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After Mateo and Ramses returned to Castledome, the latter hopped into their
ship to run diagnostics on the slingdrive. Following careful examination and
thought, he decided that it was not a good idea for them to try to jump again
today. The good news was that they didn’t have to wait an entire
year to begin the sidequest. Mateo’s daughters were capable of operating it
on their own. They were going to have to learn sometime, and obviously all
the systems were automated. While Ramses was spending time showing them the
ropes, Mateo and Leona put their heads together to draw up a list of
everyone they wanted to live here on Castlebourne with them. Darko Matic was
first on the list. According to Dalton Hawk’s claims a while back, Darko’s
last known location was the top of Monte Albán step pyramid in Mexico. This
was where Dalton was killed, leading him to ending up in the afterlife
simulation. Assuming there was no delay between his final moment on Earth,
and his arrival in the simulation, this occurred in the year 2400.
While the team was gone, Kivi, Dubravka, and Romana took the Vellani
Ambassador 85 years in the past to retrieve Uncle Darko. It was he who came
up with the collective term of Kadiar, as that was the spelled out form of
their first name initials as an acronym. They seemed to like it. Team
Kadiar. Tertius was a part of their team too, but didn’t seem to mind being
left out of the name. He wasn’t the only one to not be included, though
everyone else’s role in this new operation hadn’t yet been fully fleshed
out. Some would join the away team for the refugee missions, while others
would remain on Castlebourne to work those refugees through orientation, and
make sure they had everything they needed, as well as maintain some level of
order as hosts.
Team Kadiar’s first stop after Darko was Baudin Murdoch’s architectural
firm. His power would be invaluable on this world, speeding up construction
on every dome by orders of magnitude. He agreed to the job with very little
convincing. Over the course of the next year, more people were recruited to
live on this world. This included Mateo’s once-mother Aura, and her husband,
Samsonite, along with family friend, Téa. Ace and Paige came with a non-dead
version of Serkan Demir. Kivi asked to bring in a version of Lincoln who
didn’t literally know everything about everything. Next came Mateo’s
once-father, Mario, and his wife, Angelita Prieto. They hoped to reunite
with their daughter, Brooke, but she was off doing her own thing. She might
show up later, once things were settled with the Exin Empire and the Ex
Wars. Several other people agreed to live here too, like Kallias Bran and
Aeolia Sarai. Lastly, they found a few less likely allies in Ida Reyer,
Jericho Hagen, and Jesimula Utkin. Team Kadiar reportedly spoke with many
others who didn’t have any interest in joining, or had too much work to do
elsewhere, like Quivira Boyce and her team of time fixers, and the members
of the Interagency Alliance Commission, which operated primarily around the
turn of the 21st century. At some point during this, too, Dubra
intentionally crossed her own timeline, and stole some DNA for a new clone
body. It didn’t sound like that big of a deal.
There was one more major recruit on the list, and now that Team Matic was
back, it was up to them to complete the mission, as the Matic girls were
still too untrained to handle it on their own. Mirage was still presumably
in enemy territory in the Goldilocks Corridor with Niobe Schur. Everyone was
getting ready to go. They were checking their IMS and PRU systems. They were
running a preflight check on the Ambassador. The hot pocket didn’t have much
trapped heat, but it was purged anyway, so it could be as empty as possible.
Mateo was looking for leaks in his helmet. Onboard diagnostics were capable
of detecting such things, but as a point of redundancy, it was prudent to
also have an external means of confirming the safety of the suit using an
unsynced tester.
“You’re not going,” Leona told him.
“What?”
“You’re staying here.”
“You think you need to protect me?” Mateo question.
“No, of course not. Your daughters get one day a year with you. You can’t
waste that time.”
“I’m on a different team,” he began. “I encouraged her to form her team, but
I still need to stay with you.”
“I appreciate how you feel, but whether she says it or not, she needs you.”
He had three daughters, but Leona was referring specifically to Romana, who
was the youngest, and perhaps most vulnerable right now. “Ramses is staying
too, for his work.”
