“You always did like surprises.”
“I guess I did,” she said with a far away look. “I remember a lot of things from before, but it's more like a dream.” Alice looked at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It must feel like you're in a different universe. You must have a million questions and I'm falling apart on you.”
“While I was sleeping you were having a life out here, pretty much alone from what I'm hearing, so I understand. Do you know anything about how Ayan is though? I couldn't find much.”
“She's still at Freeground, all I could find out was that she is with their Special Projects division. They made her a founding member of the department restart.”
“Did you ever try to contact them?”
“No, I never did. I didn't know how they would react. I was afraid to. The few times I tried to look information up on them there was always a huge wall of security. Whatever everyone's doing has got to be important.”
“So they all got back.”
“They did. Oz was listed as a Captain a couple months after you disappeared, that's the last I saw of him. But everyone was listed somewhere associated with Freeground, so they all got back.”
“Was there any mention of Minh-Chu?”
Alice's expression darkened a little. “I couldn't find him anywhere.”
Jonas sighed and nodded. “I didn't think so.”
“You must be anxious to see Ayan again, I know she'll want to see you.”
“I hope.”
“I kept checking wedding announcements. Jason and Laura were married about five years ago, but Ayan never did.”
“Still, I'm not going to get my hopes up. It's been a long time.”
“We could shave a couple days off the trip there if we dropped out of transit space and changed to a more direct course.”
Jonas gave it a moment's thought then looked at the holographic display in the center of the table. The clips of Jake Valance had been playing silently in the background and it had reached the recruitment video. “I have to see that man again. If it weren't for him I wouldn't be intact now. I think he has to know what he did to save me. Somehow going on with my life without acknowledging him just doesn't sit right.”
Alice shook her head and smiled. “This is going to be interesting.”
Two Captains
Jake Valance stared at Lucius Wheeler through the transparent barrier sealing him into the secure confinement cell. The guard watching the brig had been sent outside to wait for the crewman set to relieve her.
Wheeler was sleeping soundly on the padded metal bunk. They had taken everything but the fixtures out of the cell and stripped him just in case.
He woke and sat up, smiling up at Jake. “Good morning. Been there long?”
“Tell me about Freeground,” Captain Valance ordered quietly.
“Why would I do that? It's not where you're from. You were born on some lab table somewhere I'm guessing.”
Jake crossed his arms and just looked on. The man's scraggly hair was unkempt as always, and his dark eyes had dark circles under them that blended into the bruising under his right eye and around his crooked broken nose.
“Did you tell them yet? That you're just a copy of a greater man? The real Jonas Valent is probably out there and he's the one that has a home. You're just another machine, someone turned you on thinking you were the real deal and didn't come back to turn your lights out.”
That struck a nerve. He was lead to wonder if his daughter was truly his flesh and blood, or if she had found Jonas Valent and gone on with her life. What he had done, recovered from lethal injuries in the space of a minute through sudden regeneration, wasn't human. He had gone over the radiation readings from his cloaksuit as well, and those doses of radiation really should have killed him even with the medication. That didn't explain the white scarf, the long coat or everything he knew. There were no memories, but so much knowledge that felt all his own. It was easy to get angry at the small man in the containment cell, but the rewards of patience were far more important for the time being.
“You know, before I found out what you were I thought you had become just like me. Could you imagine?”
“Count the days Lucius.” Captain Valance said as he muted the speaker of the containment cell and locked it with a four digit code. No one would be able to hear him or set him free without that passkey.
Enreega
The Triton came out of hyperspace in the Enreega system. Captain Valance worked the pilot's controls from the helm personally while Ashley watched two and three dimentional displays beside him in the navigators seat. That section wasn't so different from what she was used to on the Samson after some cosmetic modifications, there was just more information and a greater amount of computing power.
She was still unsure of herself, however, so she turned around to look at Price, who met her worried look with one of his own. He brought up what they were seeing on the main holographic display. “Captain, the defence station has been torn apart. I've got a few hundred distress signals, mostly small escape craft.”
Captain Valance turned the ship several degrees and set it on a course that would take them around the wreckage and was out of his seat as though it were on fire. “Find the cloaking system controls!” He called out as he joined Agameg Price at the tactical station, helping him search. They weren't there.
It struck him then that he was looking at the wrong station entirely. There was a field control station right beside and he found it right away. The lighting on the bridge dimmed as the cloaking device engaged and the Triton should have disappeared from all manner of sight. “It's not working. The Big Surprise must have taken out a couple of sections.”
Captain Valance walked back to the helm and sat down, carefully guiding the ship around debris. “Can you see any Regent Galactic ships in the area?”
“There are a few wrecks here I don't recognize, but no Regent Galactic. Whoever was here just wiped all the defences and large ships out and moved on.” “Can you see any city vessels on Seneschal?”
“A couple, but they're in a bad state. There's one parallel to us sending a distress call.”
Captain Valance settled the ship into a slow moving course that would take them near some of the larger orbital structures and sat back in his seat. “Good thing we have a lot of room. Get teams together, start retrieving escape craft.” He looked to the tactical display and was startled by what he saw there. “Eden system ships did this. We have to hurry.”
Epilogue
Her quarters were dark, they always were. Light sensitivity was something she had to deal with whenever she went outside, along with other persistent maladies. All a result of failed genetic meddling before she was born. It had caught up to her, and what was worse, her mother, Admiral Rice was dozens of light years away coordinating the initial settlement of Freeground's first colony. Not her choice, the Admiralty pressed her into the post.
Terry Ozark McPatrick, Oz was what his friends called him, was in his full dress uniform. He felt as though he was delivering news of the death of a loved one. He couldn't help it, he was about to crush hope.
He made his way through the foyer and looked around the living room. There was an open case with mementos on a recliner, and Ayan's white hooded poncho lay on the floor in front of the sofa. He stooped down and picked it up, folding it neatly then putting it over the back of the recliner.
She liked to keep her home fairly neat even though she didn't normally have much energy. Laura had told him there were still very good days though, when her enthusiasm was so high it was like she was back to her old self again. The way she had been when she was the Chief Engineer on the First Light.
“Thank you for coming before disembarking. I know you have better things to do with your new command,” Ayan said as she came out of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She had just gotten back from the long test voyage of the Midland.