When Team Matic landed on Castlebourne for the second time, they discovered
that automators had constructed tens of thousands of dome habitats in
Vendelin Blackbourne’s absence. They believed this to be a runaway computer
problem, but it turned out that Hrockas was making use of these domes to
turn this planet into the number one destination for all vonearthans. Even
so, after Ramses halted production in the middle of development, they never
restarted building more domes. They decided to focus on the ones that had
already been made. After all, 83,838 should be enough to tide over the whole
population of the galaxy for decades, if not centuries. That 0.3 dome, which
was left unsealed, was the last ever made, and it now served a special
purpose. This was now where the Vellani Ambassador landed after each
mission. Passengers were unloaded, and moved into a maze of self-contained
quarantine habitats. It was here that they remained for a period of forty
hours while they were tested for contamination, and to get them acclimated
to this world’s surface gravity.
Fortydome was built away from most others, not particularly intentionally,
but they were taking advantage of its remoteness to protect the rest of the
population. There were only two ways in or out; via the vactrain, or up
through the opening of what the refugees were calling The Bowl.
Hrockas was considering changing the official name since it indeed resembled
a bowl, and wasn’t technically a dome. At the moment, the Bowl was empty.
Team Kadiar deliberately made it so by not executing any missions in the
days leading up to Team Matic’s return to the timestream. Number one, it was
good to have the whole place cleared out for major cleaning and disinfection
protocols, and the original crew may need the ship for their own goals while
they were around. This appeared to be the case today.
“They didn’t give you a name?” Leona asked.
“They spoke on behalf of their superior officer,” Romana replied. “They were
very cagey about it, but it was quite important to them that Mateo be there
on this day, and they insisted that their intentions were pure.”
Leona looked over at her husband, who looked intrigued. “You
have heard of lying, right?”
Mateo shrugged. “I’ve heard of taking a leap of faith.”
“I’m not going to stop you from going, but I’m not going with you,” Leona
said. “There’s a chance that you won’t even make it on time. Ramses and
Hogarth have not yet modified the slingdrive to stay out of the fourth
dimension.”
“You’re not gonna stop me, though?” Mateo asked, unconcerned about anything
else she mentioned.
Leona looked back at Romana. “The VA is theirs now. We have no alternative.
A captain without a ship is no captain at all.”
“You have never been the captain of the vessel,” Mateo reasoned. “You’re
captain of a crew. We still need a leader.”
“Everyone’s become so capable,” Leona argued. “You don’t need me anymore.”
“I will never believe that,” Mateo tried to explain.
“I appreciate that. At any rate, if you think you should go, I think so too.
“You can’t be alone, though. You might as well feed two birds with one worm,
and spend some time with your daughter. There...there’s your order from a
bona fide captain.” Leona disappeared.
“I suppose we don’t need an engineer anymore either,” Mateo pointed out.
“No, you don’t,” Mirage agreed from her speakers.
“Still...someone should say it,” he decided. “Yalla.”
Mirage engaged the subfractional engines, and launched into space. Once they
were clear of the edges of the dome, she activated the teleporter, and
jumped right into orbit. She then fired up the reframe engine, and sent them
into interstellar space.
“Wait, why are we going so far away?” Mateo asked. “Can’t we use the
slingdrive from anywhere?”
Mirage appeared as a hologram. “There’s a lot of quantum interference from
Castlebourne, and I want to get away from the other time travelers. We’ve
realized how sensitive it is, so this is protocol. It won’t be long now.”
“What about us?” he pressed. “She and I metabolize temporal energy.”
Romana took off her jacket, and plopped it over the back of a chair as she
was walking towards a wall. The door of a standing pod slid open on its own,
and she stepped up into it as she spun around 540 degrees like a ballerina.
She smiled at her father. “That’s why we’re not gonna be here.” She jerked
her head over to what looked like another pod. Before Mateo could walk
towards it, he witnessed Romana’s door close back up. She quickly
disappeared.
