The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 28, 2398

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Ramses is doing great at his job on a professional level, but not so much personally speaking. Two people on his work team hate him: the guy whose job he apparently usurped, and the guy who had been trying to usurp it since before Ramses was even in this reality. He doesn’t even care, but this gives him access to the resources his team may need to escape to the main sequence, and barring that, survive here. First and foremost, they need to understand the laws of physics. Is there something that’s constantly suppressing their powers and patterns here, or were they stripped of these characteristics upon arrival, and now they could theoretically get them back using some other avenue? He needs to run tests, and being in charge of this department should afford him the appropriate opportunities. All he needs to do is help his people do their jobs on their own, and not bug him all the time, or try to sabotage him.

“Bruno, can you come in here, please?”

“Is he in trouble?” Stockboy asks. That’s not his real name, but he started working here as a stock associate, and worked his way up to this position. He’s just biding his time until he can climb even higher.

“He’s not,” Ramses answers. “Bruno. Double time.”

Not only does he not speed up, but he actually slows down to a snail’s pace.

“You’ll be in trouble if you don’t get in here, though. I partially wanted to talk about the fact that my paperwork finally went through, so now I have full dismissal privileges.”

Now scared for his job, Bruno hops in, and closes the door behind him. “Sir,” he says through actual gritted teeth.

“Bruno, how long have you been working here?”

“Exactly 452 times as long as you have.”

“You believe that your six-year tenure here imbues you with some kind of...entitlement?”

“Sir?”

“You think you deserve to be in charge.”

Bruno looks like he’s considering his options, and ultimately decides to stand resolute. “Yes, I do. I’ve already proven myself.”

“Mr. Castillo, I am not a leader. My best friends tell me what to do, and I do it. Repair this, build that, invent something that has never existed before. And I love it, because it means I’m useful. I haven’t been feeling very useful for the last week, does this surprise you?”

“It does not.”

“I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t even want the money. I just need to maintain my position here. And I need you to stop making that so goddamn hard.” He picks up a stack of papers from his desk, and tosses them onto the floor in front of the man who is meant to be his subordinate. It hasn’t been very long, but he’s already exhausted with this nonsense. Ramses may have had a rivalry or two back in the day, but even a group of radical capitalists generally accepted the idea that one person’s success did not inherently mean another’s failure. This world, however, considers them to be one and the same. “My job is to make sure these time reports are filled out correctly. Your job is to fill them out, not deliberately screw them up to make it look like I’m an idiot. You may have forced others to complete your work, and then taken credit for it, but I’m not like that. I’m not going to try to pass this off as my own to illustrate my value. Nowhere does it say that I have to complete them, I am perfectly within my rights to delegate. So that’s what I’m doing. I don’t have time to do them, and I don’t have time to check your mistakes. So do them right, give them to me, and I’ll file them away. That’s called trust. I can google that word for you if you need me to?”

“You can what that word?”

Ramses sighs. “If you mess these up again, I’m blaming you, and the boss will believe me, because I’ve already told him that you’re continuing to do them.”

“Sir, forgive me, but if you don’t want to be the supervisor, why are you?”

“Because I’m on assignment from the corporate office,” Ramses lies. “In one year, that assignment will be over, and I’ll step down.”

“I need the money now,” Bruno argues.

“You’ll get it.” Ramses pulls a stack of cash from the top drawer, and drops it right on top of the reports on the floor. “Like I said, I don’t need it. That’s a pittance for someone of my calibre. I’ll even let you be my lieutenant. It’s not an official position, but the team will listen to you, and I don’t give a shit. All you have to do to keep making this extra income every month is follow my orders, stay out of my way, and keep this all quiet. Are you capable of that?”

Bruno bends over, and retrieves the cash to get a rough count of it. “I was making more than this when I had your job.”

Ramses rolls his eyes. “You’re not getting all of my monthly pay. The rest is my per diem. They sent me here, expecting me to use all of it in this capacity, but I’m prepared to sacrifice half of it to keep you on my side. You’re still getting your regular wages, dummy.”

He nods. “I can do that.”

“Good. That’s not an advance, it’s a free sample, since I obviously haven’t been here all month. You’ll get another one at the end of May.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Right. Clean that up, get out, and work overtime if you must to fix them.”

