It took Leona a hot minute, but she came to realize that they were no
stranger to the ship looming over them. Well, they were still strangers, but
they had seen it before. Seventy-two years ago, it appeared to them near
Earth while they were still getting around on the Phoenix shuttle, Dante. It
pulled them into its cargo hold, and either held them in place for a whole
year, or attached itself to their pattern, and only had to keep them for a
day. They were never entirely sure of the truth, but all evidence suggested
the latter. How did it get all the way out here, and what did it want now?
Its cargo hold opened up again, apparently beckoning them inside.
Leona reached over to the console, tapped a few buttons, then typed in a
message that read NO THANKS.
“How are you sending that?” Mateo asked.
“Hologram,” she answered. “They didn’t respond to our calls before, but as
long as they can read English, they’ll see this, plastered on the hull of
our ship.”
The mysterious other ship used its maneuvering thrusters to draw nearer.
“Ram, do you detect any lifesigns in that hold?” Leona asked.
“Negative.”
“Then fire a warning shot right down its throat.”
“We don’t have weapons, sir.”
“The hot pocket,” Leona reminded him. “Purge it.”
Ramses sighed. “There’s not much energy in there.”
“Good, I don’t wanna kill them.”
“Purging hot pocket.” Ramses expunged the heat from the dimensional
reservoir, and lit the potential enemies up.
“What the hell was that for?” a voice asked through the speakers.
“Oh, so it speaks!” Leona exclaimed with an attitude.
“We figured you were derelict, and in need of assistance.”
“Last time we met, you kidnapped us, and then spit us out without a word.”
There was a pause. “We have never encountered your vessel before.”
“We were in a different one back then,” Leona clarified. “April 18, 2409
Earthan Common Era.”
Another pause. “Oh.” He cleared his throat. “You’re Team Matic.”
“What do you want?” Leona questioned.
“Nothing. We only attached ourselves to your pattern back then to outwit
our pursuers. They’re long gone. Now we’re back on mission.”
“Which is...?”
“Classified.”
Olimpia’s voice suddenly took over to say, “Captain, there are only a handful of people on this thing, and I think
you should come over to see it.” She was apparently on the ship right now.
“Who the hell is that?” the stranger asked. “Where are you?”
“Stay on board, Rambo. Anyone else is welcome to come.” Leona disappeared,
to be followed by Mateo and Angela.
“You’ve never heard of invisibility before?” Olimpia brought herself back
into view. “You’re not as informed as we guessed.”
A man was sitting at the communications console, still shocked and nervous.
“That’s not my department.” He pointed timidly. “I just push the button and
talk.”
“I am Captain Leona Matic of the Castlebourne Sanctuary Ship Vellani
Ambassador.” Wow, they were no longer a stateless private vessel. “Who is in
charge?”
“That would be me.” A thin, busty woman in a tank top and tight pants came
in from the hallway. There were numerous tattoos and scars on her body. Her
hair was too short to reach her shoulders, and buzzed to a fade on the
sides. “Captain Lusine Cross of the Astral Military Force Fireship Lusine.”
“You named your ship after yourself?” Mateo questioned.
Lusine laughed. “Every fireship is named after the person who is to die on
it.”
“Fireship,” Angela began. “Historically, these were obsolete vessels that
were literally set on fire, and steered into the enemy fleet to cause
disorganized destruction. No one was supposed to die on them, though. A
skeleton crew always escaped on a smaller vessel.”
“That’s not how we did it where I’m from,” Lusine said. “Any one hundred
percent unmanned vessel could be deflected or outmaneuvered by the enemy one
way or another. I was sent off to keep my foot on the gas until the very
last second.”
“How are you standing here?” Leona asked. “How is this ship intact?”
“Our enemies ran,” Lusine recounted. “We pursued. They opened one of their
little portals, and we found ourselves falling through it. That’s how we
ended up here.”
That was enough for Leona to figure out what she was talking about. “The
Ochivari. You’re from another universe.”
“I didn’t know you would understand the concept,” Lusine said with a nod.
“We’ve been trying to get back ever since, and those damn bugs keep trying
to stop us, because we have vital information that the Stalwart Porter needs
to know to defeat them. We have to strike the enemy where it lives, but we
can’t do it alone.”
Leona nodded, understanding more that Mateo couldn’t catch. “You think this
brane is their base of operations.”
