Future!August did not survive the night, nor did she even wake up. According
to Dr. Holmes’ examination, the injuries she incurred from knocking into the
bench were not enough to account for her death. Not even the temporal
displacement method she used would have led her to it. There were other
wounds and broken bones, suggesting she suffered a great deal before she
even left the future. Perhaps the Extremus experienced terrible
gravitational destruction, and her last act as she was being crushed by it
was to jump into a portal to warn everyone.
Present!August refused to speak with a grief counselor about her loss. She
claimed to have no strong feelings about an alternate version of her dying
in front of her. Captain Belo ended up having to order her two counseling
sessions before she could return to duty. It took her a long time to
complete them, so Kumara had to step up as the primary temporal engineer in
the meantime. They needed it too, because they had to come up with a
solution to the Feizi problem. That’s the name they settled on to replace
Theia-2, since that one didn’t really make any sense. Of all people, Consul
Vatal is the one who came up with it.
Right now, the right people are having a bit of an unofficial meeting of
minds. Omega, Valencia, August, and Kumara have been trying to work the
problem this entire time. They’ve been keeping the captains and admirals
apprised of the situation as they do it, but they’re not usually in the same
room together. Halan has taken the scientists under his responsibility, so
the others can deal with other matters. Vice Admiral Thatch has retaken his
place as the main goto source of advice.
While Lieutenant Moralez deals with ship issues, the four other executive
leaders are literally sitting on the sidelines while the four engineers yell
and scream at and over one another. Halan sighs, and lifts his hand. He
places his middle and ring finger against his thumb, and raises his pinky
and index fingers. This is called quiet coyote, and it’s usually used for
children. The scientists accepted it begrudgingly, because they know that
things can get out of hand when they try to work together. In this case,
it’s a magic signal. Even if they’re not looking directly at their
supervisor, they can tell when it’s happening, and they immediately go
silent, almost like they can smell it. Kumara once accused Valencia of
writing a time spell that forces them to go quiet when the hand gesture is
present, but he’s never been able to prove it.
“Omega. You were saying,” Halan prompts.
“We have to vote on course correction. It doesn’t matter if they move the
planet, we know where they are now, and continuing on this path is foolish.”
“The foolish thing is thinking you can outsmart them,” Kumara argues.
Omega braces to explain himself for the upteenth time. “I can plot a random
course through interstellar space that approaches each star system that we
pass.” They all start to argue at him again, so he raises his voice more and
more to compensate. “Feizi is massive and dense, but it’s gravitational pull
is still nowhere near that of a star! Therefore, if the Extremists try to
get too close to one, they won’t be able to hold their weapon in place!”
“Basically, you want to avoid being shot at by the enemy but running real
close to all the mines in the minefield on purpose!” Kumara threw back at
him.
“Yeah, because we can see the mines! We can’t see the bullets!” The mines
being the stars, and the bullets being the Feizi. It’s not a great analogy.
It’s more like risking tripping the visible mines because the hidden mine
can’t have been buried too close to any one of them. This theoretically
gives you a dangerous, but possibly safe path. The possibly part is what
concerns Halan the most.
“We can’t do that,” Future Captain Leithe contends. Kaiora has been taking
on a lot more responsibility lately. She’s a few months away from taking
over officially, so it’s time for Interim Captain Belo to take a backseat
sometimes. “The course you think you can plot is obviously dangerous, and
I’m obviously not one of the people who can explain why it’s dangerous. But
I can tell you the politics. You would have to change course on the fly, in
case something new comes up. The law doesn’t allow you to do that. We don’t
have time to vote every time, and I don’t know how you change that law.
That’s not up to any of us here.”
“Yeah, it’s up to the people,” Omega says. “So let’s not vote on a course
correction. Let’s vote to change the law so the bridge assumes complete
control over our vector.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re gonna be the one driving,” Kumara spits.
“I never said that. I said the bridge. Most ships do it like that. I don’t
know why we have this law.”
Halan is about to explain it, but Thatch stands up first, and walks forward.
He waits to respond, first letting his gravitas draw all the words in the
room to him, so no one else can use them to interrupt. “We are not headed to
a planet. We are headed to our future. Our people voted on our literal
direction before they stepped on board. Changing that direction would be
like suddenly deciding to take your colonists to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida
when they all agreed to go to Varkas Reflex. No one person has the authority
to make that call. It’s for everyone to decide. That, Omega, is why we
vote.”