Extremus: Year 48

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Former Captain and Admiral Halan died shortly after his conversation with Captain Leithe. Funny enough, the last person on the vessel still alive who could remember living in Ansutah also died that very same day. There were probably many others back on Gatewood, but this felt like a somber milestone. It was overshadowed by Halan, and everyone’s reaction to losing him. There’s a saying on Earth, don’t speak ill of the dead. This sentiment has held strong here. Even some of his most vehement opponents now have nothing but nice things to say about him. That should be a good thing, but his loyalists, like Kaiora, can’t help but feel bitter about it. He died in hock, unfitting for a man of his greatness, and those who truly loved him will never forgive these fair-weather friends for that. At least his persistent detractors hold to their own convictions. At least Kaiora can respect them for that. What she can’t respect is what has happened recently. It was all planned out, but now it’s all ruined.

Future Captain is not just something people call who they think the next captain will be. It is an official title that comes with responsibility and even a tiny bit of power, mostly involving new access to certain sensitive data. Trudie Haynes was already in this position, and had been there for two years when the council pulled the rug out from under the both of them. They have apparently decided that they need to drain the swamp. Halan picked Kaiora, then committed a crime. While Kaiora has given them no reason to not trust her judgment over the course of the next two and a half decades, they think it’s best that they handle this one. It’s not just about the captain’s seat either. Almost everyone on the crew will be dismissed at the end of this year, whether their shifts should be over at that time, or not. They agreed to a few exceptions, such as Hock Watcher Giordano, and thankfully, Chief Medical Officer Holmes. The council and civilian government justify these decisions by the new policies they devised a few years ago, which resulted in Calixte Salmon being appointed the first—and maybe only ever—Superintendent. The fact that he turned out to be a treasonous murderer is clearly lost on them.

Kaiora has been investigating this development as a possible coup, but has seen no evidence of that so far. She’s beginning to think that this is simply annoying bureaucracy at work. Besides, her medical condition is declining. She is finding it harder and harder to put as much effort into the job as she used to. First Lieutenant Lars Callaghan has been handling many of her normal duties, and he has really stepped up. Kaiora can’t help but feel proud of him. She knew there was a reason Halan and Olindse picked him to be on the team in the first place. His original position was never backfilled after Corinna disappeared, but the new crew will reportedly include a Second L-T. They say they like that it’s a thing now, and honestly, it’s one of the few things they and Kaiora can agree on. While Halan initially instituted it to control Ovan Teleres’ power, having an extra hand has served the ship nicely since then.

It’s May 19, 2317. The Captain is sitting in her office, pretending to do work, even though there’s no one else in the room to perform for. She’s just bored, which is something that happens from time to time. There are days when nothing goes wrong on the ship, and there aren’t any fires to put out. Mostly she feels like a lame duck. The transition is still months away, but it already feels over. She releases an exaggerated version of her signature sigh, but before it’s over, First Lieutenant Corinna Seelen appears out of nowhere, and takes a step towards her. “Cori! You’re alive.”

“No shit. Let’s go.” Corinna takes her captain by the arm, and transports them to Council Chambers. The council is a loosely defined collective of crewmembers and government officials who make sure everyone is doing their jobs correctly. They have been slowly accumulating power, even though their original mandate was to appoint the first crew members of the mission, and then do pretty much nothing else. Is this them? Are they the traitors? Corinna is sure staring at them with contempt. But no, Kaiora ruled them out years ago. They were the obvious suspects—especially since most of the council disappeared alongside Corinna, and had to be replaced—but they’re all clean. Kaiora’s secret investigative team has been watching them particularly closely, and has found nothing.

De facto leader of the council before the incident in the time lab, Esmee Newport is already in the room, having apparently transitioned back from wherever they were separate from Corinna. She clears her throat authoritatively. “Esteemed members of the council, after years of transdimensional investigation, we have finally figured out who has been sabotaging Extremus in multiple facets of the mission.” She steps aside, and presents the empty space behind her.

Another member of the older council teleports in, holding none other than Ovan Teleres by the chains.

Esmee continues, “Ovan Teleres, you have been charged with high treason. What say you in this matter?”

Ovan is sneering jovially. “You’re all under my spell.”

Yitro comes out of a shadow, presumably having teleported there as well at some point. “Not anymore.” He’s holding a...machete? What the hell is he doing with a machete? Ovan’s head rolls off in one quick swing. Oh, that’s why.

The current de facto leader of the council stands up angrily. “Explain!”