“It’s based on Dubravka’s timeslipping power,” Mirage explained. “She’ll be
back in five minutes. “You need to get in yours too.”
Mateo did as he was told, entering his pod, and stepping back out of it what
felt like seconds later. They were now orbiting an alien planet, evidently
16,000 light years away. Someone intercepted the Ambassador while they were
on a rescue mission last week. They relayed a message containing these
coordinates, and reportedly fully agreed to let Tertius erase their memories
of the meeting from their minds. Mateo watched it through the floor
viewscreens. “I think I’ve been here before.”
“The locals call it Ex-18118,” Mirage revealed, now back to her
disembodied self.
“Yeah, I left Korali here. She thought she would be dead by now,
but...hopefully that’s not true. If I’m not here to reunite with her, I
don’t know who it could be.”
“Her child?” Romana suggested.
“Maybe.” He took a deep breath in preparation. “Exact surface coordinates?”
They appeared on screen. “Okay.” He spread his arms wide, and wrapped them
around Romana. They stood there in the hug for a few moments before he
teleported them down to the rendezvous spot.
They found themselves next to a calming clear pond. This was exactly where
he left Korali five decades ago. Did she just never leave? “Thanks for
coming.”
It was her, still alive after all this time. She looked just as young
as she was when he last saw her. To his knowledge these people didn’t have
anti-aging technology or powers. They lived and died, just as people on
Earth did in the early 21st century, and before. “How are you...?”
“I’m good.”
“That’s great, but I mean...” He trailed off again.
“I know what you wanted to say. How am I still alive? Still young? Still
painfully sexy and gorgeous?” She reached behind her back, and came back
with one of the standard codexa that stored the central archives from the
stellar neighborhood. There was no way to know whether this one was the core
compendium, the grand repository, or the aggregate records. Leona gave her a
copy of all three, only leaving the virtual stacks out of Korali’s library.
“It’s the compendium,” she said as if reading his mind. “This tells me how
to stay practically immortal.”
“That’s possible, all the way out here?”
“As it turns out,” Korali began, “the planets in the Goldilocks Corridor
were terraformed with the same plant life that you can find on Earth. I have
everything I need, right within a few square kilometers. I just needed the
information, which you graciously gave me.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing, just living off of the plant life?”
Korali giggled. “No. I’ve been real busy. Once we felt sufficiently
powerful, we left this settlement, and returned to civilization. We staged a
coup, and literally took over the whole world. They didn’t have weapons, so
it wasn’t even hard.”
“That wasn’t our plan for you.”
“I know, but we had to make changes. We read the aggregate records too. Some
interesting stuff in there. As it turns out, Oaksent isn’t special.
Everything he made he stole from someone smarter. What he’s done here has
been done a million times before, just with some extra scifi shit. Same
story, different dick.”
“So you’re against him now? Full-on?”
“I probably hate him more than you do,” Korali contended. “You’re just a
visitor. I was actually oppressed. I’ll never be able to thank you enough
for opening my eyes to the truth. You didn’t have to, you could have just
killed me. That’s what he would have done in your shoes.”
“So, this is some sort of resistance base?” Romana asked.
Korali darts her chin to look at Romana like she didn’t realize she was
standing there the whole time. “It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her
hand. “Korali Stinger.”
They shook hands. “Security Officer Romana Matic of the Vellani Ambassador.”
“Any relation?”
“I’m his daughter.”
Korali took a moment to absorb the new information. “Hm.” She went back into
the conversation. Not exactly.”
“How do you keep them from blowing you out of the sky?” Korali asked.
Korali held the core compendium codex back up. “Like I said, we learned
things. Thanks again for that,” she said to Mateo.
He nodded politely.
“Anyway,” Korali went on, “no, we’re not a resistance base, we’re a refuge.”