Omega places a hand on Thatch’s shoulder, and speaks calmly, “fair enough.
But I’m trying to save lives the only way I know how. I don’t hear any other
good ideas. Because the truth is...dead people can’t vote.”
“Just because it’s the only idea,” Valencia begins, “doesn’t mean it’s a
good one. Face it, there are too many variables. Stars are too far apart.
There are plenty of opportunities for the True Extremists to move their
rogue world where they need to. That’s what a rogue world is.”
Omega frowns. “What would you have us do?”
“Give up.” It’s Consul Dvronen Vatal. He’s on the top of the steps.
“This is a closed session,” Halan warns. Dvronen wields a lot of power, but
he doesn’t have full privileges. He has no reason to be here.
Dvronen chuckles and begins to walk down slowly. Saunter, even. “I can see
the eight of you are where you need to be. You understand our power.
Well...” He chuckles again, but louder. “You don’t understand it, but you
fear it. That’s all we’ve been trying to get you to do.”
Halan isn’t sure it makes sense, that this man would be a True Extremist. He
got the Captain to step down, but he didn’t take all of his power away. He
had plenty of times to kill him too, but never did? This must be the part
where the villain lays it all out for them, so the final pieces of the
puzzle will fit together. This is neither the time, nor the place, for this
conversation. “August,” he orders simply.
She takes out a teleporter gun and shoots Dvronen with it. He doesn’t seem
the least bit perturbed during the second he remains standing before he
disappears.
Halan turns to Olindse. “I strongly recommend that all eight of us sync to
that room to interrogate the prisoner. His words may help these fine
scientists come to a real solution.”
The Captain reaches over to her teleporter, quickly calibrates the range,
and transports everyone else to the hock. Dvronen is already sitting on the
bench. In fact, he looks like he’s exactly where he wants to be.
The Captain looks at the engineers, and nods her head towards the bench on
the side wall. They all go to sit down. They’re here to observe, not
question. She bows a little, and gives way to Admiral Yenant. “It ought to
be your show.”
“No,” Halan says. “It should be hers.”
They all look to Future Captain Kaiora Leithe. She’s anxious for a moment,
but she doesn’t want to show any self-doubt. She performs the Picard
maneuver on her uniform, and steps forward. Then she simply says, “report.”
“We are the oldest human civilization in the Milky Way galaxy of
Salmonverse. We were building starships before your ancestors were building
ocean vessels. We’ve since built an empire in our little pocket of space,
and we don’t appreciate your interference.”
“But you came from us. We are your ancestors. You wouldn’t exist without The
Extremus.”
“Which is why we let your ship take off. We were worried about the timeline.
Some wanted to destroy you in the dock, but cooler heads prevailed. As it
turns out, my side was right. We’re living in a stable timeloop, not an
alternate reality.”
“Why destroy us at all? What have we done against you? Space is very big.
You just wouldn’t believe—”
“Save the speech,” Dvronen interrupts. “It’s not about space. It’s not about
resources. I was born on a planet called Extremus. We take offense to your
mission to colonize your own world of the same name.”
Halan goes on autopilot, and can’t stop his lower brain from attacking.
“That’s it? You tried to destroy this ship, and kill thousands of people,
over a fucking name! Fuck, we’ll name it something else if you’re that pissy
about it!”
Dvronen remains in control. “It’s not the name, it’s the principle. Our
ancestors went to a lot of trouble to build our civilization. They went
millenia into the past. We deserve both the name, and the recognition as the
rightful owners of the galaxy.”
Captain Leithe takes the interrogation back. “You stole that from us. Quite
literally. Oaksent stole embryos and time travel technology.”
Dvronen takes a moment to consider his response. “I know, from your side of
the bars that makes sense. But you have to understand that none of us was
there when that happened. Me, Vesper, no one was born yet. We get that we
come from you. No one has ever tried to diminish or ignore that truth. I’m
just telling you that we have thousands of years of history that tells us we
are true descendants of the Extremus mission. And none of those people who
first landed on that inhospitable planet—thousands of years ago, from my
perspective,” he adds, tapping on his chest, “ever set foot on this ship. To
us, you seem like invaders. We tried to stop you without shedding blood. We
hired Old Man to repair the recall device, so it would send you back to
Gatewood. He said he would, and then he betrayed us.”
“Betrayed us how...by closing your timeloop, which is what you wanted
anyway?” Leithe asks.