“Hock prisoner, Mr. Teleres,” Yitro begins, “has been infecting people’s minds with an illegal breed of nanites, which manipulate the victim’s thoughts, movements, and emotions. He controls—controlled these little buggers from inside his cell, and he was doing it for years. That’s why Rita seemed to go crazy. That’s why the Superintendent switched sides. They were all infected. They were all innocent.”

“So, wait. There are no clones?” one of the other council members asks.

“There had to have been,” Kaiora argues. “I saw the other me in the timelab. She tried to kill Greenley Atkinson.”

Corinna places a hand on Kaiora’s shoulder. “That was not a clone either. That was the real Kaiora Leithe. We think that she was the first victim.”

“No, but I’m...” Kaiora starts to say, but then she remembers. “I’m the clone. The original went back in time.”

Corinna closes her eyes solemnly, and nods slightly. “That’s right.”

“I did this. I caused all of this.”

“No,” Esmee contradicts. “Victim is not just a word we’re throwing around. It’s what your alternate self was. It’s what all of them were. Nanites are invisible to the naked eye, and undetectable when dormant. Anyone could have been infected. We still don’t know how many were, in fact. Every single civilian and crewmember will now have to get tested, even though the master is now dead.” She grimaces at Ovan’s head on the floor.

“Forgive me for the brutal violence,” Yitro says. “It was the safest way to sever his connection to all of his victims at once. Like she said, we don’t know who’s been infected. I couldn’t risk the possibility that one of you might have stopped me.”

The council leader sits back down calmly, and composes herself. “Until your story can be verified, you will all be placed in hock, including the captain.”

Yitro laughs. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

“You have no authority here, Captain Moralez of the Admiral Perran Thatch Detachment Timeship. You shouldn’t even be on Extremus Proper right now.”

That’s when Omega and Valencia appear behind the council’s backs. “Neither should we,” Omega declares. One by one, they tap on the council member’s heads as if playing Duck, Duck, Goose. As they do, the lot of them disappear, probably to hock themselves.

Kaiora slowly backs away. “Now I can’t trust anyone.”

“Captain, you can trust me,” Corinna insists.

Desperate, Kaiora snatches Ovan’s head up from the floor. “We’ll see about that.” She teleports away, but not all the way to her secret section, worried that someone might be able to track her there. As quietly as possible, she runs the rest of the way, and slips inside, checking to make sure no one is watching her. “Daley!” she cries out once she’s fully inside the section.

Nurse Daley McKee jumps into the hallway in front of her, ready to help.

She hands him Ovan’s head. “You’ve been looking for a subject to test. Here ya go. Tell me what you find.” She passes him, and heads for the office she keeps down here, and doesn’t use much.

“Where’s the rest of him?” Daley asks.

“The rest was too heavy to carry!” she shouts back.

“So you hacked it apart!”

“Uhuh!” she lies.

“What am I looking for!”

“I’m not tellin’! You should find something, and if you don’t...either you’re lying, or the person who served him up on a silver platter is! Just do what you’ve been waiting for years to do!”

About thirty minutes later, hacker Elodie Seabrooke knocks on Kaiora’s open door. “Captain?”

“Have they found anything?”

“I don’t know. I came to let you know that I watched the footage. I know how you got that head. And I also want you to know that I’m not going to tell anybody. I understand why you don’t want to contaminate the results with preconceptions.”

“Thank you. Is that all?”

“Also, I’ve been doing a little math.”

“Your specialty.”

“There’s a reason the transdimensional investigators showed up on this day.”

“And that would be?”

“If they went back in time in the reverse dimension as far as they were planning to, they were gone for as long as it took them to get there.”

“Huh?”

“When the machine turned on, you were expecting the other investigators to use it to travel back about six years.”

“Okay...”

“That was about six years ago.”

“So...once they exited the dimension, they had to wait twelve years to return?”

“I think they went to another dimension first; another observation dimension, that is, which parallels ours in direction. And yes, I think they were stuck there for twice as long, for whatever reason. It’s the most logical explanation for why they showed up today, and not anytime earlier.”

“That sounds stupid,” Kaiora spits. “Who designed that?”

“God?” Elodie proposes.

She nods. “Anything else?”

“If this is true, then...”

“Then it’s not over. If Kumara and Errol eventually caught up with the rest in the past, they’ll have to be there for even longer, and won’t return until...”

“Around November 9 of this year. But that’s assuming they all entered the second observation dimension at the same time. They might have gone back further in the timeline, or they came out sooner. Or they died...”

