Askior
One thing that was hard to appreciate about star systems was their variance. No two had the same conditions.
Mummar was notable for being pretty barren. It had just five planets spinning around it, and the one gas giant it had an extremely far orbit, offering little protection. Gas giants like that were shields for a system’s inner planets. The bigger planets could tug stray meteors and comets out of the path of smaller, vulnerable, life-supporting planets.
Back home, Earth had Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
In Shirao, Yawhere and Harrogate had Paris and Calcodan, plus a few smaller ones even further out.
In Mummar, poor Cammo-Caddo only had Haxiad, a gas not-so-giant super far out.
Askior had apparently been a prime candidate for terraforming, once upon a time. It had Dai-Dai Koahn, a gas giant that lived up to the term as well as another Saturn-sized planet further out, as well as a few smaller terrestrial ice balls out there. Those optimal outer planets were compounded by five terrestrial planets, three of which had moons in stable orbit.
It should have all added up.
But each of Askior’s five terrestrial planets had at least one crucial flaw for anyone wanting to terraform or introduce an ecosystem. Mihan’s magnetosphere was too thin, and the radiation levels on the ground were erratic. Scozha actually had water and even a thick atmosphere, but a toxic one. And ground sources ensured planetary air quality would be dismal for millennia. Hexiam’s tectonics and soil composition couldn’t support a water table: a recurring problem for Tock and Tozho too, but those two also contended with weak and erratic magnetospheres that fouled attempts to erect planetary scale blackout curtains. It would have been better to have nothing at all.
With all the problems, I was actually shocked to learn the planets had been colonized anyway, even in the absence of viable terraforming.
Every colony on Mihan needed extra-strength blackout curtains, Scozha did the same thing but with complex atmosphere-regulating barriers. In addition to the ordinary radiation and air infrastructure, Hexiam colonies were careful to survey the ground they built on and regulated water usage. Tock and Tozho had allowed two problems to solve each other, avoiding surface radiation by building down, and influencing the geology surrounding their colonies with artificial root-tunnel structures to hold the ground together.
There was no end to dogged colonists’ determination to carve out places to live.
The book I was reading speculated half of all colony projects would collapse in the next two-hundred years. Too many people moving erratically all at once…supply infrastructure wouldn’t keep up…a lot of this was going over my head.
But even if I didn’t understand everything I was reading, it felt good just to have a book in my hands. So much of the information I was devouring nowadays was in psionic form, it felt good to run my fingers across some honest-to-God paper.
I wasn’t the only one learning new things.
Jordan was proving herself to have the same stripes as me. She was hungry to learn, and proactive about it.
“The trouble you’re going to keep running into,” Nai explained, “is that you’re looking for some overarching, unifying perspective through which you can understand all of Adeptry. It’s not going to happen. Many groups, full of people much smarter than you or I have tried, and the L-aptitude measurements is the closest they’ve gotten.”
“I have a growing list of statements about Adeptry that are growing closer and closer to contradicting one another,” Jordan frowned.
“Magnitude is a pain to wrap your head around when you’re starting out,” Nai conceded.
“Yes! I thought mass limits were supposed to encompass potential energy too,” Jordan said. “So, if I can make fifty kilograms of a material with…‘X’ amount of energy per gram in it, I should be able to make twenty-five kilograms of a material with twice that energy density, right? No! I can still make almost forty kilograms. Mass and the energy you can put into it aren’t correlated?”
“What you’re talking about is energetic capacity efficiency,” Nai said. “It actually tends to be a feature of intricacy more than magnitude, but it’s a little of both. ‘Mass limit’ usually refers to how much mass an Adept can make, regardless of how energetic they make it. Some people have to trade-off total mass to gain more energetic materials, like me. And other people are like Caleb, who can only make—what, eighteen kilos? But he can make all eighteen kilos into highly reactive combustible material, or totally inert.”
I nodded. Her guess was close enough.
“So let me see if I have this correctly…” Jordan said. “‘Energetic capacity efficiency’ is not the same thing as ‘energetic capacity’. The former is a measure of how effectively you can increase your mass’s potential energy without compromising the quantity of mass in the process…and the latter is just how much energy you can stuff into a given piece of mass, regardless of if you sacrifice total mass to do it.”
“Correct. The former is associated with intricacy and magnitude, but more intricacy, while the latter is one of the distinct hallmarks of magnitude,” Nai said.