“Have you talked to her about this?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good. I need to show you something.” He held out a hand, and when she took
it, teleported them both to a farming dome. This wasn’t, strictly speaking,
necessary when vertical farming had long ago replaced traditional methods,
but Hrockas put a lot of effort into transporting live organisms on an
arkship, and he didn’t want to waste it. Arkships were very rare vessels
designed to store tons of organic material, such as seeds, and flora and fauna
DNA. They were meant to seed life on other worlds, but the government didn’t
just hand them out to anyone who bothered to fill out an application. It wasn’t
even clear whether a single other one had ever been launched as the ethics
of them proved to be the most complex and divisive of all. It was pretty
insane that Hrockas managed to get one. He must have been able to prove that
this rock was otherwise completely inorganic.
“This is nice. Come here often?” Leona asked in half sincerity.
They were standing by a tall fence, which was an even funnier thing to have
here since there was no such thing as trespassers, or animals that needed to
be kept penned in. Mateo had strung a bunch of different types of fruits
from the top rail. A couple of them had apparently burst open, and there was
fruit splattered on the wood and ground. “I was just practicing, and wanted
my new abilities to be a surprise, but I guess you’re gonna need an early
demonstration.”
“What new abilities?”
“Not really new, we just haven’t really been talking about it.” Mateo put
his hands together in front of his chest in an unusual configuration. He
then split them apart, leaving his left hand out where it was while pulling
his right back towards him. A holographic arrow materialized between them,
clarifying that he had been pretending to string it on a bow. He looked over
at his wife, and winked. Then he let go of the imaginary arrow, and sent it
flying towards the fruit. It struck a passion fruit, which burst open, and
splattered all over.
She was shocked. “How did you do that?”
“I think I have that figured out.” He sauntered towards the fence, and
pulled what remained of the passion fruit from its string. He tossed it over
to her, so she could feel that it was real. “It took me a while, but then I
remembered. The timonite.”
“You still have timonite in your system?”
“I don’t know, but it was definitely on my hands, which is why a lemon would
explode if I ever tried to pick it up.”
“Yeah, I remember you doing that for fun in the Third Rail. We got that
fixed.”
“Exactly,” Mateo agreed. “A god gave me telekinesis. I haven’t touched a
single thing with my bare hands in months.”
“Oh, right. That was telekinesis.” She shook her head. “Wait, no, those were
different hands. We transferred your consciousness to a new substrate. That
body is gone. You shouldn’t have that anymore.”
He shrugged. “I guess it transferred too. I don’t know how telekinesis
works. Do you?”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s not a time power as far as I can figure.”
He started talking with his hands. “I think it...integrated with my illusion
powers, and created something new. We were wondering what my specialty was.
Olimpia is better at invisibility. Marie is better at impersonation. This is
my thing. I can make solid holograms.”
She shook her head again. “The god guy said that it was just really close to
your hands. You weren’t meant to do anything at that great of a distance.”
“It mutated,” Mateo decided. “Again, we don’t know how it works. But it’s
the best explanation. I’m not that strong right now, but with more practice,
I might be able to create a giant fist, and smash into that fence. I’m Ms.
Marvel!”
“Maybe in the movies, not the comics.”
“Well, our ship is named after the movie version, so...”
“Why are you showing me this? I mean, I’m glad I know now, and I wish you
had told me sooner, but what does this have to do with the mission?”
“Leona, I can make an impenetrable force field for the VA out of light. I
have an endless supply of missiles that I could send to an enemy.”
“Oh, hold on. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You literally just said that
you need more practice, and if the arrow is the best you can do right now, I
believe it. I’m not sending you out with this. I have half a mind to try to
figure out how to suppress your pattern, so you can spend the next 365 days
training with Prince Darko.”
“We need Mirage back,” Mateo reasoned. “I’m your best chance of getting her
back safely. You need me.”
“This is a stealth mission,” she contended. “We’re going to be invisible. No
one from the Exin Empire should know that we were ever there. I don’t even
want our allies to know that we were there, save for Mirage herself. We are
not ready for an assault. You’re not just unpracticed, you’re a liability. I
was willing to discuss you coming along, and even bringing your daughters,
but you just made the decision for me. You’re grounded until further
notice.”
“You’re grounding me?” he questioned. “Like a child?”
“No, like a sky jockey.” She sighed. “Show this to Dubra. She has experience
with lots of powers. We don’t have time to argue, and I’m not interested in
your complaints. We’re going to get Mirage without you. I have spoken.”