Dvronen picks a little at his cuticles. “Old Man, Rita, Oaksent, and Airlock
Karen. They did not use the recall device to transport off this ship. They
used a completely different invention, of incredibly similar design, but
only superficially. If he did end up repairing the original device, it’s
never been used. It could still be in his lab; I don’t know. Vesper was
supposed to look for it. Perhaps he found it, and had it on him when he
died. ”
“Why did he so desperately want me to touch it?” Halan asks. “If he had had
his way, I would have gone instead of Rita.”
“Our assumption,” Dvronen begins, “is that Old Man knew that you were the
only person in the universe who could have stopped Oaksent from realizing
his dream of seeding a new civilization. He wanted you to stop us from ever
existing.”
“That’s an interesting development, but it doesn’t solve our problem,”
Kaiora goes on. “Bottom line, what do you want? What can we do to avoid any
more conflict?”
Dvronen shrugs. “Turn around.”
“You want us to go back to Gatewood?”
“It doesn’t have to be Gatewood. Just go somewhere within Earth’s stellar
neighborhood. We don’t want no trouble with them, so we’re leaving them all
alone.”
“How are you dealing with Project Stargate, or Operation Starseed, for that
matter?”
“You let us worry about that,” Dvronen answers cryptically.
Omega stands up, and approaches. “We can’t turn around. We have our own
mission. And it was ours first. How dare you co-opt it just because you went
back in time, and technically lived earlier? That’s so human of you. We’re
time travelers, the lot of us. Time is not linear, therefore, we were here
first by every single measurement of time, except for the one the people
like us have no use for.”
“Oaksent traveled back with his embryos, to father us on the homeworld. No
one has time traveled since then. We...live in linear time.” Dvronen adjusts
his position to look more serious. “This galaxy is ours. We’ll let you lease
some space, just like we do the vonearthans, but if you don’t want to follow
our rules, you can leave.”
“Leave?” Valencia questions, also standing up. “Leave the Milky Way? You’ll
stand down, and not try to stop us if we leave the galaxy?”
“Well, yeah, I guess,” Dvronen confirms. “Though the next galaxy over is
thousands of reframe years away, so I’m not sure you can sustain your
population for that long, but if you think you can, go for it. We won’t stop
you.”
Valencia draws nearer. “Can you do that? Are you authorized to speak for
your people?”
Dvronen laughs. “I know you don’t know who I am when it comes to respect on
the real Extremus, but...that’s a riot. Yes, I’m authorized. I speak for all
of us.”
Omega smiles. “I want that in writing.”
Valencia pulls Halan and both of the Captains over, and transports them to a
secure location. “I have an idea, but it’s going to require us to go against
that rule Admiral Thatch was trying to explain to my husband. We can wait
for a vote, but I guarantee that we’re gonna lose. Now, Dvronen said that
Project Stargate is in trouble.” She consults her watch. “In a few years,
the quantum seeder ships are probably going to pass far enough out of the
stellar neighborhood for the True Extremists to consider them a threat.
Omega and I have to try to stop whatever evil plans they’ve cooked up.”
“Where are you going with this?” Halan questions. “You’re all over the
place.”
“I know, just...” She sighs. “The Captain can’t make a course correction
unilaterally. She would have to put that up to a vote, right?”
“We follow,” current Captain Belo says.
“But the Captain can also refuse to put it to a vote. The people can’t just
create one out of thin air. You start it, they finish it, so all Captain
Leithe would have to do is not let it come to a vote at all.”
Kaiora starts trying to work it out. “You want to change course, because
once you do, you’re going to escape the ship anyway, and all I have to do is
prevent a second course correction from undoing your decision.”
“Correct,” Valencia says.
Halan shakes his head. “I can’t let you do that, Valencia. You need to go
help with Project Stargate. I understand as much. But you may one day need
to return, and for the good of the ship, whoever is running the place at
that point needs to be able to trust you. I, on the other hand, am actually
expendable. I’ll make the course correction, against the reported wishes of
everyone in this room, and in the hock section. I’ll suffer the
consequences, and everyone else will move on.”
“But, Admiral,” Kaiora tries to say.
Halan holds up quiet coyote, and shushes everyone. Maybe it is magic, and
maybe it works on anybody. “You’re gonna do a fine job.” With a fatherly
smile, he taps on his teleporter, and jumps to the bridge. For his last act
as a ranking member of this crew, he inputs his authorization code, and
makes the ship teleport only an astronomical unit away. It’s the easiest way
to point it in a different direction. It keeps going without missing a beat,
but it’s now begun a journey into the void.
