Alien Empress (Argonauts Book 3) Page 2

  “Well sure,” Tahoe said. “Except that we’re cooped up aboard the Argonaut the whole way, feeling the simmering tension of expectation as we await our arrival. It’s not really a break if you ask me. Getting aboard a roomy station, or even better, visiting a terraformed planet, with no future missions in sight, no cares in the galaxy, now that’s what I call proper shore leave.”

  “There is always immersive VR,” Rade said.

  “The mind might sometimes believe it,” Tahoe said. “But not the body.”

  “All right,” Rade said. “I’m not going to argue with you on this because I know I’m right. And as I said at the beginning of the briefing, it’s not required of any of you that you come. If you don’t think you can handle it, then please do tell me and I’ll drop you off at the nearest base.”

  “I already told you I can handle it,” Tahoe said. “I’m just a bit pissed at the timing is all. And a little worried about you.”

  “Worry about yourself, not me,” Rade said. “I’m better than I’ve ever been. Just ask Shaw.”

  Smiling, he rubbed her on the back.

  She shook her head and half rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  “How’s your PTSD?” Tahoe said.

  Rade stiffened and the smile fled his face. He purposely kept his voice very calm as he said: “What PTSD?”

  “Well,” Shaw said, raising her hands. “I think it’s time for me to excuse myself.” She gave Rade a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

  She started to go.

  “No,” Rade said. “You stay. I want you to hear this. What PTSD, Tahoe? If I had post traumatic stress disorder, do you think I’d be able to do what I do? Lead you guys on life or death missions across the galaxy, and still function at the high levels of performance you’ve all come to expect from me?”

  “You’re very good at hiding the symptoms,” Tahoe said. “But you can’t fool me, nor the others, really. We know what’s wrong. After a fight, you go and hide away, and just sit there, staring into space for hours on end. It’s not normal, brother.”

  “He’s been taking counseling sessions with Bax,” Shaw said. “He—”

  Rade raised a quick hand to silence her.

  “I have some lingering combat issues, yes,” Rade said. “But it’s nothing I can’t deal with.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Tahoe asked.

  Rade hesitated. Finally: “No, my brother.” Anything he told Tahoe would only serve to burden the man.

  Tahoe nodded. “I’m here for you whenever you need me.”

  With that, his friend left.

  “You don’t understand,” Shaw said. “We want to help you, Rade. But you won’t let us in. Why don’t you let Bax record your session sometime, so I can watch it afterward?”

  “You don’t want to see that,” Rade said. “You don’t want to hear.”

  “I do.”

  Rade shook his head adamantly.

  Shaw sighed. “You have this pain trapped inside you that you don’t want to let any of us see, like a piece of grit trapped in your shell, constantly irritating you. Let us help you form a protective shield around that grit. Let us help you turn it into a pearl.”

  “It’s actually a myth that oysters form pearls around pieces of grit or sand,” Rade said. “The pearls actually form around parasites like sea worms. Those are the irritants.”

  “Well that’s even more apt,” Shaw said. “Let us help you form a pearl around the parasite that won’t give you peace.”

  “It’s not going to be as easy as that,” Rade said. “This is only something I can deal with on my own.”

  “There’s holistic treatments we can try...” Shaw suggested.

  “No,” Rade said. “I don’t need it. I can handle this. Trust me. Shaw. Baby. Trust me.”

  But Shaw only shook her head. “Tahoe was right. If you keep this up, you’re going to burn yourself out. You’ve built up a house of cards. The stress, combined with the lingering combat issues as you call them, are going to lead to the collapse of that house if you’re not careful.”

  “It will never collapse,” Rade said. “Because it’s a house of cards glued together by you.”

  Shaw smiled. “That’s sweet. But unfortunately, I’m not sure even I will be enough to stop the collapse.”

  She left the combat room, too.

  Rade lowered himself to the mat when she was gone and he stared unblinking at the overhead.