“How would any of this explain how my original self went back, and somehow got out of the reverse time dimension without having to go to this second observation dimension?”

“That I can’t explain,” Elodie answers. “Maybe she escaped completely.”

They hear someone else coming down the hallway. Elodie steps inside to let Corinna in the room. “How did you get in here?” Kaiora demands to know.”

“We were in an observation dimension,” she confirms, apropos of the conversation. “It was my job to watch over you. It was a sick assignment, really, since I couldn’t do anything to help.”

“Is it true, you were stuck in there for eighteen years?”

“Don’t I look it?” Corinna asks.

Indeed. She looks like she’s in her fifties, when she should be in her forties. “Yes,” Kaiora answers truthfully.

“It was rough,” Corinna agreed, “but we survived, and we learned so much.”

“You being here does not change the fact that I still can’t trust anyone,” Kaiora acknowledges. “In fact, it probably makes it worse.”

“I’m going to the lab now, so they can test me too.”

“What would they look for?”

“Anomalies. There shouldn’t be any, but...there might.”

“Assuming you are who you say you are, and you’re still on my side,” Kaiora begins, “then you must know if I can trust them.”

“You can,” Corinna replies. “You did well. You picked a good team. The whole ship has been compromised, including the Bridger Section, but excluding this tiny little isolated area. I was in charge of watching over you, but Esmee took responsibility for these people even while you weren’t here. She knew that Dr. Malone was working for the Bridgers, and I think she only told me.”

“I see.”

“This is all gonna work out, Captain. You’ll see that too.”

“Thank you. You’re both dismissed.”

Once they’re gone, Captain Kaiora Leithe, Third of Ten goes down for a nap, and she never stands up on her own again.

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Microstory 1789: Kendall Cole

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Kendall Cole is one sick puppy; not evil, per se, but certainly not a good person. She loves to start trouble, and she is a master at it. She knows how to manipulate others into doing what she wants, and not even for her own gain. Well, she appears to gain the joy of watching people squirm, but she isn’t otherwise benefiting from all this conflict. At least, it doesn’t seem like it gets her anything else. She just likes to watch people in pain, and her parents were always worried that this would translate into something really bad and violent when she grew up. Therapy didn’t help. Socialization didn’t help. Nothing did her any good. If there was an opportunity to make people feel bad, and get away with it, she would do it. As she grew up, however, she got better at causing trouble in secret, leading her parents to believe that she had learned to change her ways. She stopped getting in trouble at school, because of how good she was at convincing others to become the agents of chaos, so she never really learned what consequences were. No one gave her any real reason to improve herself, so she never did, and she never regretted it either. Kendall didn’t become a serial killer, or anything, though. That much could be said of her. She just liked to undermine people at work, especially her boss, and make the job unnecessarily harder on others. A missing file here, an anonymously forwarded private email there. She didn’t limit herself to her real workplace. She once took a second job at a family planning manufacturer. She deliberately tampered with thousands of pregnancy tests to make them all show up as positive, no matter what. She timed it according to a co-worker’s tenure at the company, and framed him for the crime. No one ever suspected her, and bonus, she made a little extra money.

She might have said that sabotage was her middle name, except then that would be admitting to others what she was, and that would have ruined all the fun. Her power came from her invisibility, and no one could ever know that she was behind all of this turmoil. Someone took notice once when she gaslit an entire apartment complex into believing that a virus was spreading through the gas lines. She tricked them all into shutting off their gas, and quarantining themselves in the building for an entire week before the children of one of the tenants grew suspicious, and reached out to the CDC. She didn’t set one foot on the premises, and no one could have possibly connected her to it. A self-proclaimed “mastermind with genius-level intellect” felt compelled to investigate on his own by looking into who had contacted the building manager. He traced the call to a payphone, then phished his way into reviewing the security cameras of the convenience store next to it, where he witnessed who he thought to be the culprit making that call. Using facial recognition software that he bought for a steep price on the internet, he figured out the woman’s identity. He began to stalk her to find out what her motivation was, and whether she did other things like it. He never saw a damn thing, and he became impatient with the whole matter. He decided to give her a taste of her own medicine by killing her on paper. He notified her place of business that she was dead. He cancelled all of her credit cards. He informed her parents that she was gone. He identified a Jane Doe as her in the morgue. The authorities found him rather quickly, and arrested him for fraud, harassment, and a number of other charges. He only received one visitor in prison. It was Kendall Cole, there to gloat about how she had tricked him into ruining a completely innocent person’s life, as well as his own.

