Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (9 page)

After all, he fully intended to
try
to return this ship in one piece.

After Volosk had departed, Caleb remained by the river for a while. His outward demeanor was relaxed, save for the rapid tap of fingertips on the railing.

He had been on leave ever since the post-op debriefs for the previous assignment had wrapped up. Whether the vacation had been a reward or a punishment he wasn’t entirely sure, despite Volosk’s vague hint at a promotion. Nor did he particularly care. He had accomplished what he had set out to do, justice had been served—albeit with a spicy dash of vengeance—and the bad guys were all dead. But it appeared it was time to get back to work.

The serenity of the cool night breeze and river-cleansed air juxtaposed upon the pulsing thrum of the music and swelling buzz of the crowd made for an appropriate backdrop. Time to retune himself.

He had enjoyed spending time with Isabela and her family, especially getting to play the bad uncle and fill Marlee’s head with rebellious and unruly ideas sure to drive her mother crazy for months. The little girl had spunk; it was his duty to encourage it.

It had been a welcome respite. But it wasn’t his life.

He pushed off the railing and strolled down the promenade to the bar area. The throbbing of the bass vibrated pleasantly on his skin as he neared. He ordered a local ale and found a small standing table which had been abandoned in favor of the dance floor. He rested his elbows on it, sipped his beer and surveyed the crowd.

It was amusing, and occasionally heartbreaking, to see how people doggedly fumbled their way through encounters. All the cybernetics in the world couldn’t replace real, human connection, which was likely why physical sex was still the most popular pastime in the galaxy, despite the easy availability of objectively better-than-real
passione illusoire
. Humans were social animals, and craved—

“What are you drinking?”

He glanced at the woman who had sidled up next to him. Long, razor-straight white-blond hair framed a face sculpted to perfection beyond what genetic engineering alone could achieve. A white iridescent slip minimally covered deep golden skin. Silver glyphs wound along both arms and up the sides of her neck to disappear beneath the hairline.

He smiled coolly. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She dropped a hand on the table and posed herself against it. “Yes, you are. Would you like to dance?”

He suppressed a laugh at the heavy-handed come-on. “Thank you, but…” a corner of his mouth curled up “…you’re not really my type.”

Her eyes shone with polished confidence. She believed she was in control. How
cute
.

“I can be any type you want me to be.” The glyphs glowed briefly as her hair morphed to black, her makeup softened and her skin tone paled.

So that’s what the glyphs were for. A waste of credits born of a desperate need to be wanted. He gave the woman a shrug and shook his head. “No thanks.”

She scowled in frustration; it marred the perfect features into ugliness. “Why not? What the hell
is
your type?”

He took a last sip of his beer and dropped the empty bottle on the table. “Real.”

He walked away without looking back.

3

ERISEN

E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
C
OLONY

T
WELVE SCREENS HOVERED
in a grid pattern above Kennedy Rossi’s desk.

She regarded them with a critical eye. Her head tilted to the left, then the right, on the off chance the shift in angle might reveal a new perspective. After further consideration she backed up to lean against the window. The distance allowed her to better analyze the overall effect. At least in theory.

The desk was made of nearly transparent polycrystalline alumina glass. It displayed any information transmitted to it—in her case typically ship architectures and schematics—with micro-scale accuracy and detail. It also happened to act as a rather beautiful complement to the bright, elegant décor of the office.

This project wasn’t so far along as to require the desk’s particular capabilities, however. Not yet. The presentation contained in the hovering screens focused on the big picture. Its purpose was to weave a story the less technically minded (she was being charitable) directors might understand and, more importantly, believe in enough to invest significant funds in the project.

She gazed out the window. Large, feathery snowflakes danced in the air yet again. Maybe she should go skiing this weekend….

Erisen was the closest habitable world to Earth and had been one of the first extra-solar settlements. In a nasty storm she occasionally questioned the ‘habitable’ part, but colonists had put the chilly environs to good use. Due to little orbital tilt there weren’t seasons to speak of and while it did snow often, the low humidity resulted in a dry, champagne powder snow. Those features meant, in addition to creating a skier’s paradise, quantum-scale and other manufacturing that required supercooled conditions could be made cheaply here without the need for orbital facilities.

The colony had wasted no time in crafting the advantages into an economic boon, building a manufacturing sector which was all too happy to supply materials for the rapid galactic expansion of the late 22
^nd
century. More than a hundred fifty years later, Erisen was among the most prosperous Alliance worlds and a hub for electronics, orbitals and starship design and construction.

Which was why she was here, despite the reality that the social and cultural offerings still paled in comparison to those of home. But Earth was a mere three hours away, and it was easy enough to hop a transport when something interesting caught her fancy.

With an almost wistful sigh she turned away from the snowflakes and back to the presentation. A palm came up to rest beneath her chin.

As onboard CUs grew increasingly powerful and attained greater range, long-distance hacking of ship systems constituted a growing crime. The chart hovering to her left indicated the rate of increase in such attacks threatened to become exponential.