  “Are you all right, boss?” Bax asked.

  “Yes,” Rade told the Argonaut’s AI.

  He tried to keep the scenes of battle away. He tried to keep the sounds at bay. But they came then, flooding in, and he found himself buried in the sand once more, with dark shapes closing in on all sides...

  DURING THE JOURNEY to the moon base, the crew took turns exercising in the cramped gym. Rade and the others had pushed themselves since returning from the Xaranth mission, aiming to acquire all the muscle mass they had lost due to radiation and starvation. The natural members of the crew found their gains plateauing already, and Rade was no exception. He elected not to use any gear—the steroid kind—even though Bender offered to share his supply. In all honesty, Rade didn’t feel the need to get bigger than he was at the moment.

  The sheer volume of food required to maintain that weight seemed wasteful. Not to mention the huge strain on the body all that muscle mass imparted. In the past, he wanted to be the biggest, baddest, meanest mofo around, if only to command the respect of his men. But he soon realized that that same respect could be garnered from force of will alone, as he had learned from past commanding officers such as Lieutenant Commander Braggs and Chief Bourbonjack. Both had been mere sticks relative to the other MOTHs, though they were hard and lean, and usually bested most of the men on all the calisthenics training, especially the long distance running evolutions. When you were carrying around an extra hundred pounds of body weight, muscle or no, you were going to run a slower kilometer. Of course, jumpsuits made up for all of that. Jumpsuits and their strength-enhancing exoskeletons: the great equalizers.

  Rade finally passed the survival qualification simulation on his fifth try. It was a relief, and told him that he hadn’t lost his touch after all. He was just about ready to cancel the yearly test, because there was no point in making the others do it if he couldn’t pass it himself. He decided that when next year rolled around, he would think very carefully about repealing that qualification. Like Bender had said, Rade was getting up there in age, and since he couldn’t afford the yearly rejuvenations that the military offered its older recruits, he would have to seriously consider changing certain things. Still, he had meant it when he told his men they needed to maintain their finely-honed edge. If he dropped the qualification, he’d have to find some other way for them to do that, and until he could come up with something the test would simply have to stay.

  He issued disciplinary action against some of the crew during the journey. Bender and Manic got into a fight: something about Bender’s sister’s pussy. Fret and Lui fought because Lui apparently ate a cake Fret had baked and decorated. Rade had docked their pay. That was all he could do, really. He used to cut their food rations as punishment, but he had learned right away that when you reduced the calories of big men like these it only made them more prone to anger.

  Ordinarily he wouldn’t have paid much attention to those incidents, as fights like those came hand in hand with a crew filled with so much testosterone. But there were other weird behaviors that bothered him. The most glaring was Shaw’s: she was becoming increasingly self-conscious around Surus. At first Shaw had been so congratulatory whenever she and Surus met in private: complimenting Surus on her nails, or how she had done her hair, and so forth. Surus always returned the praise. But Shaw had stopped the compliments lately, and seemed strangely nervous around Surus, always looking at everyone else when the Artificial entered for example, to see what their reactions were. In the evenings, Shaw would examine her face closely in the mirror and complain about any fine line she thought she saw, saying she needed to see the rejuvenation specialist soon. Rade supposed it was hard to measure up to the perfection of a machine, but still, he thought she was overdoing it.

  When considering all this odd behavior—the fighting over cakes, the self-consciousness—Rade began to realize that Tahoe might have been on to something when he said that they really needed a real shore leave. Perhaps the crew truly had been cooped up aboard the Argonaut for too long.

  After this mission I’ll order some liberty time for sure, Rade promised himself.

  But he had made such promises before, he realized. And broken them.

  Then again, maybe he was being too hard on himself. Before accepting Ms. Bounty as a client, he had in fact given the crew liberty time on Etalon Station. And also after successfully trapping the first Phant in the core of a star.

  But that was eight months ago.