Microstory 1452: Nevertheless, They Persisted

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After the haemophilia virus wiped out all of the men and boys trying to live in Ladytown, the women were devastated. They knew that this was no accident. Haemophilia was a genetic disorder, and did not spread like a contagion. Sure, it was possible that the rogue planet of Durus came with diseases that didn’t exist on Earth, but there was no logical reason for it to spread at this point in history. This whole area had been dug and altered to make way for the old town of Hidden Depths, as well as the irrigation system. It was just far too unlikely that they somehow managed to unlock something now. The Trojan horse woman disappeared shortly after the virus ran its course, so obviously they suspected her to have been involved, but they possessed no evidence, let alone proof. The Aljabaran government got away with it, but that didn’t mean the survivors were just going to roll over and let this destroy their way of life. The Republicans weren’t going to win, no matter what they did. They wanted the women to come crawling back to Aljabara, and not because of any particular affinity for them—in fact, the government considered them damaged goods by now—but hopefully the act would solidify the Republic’s hold on the city, possibly forever. The Ladytowners couldn’t let that happen, and they were willing to go to war if they had to. The tragedy galvanized them into action. They were content to just stay on the other side of Watershed, and leave Aljabara be, but if a plague was their first attempt to end them, what would be their second? They had to be prepared for everything. They started to come up with new responsibilities for the townsfolk, even though they were already stretched thin with their labor force. 

Some were tasked with dressing themselves up like men, making the rough journey across the thicket to Aljabara, and infiltrating the city. They weren’t there to make trouble, or sabotage the government; they just needed resources. In particular, they needed books. The one male survivor of the virus was still in his mother’s stasis bubble, and in order to save him, they needed to understand what exactly was wrong with him, and how his symptoms could be treated. Perhaps they would even be able to cure him one day. While the infiltrators were stealing information, and handing it off to the scholars, the rest were leveling up. They forged weapons, and trained in combat, and studied wars of the past. Everyone had to contribute to the lasting prosperity of the town itself, as well as future war effort. Unfortunately, as always, research was no comparison to practical experience. They needed someone who knew how to fight. Now, the reason none of them knew was not because women weren’t capable of being warriors, but because these women were never allowed. They went to school as children, just like the men, but they learned very different things, and military tactics simply wasn’t on the list for them. Fortunately, they weren’t completely alone. A man by the name of Fulcrum Nielsen was sympathetic to their cause. He wasn’t raised to be misogynistic, and he wasn’t raising his own son to be that way either. He was a well-trained martial artist, because he was completely free to learn whatever he wanted. He was also a teleporter. He had to be able to see where he was going, but it only took a few jumps for him to reach Ladytown during his off hours, where he would help the women learn what they needed to protect themselves. For years, the oblivious government left them alone, content in their belief that there was nothing that Ladytown could do but wait to die out. Little did they know...

Brooke’s Battles: Bailout (Part XIII)

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As it turned out, the ship that appeared in their cargo bay was not a ship at all, but a machine called The Prototype. Old friend and Brooke’s mother figure, Leona was on it, along with a few other friends. They had just been traveling the multiverse, looking for various objects that were apparently meant to help Leona find her husband, who was erased from the timeline. The last object they were looking for was the Cosmic Sextant, which Farhana happened to have in her possession. In a major personnel change, Ecrin and Relehir took the Prototype on their own new mysterious mission to battle Maramon in other universes. The Vespiarians decided to return to civilization on their refueled ship. A Freemarketeer cargomaster defected, and chose to go with them, as did Leona and Holly Blue, who wanted to see her family again. Vitalie, the astral projector from Durus, who helped Ecrin find Brooke after the latter had a breakdown years ago, wanted to come with them to Bungula. And so everyone left Vespiary at about the same time; The Vosa to Earth, and The Sharice Davids to the Alpha Centauri triple-star system.

Sharice was not chosen as captain because she had leadership qualities, or years of experience. She was chosen because she was the most intelligent entity on board, and was already ultimately most responsible for the ship’s operations. With an artificial intelligence like her, no human crew was truly necessary, especially not now that Sharice had access to an assorted complement of android bodies, some with nimble fingers. While in android form, she maintained contact with the ship proper via vocal and manual commands, just like anyone else would. After clearing Vespiarian space, the ship went off on what might have been its final mission, moving at eight times the speed of light. While it would take the light from the sun 4.37 years to get to Alpha Centauri A, it was only going to take the ship four and a half months. Unfortunately, fate—or perhaps some enemy—had other plans for them.