“It is,” Lusine said with a laugh. “We’ve been to Worlon. That’s where they
retreated to.”
“That’s the homeworld. They don’t operate out of there. However many you
discovered living in that system is a rounding error compared to their
numbers in their new universe.”
Lusine frowned. “You’re lying. You’re lying because you think your own
worlds will be destroyed if we bring our war here to your front.”
“Nah,” Leona began, “we can protect our people from that. There’s a reason
the Ochivari don’t come after our version of Earth. We’re time travelers,
they know they’d lose. They’d lose in any time period, in any reality. So
will you if you threaten the safety and security of our most vulnerable and
innocent. I suggest you go home. The Transit Army will handle the Ochivari
from here on out.”
“I don’t know what the Transit Army is,” Lusine argued. “But it’s
meaningless. We’ll protect our people as fiercely as you. I signed up for a
suicide mission. You think I’m worried about what you’ll do to me?”
“You are not the first person to feel that way, and you will not succeed
where the others lost,” Leona reasoned. “Turn around. Go home.”
“Not until we know where the Ochivari come from. If you’re right, and it’s
not this universe, then tell us where it is.”
“I don’t have the coordinates. All I was able to learn from the
interrogation logs in Stoutverse was that they call it Efilverse. Trust me,
the only thing capable of doing real damage there is the Transit. It’s best
you leave it to them.”
Lusine was frustrated, but appeared to be processing what Leona was saying.
“We can’t go back anyway. We need the bugs to open another portal.”
“Let me see your Nexus. You may have to leave your ship behind, but I know
someone who can return you to your world.”
“We don’t have a Nexus,” Lusine claimed.
“I know how to detect them. It’s here.”
“Part of it is,” Lusine confirmed. “We use it for power.”
Now Leona was frustrated. “Vacuum generator. You’re the one who stole it
from Antarctica. Why would you do that?”
“We needed it.” Lusine was not apologetic about their thievery.
Leona’s watch beeped. “Crap, we must be too close to a black hole.”
“Yes,” Lusine said. “We’re hiding out here on purpose, again to avoid
detection.”
We only have half an hour until we make another jump. Will you be here in a
year?”
“We don’t stop moving,” Lusine explained. “If you’ll allow it, we should
like to absorb your energy again, and jump with you. But you’ll have
to come inside again, so we can sync up.”’
Leona weighed her options. “Vote.”
Everyone said aye—in person, or through comms—except for Ramses. He
didn’t want to get involved. According to him, this one Fireship posed no
significant threat to either galaxy, and could only waste their time when
they should be trying to find Romana. He felt so bad for losing her. He had
to get her back, and as quickly as possible, to make up for that mistake.
Mateo jumped back to the Ambassador, even though the vote didn’t have to be
unanimous. “Do you have the data you need?”
“I’ve not had any time to look over it,” Ramses replied. “We’ve been dealing
with this since we arrived ten minutes ago.”
“Then do it,” Mateo encouraged. “We’ll deal with this other thing, and meet
back up on the other side.”
“I’ll need an assistant,” Ramses said just as Mateo was trying to walk away.
“Who in the group can you spare?”
Mateo turned back around. “Who we can always spare...me.”
Shortly thereafter, they jumped to the future, their pattern having been
interfered with by the black hole they were orbiting. To free themselves
from the gravity well, Leona piloted the VA into the cargo hold of the
Lusine, and allowed their new friends to fly them out of the singularity’s
relativistic grasp. They used a weird engine, which wasn’t surprising seeing
as they were from another universe, but it reportedly didn’t operate the
same as it did back where they came from. The laws of physics were different
here. Leona was surprised that it still functioned at all. They didn’t have
a name for their brane, or of course, the path back. Hopefully Venus
Opsocor, Keeper of the Nexus Network, would know what to do.
Once they were sufficiently free from the black hole, they decided they
needed to wait for Ramses to study the results from their last jump. Jumping
again could throw off his conclusions if he was still in the middle of
formulating his hypotheses. Luckily, they didn’t have to wait too terribly
long. Unluckily, he turned out to have been wrong before. He could
still not find Romana with what he had here. One final, highly directed,
jump to a new location could do it, though. Luckily again, they needed to go
somewhere anyway. They synced the Vellani Ambassador up to the Lusine’s
systems, just as the latter had done before with the Dante. Then the
Ambassador took over, and initiated the slingdrive. They made it, all the
way to Dardius in the Beorht system.