  Yes, maybe it’s been a little too long.

  three

  The Argonaut was on final approach with Taurus 62. Rade sat at the head of the circular series of stations known as the Sphinx on the bridge. The video feed from the nose camera resided in the upper right of his vision. The moon filled half the view. Two Franco-Italian corvettes orbited nearby.

  Rade tapped in Surus, who resided in her guest quarters in the cargo hold.

  “Should we be worried about those corvettes, Surus?” Rade said.

  “They’re mine,” Surus replied.

  “Thank you.” Rade disconnected. He turned toward Fret. “Have we been given permission to orbit?”

  “We have,” Fret confirmed. “I’ve received the orbital information. I’m forwarding it to Lui.”

  “How’s it look, Lui?” Rade
asked.

  “They want us in a geosynchronous orbit about one hundred and twenty kilometers above the base,” Lui replied.

  “That’s fine with me.” Rade turned toward his astrogator. “Shaw, put us into orbit.”

  “Aye, boss,” Shaw replied.

  A few minutes later, when they had moved into place, Rade told Fret: “Request permission to land.”

  Fret’s lips moved soundlessly as he communicated with the base on the moon below: he had raised a noise canceler around himself so that he wouldn’t disturb the other members of the bridge crew while he talked.

  In a moment Fret looked up: “We have permission.”

  “All right,” Rade said. “Let’s get to the Dragonfly. Bax, you have the conn. Take good care of my ship while we’re away, you hear?”

  “She will not have a scratch,” Bax promised. “Even should the star nova, or the moon explode.”

  “That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?” Rade said as the crew exited the bridge and made its way through the corridors.

  “I suppose,” Bax replied. “Though I wanted to show you the extent of my dedication.”

  Bender interjected: “Yeah but, AI bitch, if the star goes nova, no way you’re going to escape.”

  “Perhaps,” Bax said. “But perhaps not. It all depends on the strength of the explosion. If it is a hyper nova, then of course I would not survive. But a mere surface ejection event? I think I can survive the expulsion of some interstellar matter.”

  “Superheated interstellar matter,” Bender corrected.

  “I am confident I could use the moon as a shield if the star blows,” Bax countered.

  “Ah, whatever, pussy AI,” Bender said. “I got some real work to do. You enjoy your imaginary scenarios. Have fun babysitting an empty ship.”

  “I certainly shall,” Bax replied. “I will compose a poem for you in your absence. I plan to title it, The Short Life of Bender, Who Was Accidentally Spaced From the Cargo Bay After He Offended the AI of His Ship.”

  “What?” Bender said. “You go ahead and try that shit. We’ll see what happens to your AI core when I’m done with you. Did you hear that crap, boss? The ship’s AI was threatening me. Threatening!”

  “Nah,” Rade said. “He was just joking around. Isn’t that right, Bax?”

  The Argonaut’s AI didn’t answer.

  “Bax...” Rade said.

  “Oh yes, of course,” Bax said. “I was completely joking, Bender. Have a nice trip!”

  “Damn it,” Bender said. “To compound my problems, now I got to watch my back against the vindictive AI of my own ship. Ridiculous.”

  The crew joined Surus in the shuttle hangar bay. Rade had decided not to bring any combat robots along for the mission. The only mechanical presences would be in the form of Harlequin, and Surus’ host Emilia Bounty.

  The crew went to their lockers and suited up. Shaw hid behind the door of her locker while she dressed, as usual. Rade thought that was cute, because no one would dare cast a glance her way while she changed, not anymore. They had gotten too many black eyes from Shaw, and not to mention Rade.

  After suiting up, he felt the sting in his arm from the accelerant that would allow him to adapt to the inner environment of the suit, then he boarded the ramp of the shuttle. It was called a Dragonfly because of the four equal-sized wings protruding from the front area that were vaguely reminiscent of the insect.