“Okay…I think that makes sense…”
“Mass limits are most often measured in strictly inert materials because it eliminates two variables at once, both the energetic capacity and the efficiency. Makes it easier to standardize. But even then, everyone’s inert materials are a little bit different.”
“Because no one can actually make something perfectly inert,” Jordan nodded. “You can just approximate it very closely.”
Nai nodded back. “Correct. In fact, a lot of combat Adepts cut corners without realizing it and their creations spontaneously decompose if their surroundings change too much. You would not believe the number of times I’ve seen materials just evaporate if they get too hot.”
“Seems like that’s a mistake you only make once,” Jordan said.
“Not necessarily. It can be worthwhile to cut some of those corners,” Nai pointed out. “Sure, maybe your knife dematerializes from just static discharge or a few degrees of heat, but if eliminating that quirk takes enough work to slow down how quickly you make it? Better to be able to make a knife with a weakness in a heartbeat than a perfect knife that takes five seconds.”
“There’s so many idiosyncrasies to Adeptry, but not all of them always apply,” Jordan complained. “How do you keep track of it all?”
“I’ll be honest, it’s a lot easier with psionics,” Nai admitted. “A lot of my instincts about Adeptry are really just instincts about fighting with Adeptry—and well, they’re instincts. I didn’t have to really organize them.”
“Teaching me forced her to actually know what she was doing,” I grinned from the other side of the mess.
Nai pointed at me, as if to say ‘see?’.
“There are few better ways to test your own knowledge than to teach someone else,” Nai said.
“Have you gotten better at psionics that way, Caleb?” Jordan asked.
“Definitely,” I said, turning the page in my book. “Did you know Hexiam only has three colonies on its surface, but it’s the most populous planet in the system?”
“Three major colonies,” Nai pointed out. She’d given me the book after all. “And they’re less like three individual colonies and more like three clusters of colonies that have all grown and bled together. Not to mention all the tiny settlements out in the middle of nowhere with two hundred people apiece.”
Nai was the only member of the crew who’d been to Askior system before. Her last visit apparently had not thrilled her.
“Quit distracting my tutor,” Jordan told me. “I’m thinking of looking into that discovery Nora made: physical materials interacting with psionics. There’s a lot of potential to that.”
“Here,” I said, flicking her a file. “This is some of what I learned on Cammo-Caddo. If you have time in the next couple days, look it over and tell me what you think.”
“You’re not going to give me any more context?” she asked.
“I have a theory, but I don’t want to predispose you to it,” I said. “I need a fresh reaction.”
“Okay.”
“You should talk with Shinshay about computers,” I suggested. “Your range is so big; it could be worthwhile for you to try mimicking our friend ENVY. Creating drones a mile away could be valuable if you can get all the moving parts working properly.”
“Go back to your book,” Nai chastised me. “Quit distracting my student.”
“A [sensei] should command their students’ attention, despite distractions,” I joked.
“Shut up,” both Nai and Jordan said.
Hah.
·····
The Jackie Robinson appeared in the Askior system in a blinding white flash.
It lingered near the Beacon for only a few minutes, but this half of the entity was dormant too. So the ship rocketed off toward the inner planets.
·····
This system was technically a warzone. Not a lot of spacecraft were out and about.
We flew for almost a day before we ran into anyone on our scopes, and the Jack’s scopes were good. Since we weren’t looking to get in a fight or be boarded, it was important to see trouble coming. Having twin engines to outrun it didn’t hurt either.
Still, when the first ship we came into contact with was an Assembly one, we all got nervous.
The crew all signaled our confirmation, and we dropped what we were doing to set up crash chairs. This was only an alert so far, but we might need to go to full burn on short notice.
It was Serral, Jordan, and I on the flight deck with Weith above us in the cockpit. The Jack’s laser mapping display showed one dot near us.
‘Near’ was a bit misleading, because the blip really was on the furthest reaches of the Jack’s ability to detect. But its vector was bringing it closer.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“How do we know it’s a Majesty ship?” I asked.
“They have an active transponder,” Weith said. “They want everyone to know who and where they are.”
“It’s a gunship,” Serral deduced. “This is them showing the flag.”
“It gets worse,” Weith said. “Gunships usually like to be able to see what they’re aiming at.”
“So we might already be on their scopes,” Serral said.
“Our drive plume isn’t pointed at them, so that’s something,” Weith said. “But we’re a twin-engine. Even when the plumes are pointed away, they still pop.”