He didn’t want to get into a real fight either, especially since he would
definitely lose. She was the Captain, and her face certainly showed that she
was giving him an order in that capacity, instead of as his wife and
partner. He nodded respectfully. “We can maintain contact with the quantum
messenger on the Ambassador, right?”
“We’ll be technically reachable, yes, but I want you to stay busy. They just
opened a new scenic train in one of the domes. Right now, the landscapes are
all computer-generated holograms, but I still hear it’s nice. It goes around
the entire circumference of the dome, from a few kilometers above. So it
takes about four hours to go from start to finish. Why don’t you get to know
the girls there? You could have a nice lunch, talk about your hopes and
dreams...”
“You can’t force this, Leona.”
“You can’t get anywhere with them if you don’t try.”
“So your suggestion is for us to ride around in a circle?”
“Very funny.” She paused. “It has slanted windows. You can look right down
at the geographic features.”
“The fake features,” he pointed out.
“The topography is already there. That’s why Hrockas chose that spot on this
planet, because it’s more textured than other regions. They just need to
paraterraform it, which will take some time. The holograms are a stopgap.”
“You’re a stopgap,” he muttered under his breath, actually like a
child.
“What was that?”
“I said were I you,” he lied.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard,” she lied back. She lowered him down by the
shoulders, and kissed him on the forehead. “Qapla’!” She disappeared.
Mateo took only one moment to look back at his hanging fruit, and
contemplate what he might do to accelerate his own training. By the time he
teleported back to Castledome, the Vellani Ambassador was gone. It would
never return.
He tried to call them on their comms disc, which were synced through a
quantum connection to increase the range, but no one responded. They were
probably too busy to deal with his incessant nagging. He reached out to
Romana instead, who said that she was in Dojodome. It wasn’t just one big
dome with thousands of dojos. It was modeled on Japanese architecture in
general, so there were also ponds, gardens, and empty spaces. This was one
of the big problems with the whole one dome per theme concept. A lot of
themes just weren’t grand enough in scope to take up the whole 1.3 million
acre area. Your only choices at that point, really, would be copying and
pasting the same structures over and over again, or just leaving some of it
as unused desert.
“Are you guys training?” he asked once he had teleported to Dojodome.
“Yeah, it’s scheduled as a solo day,” Romana answered, “so we each do our
own thing. It’s how Uncle Prince Darko gets his breaks.”
“Do you really call him that?” he laughed.
“L-O-L, sometimes, he doesn’t like it. Hey, I thought you were going off to
the Goldilocks Corridor. We said our good lucks at breakfast.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Mateo said, “but Leona kicked me out. She was
right, they don’t need me out there. I want to spend it with you three, if
you’re not too busy.”
“No, this is a perfect time. I was just gonna go for an extra run.” She
fiddled with her armband. “It looks like Dubra’s at the South Pole at the
moment, probably for a swim. And Kivi’s in...where is that? She’s on the
move. Oh, that’s probably the Terminator Track. Ooo, I bet she’s on a date
with Lincoln. I don’t have his location ID, but I’m sure he’s there too.”
“What’s the Terminator Track?” he asked.
“The pod’s speed is based on the rotation of Castlebourne in order to
maintain a fixed position relative to the sun at that latitude. I think
there are four pods. One is in perpetual sunset, and another at sunrise. The
other two are in daylight, and nighttime...or is it twilight? Maybe there
are five. I can’t remember, but they follow each other on the track.”
“Hrockas really thought of everything, huh?”
“I’ve helped,” Romana bragged, “but yeah, he pretty much had the big picture
painted before I got here.”
Mateo took Romana’s arm to look at the little dots that indicated where all
of Romana’s friends were currently located on the satnav, paying special
attention to Kivi’s and Dubra’s. “I’ll let you do what you were planning on
doing, and let the others do the same. But can we agree to meet one year and
one day from now?”
Romana thought about it for half a moment, debating in her head whether she
would try to make her sisters accommodate a daddy-daughters date this year.
Having come to a decision, she nodded once, and said, “okay. What are you
gonna do today instead?”
Mateo looked around the dojo, eventually zeroing in on a wooden dummy on the
other side of the room. Drawing inspiration from his own comment from
earlier, he reached his arm back, and shoved it in the air towards the
dummy. A hologram of his fist flew away from him, as the arrow had before.
It crashed into the training apparatus, bursting it apart. He smiled and
admired his own work. “I have some training of my own to do.”
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