A heavily cyberized merc ship was able to hide in the shadow of a moon and remotely take control of a corporate, personal or possibly even military ship halfway across a stellar system. Mercs were then free to disable it for boarding and raiding, turn its weapons on its friends or send it crashing into the nearest planet.

The problem hadn’t yet hit the radar of the general public, but it would do so soon enough. If she had her way, IS Design would be waiting in the wings to offer the finest in EM reverse-shielding to counter the threat—for the right price, obviously.

She had already drawn up rough schematics for how the shielding would integrate into standard ship infrastructure, determined the estimated power and material requirements and developed a lattice formulation to best improve its performance. Really, all she needed to do now was add some flowery words and a couple of charts projecting outrageous profit percentages, and she’d be ready to present to the board of directors.

She reached over and flipped the trend statistics and market analysis scr—

—a flashing light in her eVi signaled an incoming holocomm request. She stashed the screens and allowed the holo to take their place.

“Kennedy Rossi speaking. I’m seeing the back of a head and a knot of dark red…Alex?”

“It says so right there on your screen, Ken.”

“Oh, I never check that. I prefer to be surprised.”

Alex chuckled and finally looked up. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the engineering well of the
Siyane,
an open panel exposing the engineering core beside her. She blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “Sorry, final diagnostics check. I have a question.”

“And I have an answer—or if I don’t, I have an entertaining-yet-relevant anecdote.”

“Uh-huh. Is it safe to tune the power outflow to the dampener field down fifteen percent or so, then run it through an mHEMT amp on the way? I don’t want to blow up my ship.”

“Hmm…give me a second and let me check the field test data.” She flicked her index finger against the edge of the desk to display the product files and scrolled down a series of tables and charts, pausing a few times to study one. “Not quite, but you
can
—do you keep a silica-sapphire matrix filter on board?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, if you run the conduit through it after the amp you should be fine. The dampener doesn’t like power spikes.” She picked up a diagram out of the files. “Here, I’ll send you the schem flow. I’m sure the CEO won’t mind if I toss around a bit of proprietary information.”

“Terrific, thanks.” Alex relaxed back on her hands while the file transmitted and loaded. “How’s life on Erisen? Have the dinner parties lowered your IQ precipitously yet—or would it be the boardrooms? I can never tell which is worse.”

She rolled her eyes with dramatic flair and flopped down in her chair. “
Dreadfully
boring. Yesterday I had to politely educate three visiting investors on how we would not be switching to the trendy new tungsten metamat for our starship hulls due to the fact it
melts
in warmer planetary atmospheres. They kept getting distracted ogling my legs and—well, I won’t put you to sleep with the tiresome details of what followed.

“Although, I did meet a delicious eco-dev executive at a cocktail party later in the evening, so the day wasn’t a complete loss. We’re having dinner tomorrow night. I have high hopes.” Her eyes sparkled with deliberate playfulness. “Speaking of tall, dark and handsome, have you listened to Ethan’s newest music?”

“I have. It was surprisingly mellow. He’s getting complacent in his wealth and fame.”

“Angst and rage is for the young and poor, right? You know, you should totally stop by and see him for a quick lay before you hit space again.”

Coaxing Alex to stop working for five minutes and, heaven forbid, engage in
fun
had been an ongoing project of hers since university, where inventing the most clever and efficient engineering designs had competed for attention with frat parties and beach bonfires.

Of course Alex had never wanted to go to the frat parties, preferring her men brooding and intellectual; the bonfires she had been only a little more amenable to. But Kennedy was nothing if not persistent, and she had on occasion relented, even if she had usually ended up fucking
with
the boys rather than actually fucking any of them.

Alex worried at her lower lip while she gave a stellar impression of scrupulously studying the incoming schem flow. “Ken, it’s been eleven years. I am not going to ‘stop by for a quick lay.’”

“You’re forgetting that time you
did
stop by for a not-so-quick lay after Malcolm broke up with you. When was it, two years ago?”

“Two
and a half
years ago and I haven’t forgotten. It doesn’t count, because I was wasted…among other things.”

She twirled a long lock of hair around a finger. “All weekend?”

Alex’s eyes narrowed; it magnified the effect of the arched eyebrows above them. “
Soglasen—past’ zakroi
.”

Kennedy laughed but raised her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I’ll let it go—but my point still stands. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to indulge you again. He’s always had a soft spot for you.” She definitely saw a brief flash of amusement cross Alex’s expression before she tamped it down.

“And
you’ve
always been entirely too nosy when it comes to my sex life. Now about the field’s power requirements. You said it doesn’t like spikes. Just how much fluctuation can it tolerate, really?”

SIYANE

E
ARTH,
S
EATTLE

Alex took a few steps back and let her gaze run over the length of the ship.

She had spent more than three hours the previous evening working the silica-sapphire matrix into the control grid and recalibrating the power outflow, then testing and retesting the entire system—but the results were worth it. While even extensive testing couldn’t replicate real-space conditions, the sims averaged a 39.2% decrease in emission leakage with the new dampener field engaged.