The planet owners were busy with affairs of the state, but Vearden was
available. He saw nothing wrong with granting them access to the Nexus
building, as long as they didn’t make any attempt to address the public, or
engage with anyone besides the Nexus technicians. They also needed to limit
their numbers, so Leona and Lusine teleported to Tribulation Island alone,
leaving most everyone else up in orbit. While they were waiting for that,
Mateo continued to be Ramses’ guinea pig. As instructed, he teleported to
various points on the surface of the planet, and through space. He carried
sensors with him sometimes, but not always, which apparently generated some
sort of map of the region of space where they appeared.
“Come back in,” Ramses said.
Mateo was currently on Lohsigli. While Dardius remained as the seat of power
in this solar system, Lohsigli currently boasted a population of tens of
thousands of people. Many had emigrated here over the last several decades,
following an enemy invasion that the team didn’t have time to learn about
right now. It seemed to match up with what Romana told them about her own
past. They accepted a data drive as a gift, so they could update their
central archives. They would read about what happened when they had more
time. Mateo finally returned, tired from all the jumping, and needing some
water.
“I’ve figured it out,” Ramses said, quite pleased and relieved.
“Did I help?” Mateo asked, trying to lean back in his chair, though unable
to with his armor module still on.
“Immensely,” Ramses answered. “So did the, uhh...alien people. The
Ambassador has been stealing information from their computers, giving it
insight into a realm of physics that I never knew existed. They use
quintessence where they’re from too, though only as a raw power source, not
as a shortcut from Point A to Point B. That’s what I was missing;
perspective. I can’t go into detail about what I learned, because you
wouldn’t understand it, but to simplify, we have all the tools we need; we
just have to put them all together, like ingredients. First, we need
Romana’s biometric data, which the ship absorbed passively the first time
she stepped on board. Second, we need her quantum signature. Every object,
or living thing, vibrates at a certain quantum frequency. The ship doesn’t
automatically log that for everyone who comes here, but my machine picked it
up from her specifically when we linked to each other through the Livewire
tethers. Third, we need a way to measure her signature across vast
distances. It would be easy if we knew she was on the same planet as us, but
she could be anywhere in the universe, which is why the slingdrive is so
important. Now, there’s a bit of an issue, which is that a person’s quantum
signature shifts over time, but I should be able to write an algorithm that
predicts what it’s become since we lost her.”
“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t find her before. We’ve had all
those ingredients the whole time, even before her signature had time to
shift. What exactly has changed?”
“Well, our jumps have given me a clearer picture of how to navigate; that’s
one. Also, perhaps I’m downplaying how much the Lusine contributed. I still
don’t understand it, but based on what I was able to glean, it comes from a
galaxy where you can’t just fly in any direction you want. You’re limited by
these sorts of...shipping lanes, which control their routes, even through
the ocean of outer space. Again, I don’t really know why it’s like that, but
the Lusine is different. It can subvert that limitation. It can go wherever
it wants. My impression is that it’s illegal. Anyway, I turned
their exploit into my exploit. Obviously, we don’t have those
crazy cosmic shipping lanes here, but I was going about the search all
wrong. Now I know how to head straight towards Romana, and find precisely
where she is. Give me just a tiny bit more time, and I’ll be able to isolate
her signature from the cacophony of noise vibrating between us and her.”
They gave Ramses more time, which Leona spent dealing with a rather
difficult Venus Opsocor. She did agree to help, though, when Leona reasoned
that the crew of the Lusine didn’t belong in this universe. It was logical
to help them return home to maintain a kind of multiversal balance.
Hopefully this gambit didn’t come back to bite them in the ass, such as when
they found themselves in need of traveling to a different brane. But for
now, it was necessary. The Dardieti agreed to hook the ship up to their
Nexus for a peripheral transport, allowing Team Matic to check this tangent
mission off the list, hopefully for good.
“Are you sure?” Leona asked in regards to the search for Romana.
“Certainty is one of those abstract concepts that doesn’t exist, but which
we can draw nearer. Am I sure? No. Am I as confident as I can get? Yes.”
Ramses nodded, satisfied with his own CYA response.
Leona looked over at Mateo, who nodded too, but for a different reason.
“Very well,” she said before a pause to make sure there weren’t any
objections. “Yalla.”
Ramses pushed all the buttons, and sent the slingdrive soaring through the
quintessential firmament.