“If they have seen us, why haven’t they said anything yet?” Jordan asked.
“Because we’re not trying to hide either,” Serral said. “Our transponder’s in passive mode, right now. It’s not announcing who we are, but anyone that bounces a query toward us will get a response automatically.”
“What’s the light delay between us and them?” I asked.
“About a minute,” Serral said.
“So two round trips…” I started, but Serral already knew what I was asking.
“If their comms are set to query anything nearby automatically, two minutes. If they’re checking manually, three. So it should be any—”
The radio light started blinking.
Serral pressed the button and the ship’s message played.
“Alert, Jackie Robinson, this is Majesty armed vessel Wanthuro. State your business, cargo, and destination immediately,” the radio crackled.
“Short and sweet,” I snarked. “How friendly.”
Jordan frowned though.
Meanwhile, Serral was ready to reply.
“Wanthuro, our business and cargo are the same: diplomats and ambassadors. We’re carrying out an extended First Contact mission and are searching for Humans in this system—do you require elaboration on what ‘Humans’ are?”
Turnaround on the messages took a tense couple minutes.
“What do we do if they order us to cut thrust, or surrender for boarding?”
“Well, I could actually be convinced to allow them to board,” Serral said. “If their ship gets that close, it’s actually to our advantage because it means Nai comes into play. Ideally we don’t fight at all, but if it becomes necessary, I’d like to be able to play her card.”
“If they board, they might try confiscating things,” I said. “Like Assembly technology—like our fabricator?”
“Again: Nai. But honestly, I doubt they would. It’s a Vorak fabricator, and the Majesty aren’t Vorak,” he said.
The radio crackled back.
“Jackie Robinson, state your destination immediately. Transmit diplomatic credentials also. Do not alter your vector. Altering your vector will be considered a hostile act.”
Serral sighed.
“Wanthuro, you can read our vector: we’re headed for Mihan. Our ship flies under diplomatic certification, that should be all you need. But in the interest of cooperation and goodwill, we will attach the credential codes. We’re carrying Solar system’s diplomat to the Coalition, Caleb Hane, Human…of Earth ‘T1’…‘H1’? The system isn’t designated yet. We’re not interested in any trouble today, nor are we involved in any military mission. We are here to find Human abductees—effectively refugees, and extricate them from possible warzones. Extended formal inquiries can be directed to the Red Sails civilian arm, or the Terran Enclave of Asrin-Dane colony, Archo, C2,” Serral said.
Said ‘open channel’ still had twenty seconds of light delay, but that was still less than sixty.
“Jackie Robinson, you are ordered to adjust course and match our vector. This—”
Serral didn’t both listening to the whole rest of the message.
“Wanthuro, your vector is six times our velocity in the opposite direction. Even at maximum burn it would take multiple days for us to comeback into radio contact. Whatever you need to say, say it, and we’ll continue on our way. If you try to shoot at us, I want you to know we have psionic expertise on board that will make sure everyone in the cosmos hears about how you fired on a diplomatic ship unprovoked after giving it orders to make a high-G maneuver that would kill our whole crew. Do you want us to leave a message for when this system’s Beacon wakes up? Or would you like to have a civil conversation for the minutes we’re still in contact?”
The seconds we waited for a reply were so sweet, I could taste it. The officers on the Wanthuro had to be hesitating over that one…
“That was classy, Captain,” I smiled.
Psionics were a new thing, but the one thing everyone would know about them is that they suddenly just appeared all over the cosmos a few months ago. Funny thing was, I wasn’t even sure Serral was bluffing. I knew I could aim a message back toward the dormant Beacon. It would probably be picked up too.
“The truth is scary sometimes,” he nodded.
“Jackie Robinson, abort previously instructed vector changes,” the voice on the other end of the radio said. “Let’s talk…”
For being military enemies, it was a bit odd to learn how civil the Coalition and Assembly forces could be with each other. It reminded me of the opening to Top Gun, with Soviet and American pilots, nominally enemies with each other, ultimately pranking each other with polaroid photos. Or stories about World War I trenches where the soldiers would taunt each other while both sides sat around for months at a time.
The Wanthuro’s crew wasn’t happy about it, but we did wheedle some useful information about them.
They had picked up abduction ship profiles several months ago. It told us where those ships once were. Not something particularly useful immediately, but it was the first piece of a larger puzzle.
We knew we had to start somewhere.
Serral repaid the kindness with copies of our human medical data, and a reminder that the Fafin, the ship tracked in proximity to those abduction ships, was not a formal Coalition vessel.