Both Mateo and Romana were surprised, and suddenly uncomfortable, because it
felt like maybe this conversation was a little less friendly than it
started. “Oh.”
“Hey, it’s okay. Why are you worried?” Korali laughed. “Do you think I feel
threatened by Castlebourne’s involvement in our affairs? Do you think I
think there’s not room for the both of us in this galaxy?”
“Is there...” Romana asked, “room?”
“Of course!” Korali replied. “I’m here to ask you for help! Those
motherfuckers are constantly attacking us. They don’t even know where
you are. This was a great idea when I came up with it, but it’s a lot
of goddamn work. You seem to have some magical form of faster-than-light
travel that the central archives don’t even speculate about. You show up
daily, and leave mysteriously. I think it’s time we retire Ex-18118, and
just let you handle it. But I wanna be involved. I’m not planning on
retiring myself.”
“Well, that’s out of my hands,” Mateo admitted. “I’m not part of the
project. I don’t exist.”
“I’m aware of that,” Korali said. “I asked you here because I told you that
I didn’t want us to wait 47 years to see each other again. We obviously
failed that, but at least it hasn’t been 48, right?”
“So this is just a social visit?” he asked.
“Pretty much. I’m glad you brought her, though. Are you who I need to speak
with?” she asked Romana.
“The rest of the crew didn’t come with us,” Romana answered. “None of us
would be able to make such a decision unilaterally.”
“It’s urgent, but I wouldn’t call it an emergency,” Korali determined. “When
you’re ready to discuss a partnership, you know where I live. I’m
guessing you’re not interested in telling me where you do.”
“Not my call either,” Romana told her.
“We’ll be right back.” Mateo took Romana’s hand, and jumped them back to the
ship.
“Mirage, why have you been so quiet?”
“She has technology,” Mirage said as a hologram. “She would be able to hear
us.”
“Even though our comms work through bone conduction?” Mateo questioned.
“Even with an inducer,” Mirage began, “there is some sound leakage.
She has a device that can detect faint sounds, and greatly amplify them.”
“She’s trying to eavesdrop on us,” Romana noted. “That’s not a good sign. It
sounds like she was one of them. Are you sure she’s switched sides?”
“I’m not,” Mateo acknowledged.
“Her allegiances have shifted, but not to us,” Mirage said. “This
is a resistance base, not a refuge. I mean, I suppose you could argue
that it is, but its purpose is to consolidate control into a new empire.”
“She’s Bronach 2.0?” Mateo shook his head.
“Not from what I can gather. She wants power, like him, but she doesn’t want
to oppress people. She believes that Earthan technology and knowledge is the
best path forward for the Corridor. She’s probably brought you here so we
stop taking all of her people away. You see, every single person we escort
to Castlebourne is a potential member of her army. They’re expressing
dissatisfaction with their lives, and that’s who she’s been trying to
target. They’re the ones that she could theoretically fold into her
competing society instead.”
“We’re in her way, but at the same time, she needs us, because Castlebourne
currently has over 300,000 people.” Romana started to work it out in her
head. “So she won’t attack, but she’s trying to play us.”
“I don’t understand how her strategy will ultimately lead to you
transporting people to her planet, but maybe I’m not smart enough,”
Mateo said.
“No, I don’t know either,” Mirage said. “She may be intending to change her
tune after developing a rapport, and arguing that people from the Goldilocks
Corridor belong in the Goldilocks Corridor. I don’t think she knows how far
away we are, she may just be guessing that we’re near Earth.”
“This is good to know,” Mateo began, “but I meant what I said down there.
This isn’t my decision. We have to go back so you can brief your team.”
“You’re right, but we can’t leave without saying goodbye.”
“I’ll handle that,” Mateo glanced over at the local readout for the
slingdrive’s coherence gauge. “Just plot a course to safe territory with the
reframe engine so we can wait it out until it’s time to make another jump.”
“Aye, Captain,” Mirage joked.
He smirked, and saluted her.