Four months into the trip, just about everything that can go wrong on a ship, did go wrong. The cylicone exploded, killing three Freemarketeer crew members, and six passengers immediately. Weaver acted quickly, and jettisoned the back third of the vessel to protect the rest of it, which sadly killed the four Freemarketeers who survived the initial explosion. That was not their only problem, however. Entire systems shut down, including navigation, internal power, and thrust. They were out of FTL, drifting roughly towards their destination at a fraction of the speed of light, operating only on the momentum they maintained.

Sharice slipped herself into an android body just in time to protect herself from code corruption as the ship continued to fail. Artificial gravity was slowly losing power, and life support would probably only last them another five minutes, or so. She ordered everyone to congregate on the bridge deck, which could theoretically be separated from the rest of the vessel, in case of emergency. Étude took it upon herself to teleport all over the Sharice, looking for stragglers, or the immobile injured. The deck was packed with a few dozen people, but neither Brooke nor Sharice knew what they were going to do. Étude came back, and waved at them for attention.

“Did you get everyone?” Sharice asked.

She shook her head, and motioned for her to come with.

Brooke stepped forward and took Étude by her other shoulder, and the three of them teleported to an airlock in the cargo hold, which was about to be torn apart. Two Freemarketeers were ready for them, holding firearms, which they weren’t meant to have.

“What’s going on here?”

“Keep them away from me,” President Treacy ordered his men.

“What are you doing?” Sharice demanded to know. “Did you hack into our quantum messenger?”

“How do I work this thing?”

“There is no point in sending a message. We are light years away from civilization,” Sharice told him.

“Actually, we’re only about nine hundred astronomical units from Proxima Doma.”

“Do they have an interstellar ferry, or something, at the moment?” Sharice asked her, half-rhetorically.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not calling for help,” Treacy explained. “Got it. Hargesen, Hargesen!” He shouted into the mouthpiece. “Come in, Hargesen.”

“This isn’t one of our scheduled meeting times,” one of the guards told him.

“I know that, asshole!” Treacy cried.

“You’re not supposed to be using this at all,” Sharice said angrily. “How did you get past my sensors?”

Treacy ignored the question. “Fine. I’ll leave a message.” He went back to the mouthpiece. “Hargesen! We were set up! Operation Pyrethroid is a go!”

“Stop!” Sharice commanded him. She knocked the gun out of one of the guard’s hands, which prompted the other to shoot Brooke right in the forehead.

Brooke stood there for a moment, watching the light around her shrink inwards to the blackness. She felt her own systems shutting down, and the life draining from her body. As durable as she was, it was still possible for her to die. She could have survived a pedestrian bullet, but this was some kind of burrower. It continued to work its way through her brain, destroying everything in its path.

“No!” Sharice screamed. “Computer, initiate Operation Conflux!”

Brooke suddenly felt the life returning to her. Or rather, it was more like she was following her life somewhere new. It reminded her of what it was like to interface with an external system, which was something she hadn’t done in a long time. Her consciousness was being lifted from its original substrate, and transferred into another. She was becoming part of the ship. It took a few moments to acclimate to her new environment, and she had to figure out how to work the ship’s sensors. When she finally woke all the way up, she found herself watching the humans back on the bridge deck.

“You killed them all?” Weaver asked.

“I had to. They tried to kill my mother.”

“I’m not judging you,” Weaver said. “I just need to make sure no one else is going to be a problem.” She looked around at the rest of the Freemarketeers. “Is anyone else planning to stir up trouble, or do y’all wanna live?”

The head Freemarketeer engineer, Ramses Abdulrashid pushed himself through the crowd. “We will do anything you say. Won’t we?” he asked of his people.

They agreed, mostly out of fear. Of all of them, only Ram seemed reasonable.

“Good,” Weaver said. “Because I have a plan. But first, we have to break away from the rest of the ship. Unfortunately, that can’t be done in here. Only the console on the other side is functioning. It’s also a two person job. Since none of you is a transhuman, I’m going to need the strongest person to help me.”

“How are we supposed to get back over here?” a random person asked.

“Étude will teleport us back at the last second,” Weaver replied.

“She’ll what?”

“I can go,” Sharice said. “I’m stronger than anybody.”