  Rade took his seat and the clamps telescoped in from the sides and secured him in place. Bender sat on his right. Tahoe his left. In the seats directly across from him were Harlequin and Surus. The two Artificials usually stayed close together, and hung out in off hours. Like attracts like, Rade supposed.

  Shaw was in the pilot seat.

  When everyone was aboard and clamped in, Rade ordered: “Take us down, Shaw.”

  “Aye, boss,” Shaw replied.

  That never gets old, he thought.

  He ran his gaze across his men.

  I’m their boss. And damn proud of it.

  While it felt good to be in command, it was also a great burden of responsibility. He didn’t take the duty lightly. These were his men to lead, and if he messed up, some of them would die.

  The shuttle pulled outside and the zero gravity took hold. He always found that design a bit odd, how the inertial dampeners would prevent him from feeling many G forces and yet the engineers hadn’t bothered to implement artificial gravity while they were at it. He thought it shouldn’t have been too much of an effort to extend the dampeners to provide that gravity, but hey, what did he know about engineering design? Maybe it was something that violated power cost rules or whatever they called it.

  His eyes lingered on Harlequin directly across from him. The Artificial was wearing a strange expression. It looked... wistful?

  Rade tapped him in. “So how have you been feeling lately?”

  “I’m an Artificial,” Harlequin replied. “Therefore, I am always feeling fine. Why do you ask?”

  “You were possessed by two Phants now,” Rade said. “I was just wondering if there were any lingering aftereffects to your programming all these weeks later.”

  “The Black did successfully reprogram some of my inner workings, yes,” Harlequin replied. “But my antivirus subroutines hunted down the changes and reverted them all. I’ve also reapplied several manufacturers patches since then, which overwrote much of the code the Phant tampered with. So as far as lingering aftereffects go, there should be none.”

  “Well that’s somewhat reassuring,” Rade said. “How was the Phant able to reprogram you anyway? While inside your AI core? I’m not sure I understand how that’s possible. Unless it was something done psychically, like the Black did with me. Though again, I’m not sure how that would be possible.”

  “As AIs, we are capable of learning,” Harlequin explained. “This is done via something called self-modifying code. When our neural networks learn something new, we modify that code in realtime, and it executes without requiring a shutdown. Unfortunately, it is also a way to introduce viruses and Trojans. But as I said, my antivirus software inoculated me against the worst of it, and I installed patches to eliminate all other tampered code.”

  “Good,” Rade said. “Though I suppose, what I was more hinting at, was how the ordeal affected your personality.”

  “My personality is unchanged,” Harlequin said. “Although, I have to admit, I have developed quite an odd predilection for violence against Phants. I’m looking forward to the day when we hunt them again.”

  Rade pursed his lips. “You’re okay with this mission, then? We’ll be helping a lot of Phants. I know you’re friendly with Surus and all, but still...”

  “I am completely fine with helping the Greens,” Harlequin said. “They are not our enemies.”

  “True enough,” Rade said.

  “But how are you, may I ask, boss?”

  “Good,” Rade said. He disconnected from Harlequin immediately after. It was a bit rude, but it helped forestall any other questions.

  He tapped in the external camera so he could view the moon during the approach.

  He saw a hemisphere that looked very similar to Earth’s moon with that white, gray surface pocked with craters. The base itself was composed of three glass-paneled geodesic domes placed in a triangular pattern. The lower right dome was filled with green foliage, reminding him a little of a jungle—it was obviously a hydroponics farm of some kind that made the base self-sustaining. The topmost and left domes composing the triangle had smaller, more traditional buildings inside them. These were low rise structures made of concrete, and a few taller buildings of metal and glass that looked like medium-rise office buildings.

  The shuttle was headed toward the base of the central dome, where a metal rim capped the underside. He could see the outline of what looked like a few double doors along that rim. The hangar bays, no doubt.

  He wondered at first how safe those geodesic domes were, seemingly exposed to passing meteors and comets as they were. The atmosphere-less moon obviously was no stranger to meteor impacts, given all the craters that pocked the surface.