Hopefully that would keep anyone from shooting anyone else on sight.
But we managed to avert a disaster, and the Jack continued on our way, eventually flipping to being our braking burn on approach to Mihan.
·····
Mihan’s Arnaco Colony was Coalition HQ for the system, a sprawling series of colony domes and space ports—similar to the structures I’d seen on Archo—but ten times larger here. This was a planet, not a moon. And even though the gravity was heavier, it wasn’t that much stronger. And there was a lot more room.
The Jack landed with elaborate gravity assistance, and we were tucked into a Coalition hangar with no trouble.
A smooth touchdown this time just made me realize how strange our last visit to Sidar had been. I never would have been expected to be ambushed in Coalition space, by civilian law enforcement, no less.
We still didn’t know who’d anonymously delivered the documents to the local Port Authority, but my money was on ENVY, especially after what Dustin had said.
But while the AI’s reach was long, it didn’t extend to the Coalition ground crew of Arnaco base.
The landing was about the only thing that went smoothly though, because on arrival, Jordan and I had to stay on the ship.
“I don’t care, Ase Serral,” the voice said. “I told you, diplomatic credentials do not mean they’ll be allowed on my base.”
“Admiral Hakho—” Serral began, but the voice on the other end of the radio was having none of it.
“No. The Terrans stay on your ship. They’ll be arrested if they disembark. Coalition officers and soldiers—even those assigned to diplomatic missions—are cleared to disembark, but not the Humans,” he said. “Sturgin is on her way. Anything further, you can direct to her.”
“Admiral, I—” he said, but the other end of the radio cut out.
“…He is an admiral,” Fenno pointed out. “He’s probably really busy.”
“He doesn’t trust Jordan or I,” I complained. “This is stupid. How many times are we going to have to retread the same ground?”
“Who’s ‘Sturgin’ though?” Jordan wondered.
That was the question the rest of us should have paid more attention to, but while we figured out who would be doing what on the ground in lieu of Jordan and I, Nerin and Shinshay piped up from the cargo bay.
I sensed everyone on the ship stop what they were doing to make sure we heard right.
“
“<…We’re on our way down,>” Serral said.
What greeted us was a sight that clashed with the sense of normalcy my brain had conditioned itself with over the last year-and-a-half: a Vorak in a black Coalition poncho.
Their fur was almost as black as the uniform, and they had pale cyan eyes, bordering on white, and they were rather tall for Vorak, towering at least two inches over Shinshay and coming within an inch of my own height. Unlike most Vorak I’d known, this one was sleek rather than bulky, offset by how the poncho hung loosely on their shoulders.
Every single one of us gaped at the sight, including the normally unflappable Serral.
“…Say it all now. I’ve heard it before,” the Vorak said tiredly.
It seemed like no one else was going to react, so I guess it was up to me.
“I didn’t realize there were any Vorak in the Coalition.”
“Not many,” they said. “But I’ve been Admiral Hakho’s right hand since before the war broke out. So I’d appreciate it if, when you question my loyalty, you at least have the decency to not bother me about it.”
Jordan glanced at me, unsure of the Vorak’s phrasing. The actual words had been ‘most dependable subordinate’, but it was a single idiomatic word. Had that been on purpose? Maybe.
A grin crept across my face.
“Hey, you’re not the only one who’s probably been accused of being a spy,” I said. “When I first wound up on Yawhere, someone thought I might be that shapeshifting Adept everyone keeps gossiping about.”
That actually produced an amused snort.
“I’m Special Operations Officer, Adjutant Sturgin Banmei,” she said, extending her hand. She was offering one of the Casti-style handshakes where you tapped the back of each other’s wrists.
She noticed me eying the gesture, and a little understanding went between us.
It came from being aliens living in mostly Casti circles. It was why the Admiral hadn’t used the classically-Vorak neutral pronouns.
“You’re a regular fish out of water, aren’t you?” I joked.
“That’s a terrible joke,” she said, turning from me to Serral. “Captain, I’m here to help with whatever you need while you’re here. Please don’t try to circumvent me, because then I’ll get cross, and Human Hane here was so kindly building rapport. I’d hate to see it all go to waste.”
“Can you get us information on a particular vigilante gunship, vessel tracking, and food manufacturers for the system?” he asked.
“Oh, Captain,” Sturgin replied with a grin. “I can do anything…so try me.”