Weaver shook her head. “Impossible. You will basically have to hold the doors closed all by yourself. I need a human volunteer.”

“I’ll do it,” Ram said. “I know more about how the ship works than anyone but the real crew. I’m the obvious choice.”

“Okay,” Weaver said. “Let’s go.”

A helpless Brooke watched as Weaver and Ram worked on separating the bridge deck. Time was running out as the integrity of the hull buckled under the stress. Weaver had to hold a button down on the console while Ram tried to pull the manual release lever on the other side of the hallway. He wasn’t strong enough, though. Suddenly, Étude appeared, holding Goswin.

“No!” Brooke tried to yell, but she still hadn’t figured out how to access the speaker system from the inside.

Goswin reached down and helped pull the lever, releasing the bridge deck in a way it never should have needed to. The two halves started moving away from each other at an incredible rate, and would be too far for Étude to teleport within seconds.

A figure appeared down the hallway, crawling towards them. It was Vitalie, who had come on board last second. Brooke had almost forgotten about her, and there had not been time to do a roll call. They were minutes away from losing life support, even if they all got back to the bridge deck. Ram instinctively ran over to her to help. He reached her just as Étude teleported there, took them both, and got them back to the bridge. Étude then tried to jump back for Weaver and Goswin, but something was stopping her. Technically, it was possible for a teleporter to jump into a deadly situation, like at the bottom of the ocean, or in the vacuum of space. Most were born with a sort of failsafe built into their instincts, which prevented them from doing this without trying really hard. For instance, a set of coordinates might send them to the middle of a wall, so the failsafe will kick in subconsciously, and land them at the closest relatively safe place. Étude could not get back to the other section of the Sharice, because it was already too far away.

“Computer,” Weaver’s voice came in on the speakers. “Initiate burst mode. AU level. Target Proxima Doma.” A distance of 892 AU meant it would take the bridge deck 892 seconds to reach its destination, or about fifteen minutes. Holly Blue long ago warned that the integrity of the hull would not last a few hundred, but perhaps she and Weaver reinforced it somehow. After all, Brooke had no idea that they were capable of teleporting at the AU range, because they never had before. The lone Holly Blue often worked on unauthorized projects, so it was no surprise that two Holly Blues together would do the same.

Things were not going well, though. Sharice’s android body was about to give out from the stress of trying to hold the door closed. The deck was threatening to break apart just as predicted. The humans were all freaking out. The only person who was at all calm was Étude. After treating Vitalie’s wounds, she casually walked over to the hidden safe in the wall, and input a code she had no business knowing. She removed the Insulator of Life, and handed it to Vitalie.

“Do you know what’s going to happen?” Vitalie asked her.

Étude studied Vitalie’s face for a moment. Then she nodded.

“Are we going to die?”

Étude looked at Ram, then back at Vitalie, and shook her head. Then she looked over at the rest of the crowd, and nodded.

“Is there nothing we can do?” Ram asked.

Étude shook her head again.

“Looks like Treacy was right,” Ram said. “He was paranoid the solar system leadership would sabotage this mission. They backed out of the original deal pretty abruptly.”

Étude shrugged her shoulders.

“Yes,” Ram said. “There are worst tragedies.”

Étude exited the main area, to the entryway, where Sharice was desperately trying to hold the outer doors closed. She gently placed her hand on Sharice’s shoulder. Then she nodded, as if to say, it’s okay to let go. She signed the word for insulator.

“Will that work?” Sharice asked.

Étude smiled.

Sharice looked back at the doors one last time after Étude left, then sent her consciousness back to the main systems, right next to Brooke’s. The doors broke open, sending the android body flying out, along with a couple Freemarketeers who had decided to wait in the entryway. “Mom,” she said. “We’re going to live.”

“No,” Brooke said back. “Étude, Vitalie, and Abdulrashid will. The ship won’t make it.”

“I should have held onto the doors longer.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. Our mission is over.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

A minute later, the bridge deck was literally tearing apart at the seams. At the last second, Étude teleported herself, Vitalie, and Ram to the surface of Doma. The rest of the people crashed and burned.

The insulator was keeping the three survivors alive in an otherwise very inhospitable environment. They were miles and miles away from the habitat a nanofactory had built for this planet’s colonists a few years ago. But how did Brooke see that? She could sense the three humans around her, but she should have died in the crash too. Evidently, the Insulator of Life was keeping her and Sharice alive as well. That was great, but that still left one question. Now what?

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