serenity would have agreed to almost anything Rissa proposed at that moment, so whether or not he was in the mood for a party didn’t matter. He was headed to the party.
She was right about both aspects: everyone was there and it was fun. Rissa had somehow managed to gather everyone from their parents to Echo and Doyle. She’d even managed to get friends he hadn’t spent time with since college to come along for the trip, like Morwen.
Morwen was obviously fascinated by the ship, even after an entire week on it. She couldn’t seem to stop talking about it.
The crew of Death’s Wings was a mix of humans from Earth and an oddly fluidic species that it took Serenity a moment to recognize as the people of Aru’tsa’lkeet, the highest-technology world he’d ever seen other than Earth. If that was where the ship came from, it was probably capable of a lot more than he realized.
They were shapeshifters, technically, but they managed it entirely biologically by solidifying portions of their anatomy with fluid under pressure. They could imitate almost any species but it was always obvious that they weren’t actually part of the species; their imitations simply weren’t that good. The crew on the Death’s Wing had all chosen appearances that were as avian as they were human. Serenity wasn’t certain if that was because of the ship’s name or to avoid the uncanny valley effect, but either way it was a good choice.