Only two couches were occupied. Ashlan kept the weight of her concerns from showing on her face, instead constructing the understanding, patient expression she saved for rich fools and politicians. “Ambassadors,” she purred in her deep, smoky voice as she reclaimed the seat be-tween a man and a woman. “This is no way to start our journey together. Let’s begin again, shall we?”
The man and the woman were silent as Ashlan secured her flight harness into place. “My aunty once shared with me her secret to a happy marriage,” she said lightly, her smile warming the edges of her mingled Persian and Ostrovian accent. “Shall I share it with you? Dennis?”
The ambassador for Earth stopped glaring at the other woman long enough to catch Ashlan’s eye. People had a hard time staying angry when she poured on the charm. She hoped she had enough of it stocked for the years ahead.
She peered at him playfully, and Dennis rolled his eyes. “Yes, Admiral,” he chuckled. “Please do.”
She nodded her gratitude and swung her head to the woman, her eyebrows asking for permission.
The ambassador for Reach shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. “Sure, Admiral.”
She held a hand to her chest. “I am Ashlan, please.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Spare me the ‘I’m just a simple woman’ routine, ‘Ashlan.’ Wearing robes and silks instead of a uniform doesn’t fool anyone. You’re no grandmother, you’re military commander of a thirty-six thousand person, twenty-nine ship strong military force, Admiral.”
Ashlan laughed. “Coral! The convoys are joint ventures between all seven world members, not… not invasion Fleets.”
She ran her silk scarf between her fingers. “I wear no uniform because I represent no government. Convoy law governs us all, even if I do enforce it on this particular crossing. There are no other laws where we are about to go: just like a marriage, we need to work together. I have shepherded three convoys before.” She sighed. “No one talks about the work done between our worlds, in the distance between them. But we always do the work.” She leaned forward whispering conspiratorially. “We will do the work again. Consider it… our honeymoon.”
That provoked nervous laughter all around. There were no windows in this room, deep inside the centrifugal wheel providing convoy flagship Lucky Strike with gravity, but the bolts of energy surging and arcing around the convoy were on their minds just the same.
Folding a bubble of spacetime full of ships, cargo, and crew through a man-made hole in the universe was a proven shortcut to traversing the stars in years instead of centuries. Traveling by Fold was the great boon that allowed Earth to found the six colonies, of which Reach was one, as was Ashlan’s own home of Ostrov.
The Fold was also a great equalizer.
The moments after the universe went away—or rather, the Fold holding the convoy was pushed outside of it—were marked by violent gravitic, electric, and magnetic storms called ‘the Churn.’ Ships were tossed like marbles. Some were sucked to the edges of the Fold’s tiny, temporary, spherical reality where titanic forces crushed them to nothing.
People died. Even rich people. Even important people.
Even the ruling elite, like Dennis and Coral, could disappear in the Churn. Mostly they survived. Seldom were the heavily fortified bunkers like this one—on ships strategically positioned in the safest parts of the convoy—ever touched.
But it could happen.
Like the first sailing ships who braved the seas, the first space ships to pierce the black of space to plunder other planets followed a siren song crooning of wealth, prosperity, and opportunity on a scale too vast not to pursue.
But those minutes before the Fold took hold were murder on the nerves.
The Fold would happen when the Fold happened. The science of predicting the threshold for a Fold even was only accurate to within thirty-one hours. Therefore, other than ‘today,’ the men and women of the convoy could only wait for the rough weather to come.
And wait they did, in ships of all kinds and sizes. Some were little more than airtight buildings, reinforced against the treacherous Churn. Spinning wheels provided gravity to some. Others were the barest scaffolds of metal connecting engines to tanks of air, and water, and fuel. For all the ships -the awkward and ungainly, the impractically beautiful, the stalwart and ugly- the waiting was hard.
As often happened when frightened laughter was let loose, Ashlan, Dennis, and Coral were soon hooting and howling. The cathartic release was on a scale beyond the joke, but that was okay, too.
“The secret?” she prompted again.
Dennis nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. This time Coral, too, gestured for Ashlan to continue.
“A happy marriage,” Ashlan shared, “is the union of two good forgivers.”
Dennis and Coral eyed each other warily again.
“There needs to be trust for forgiveness,” Coral said, directing the words past Ashlan to Earth’s ambassador. “We know about the ‘farm equipment’ you sent to Reach in the last convoy. You want Reach to trust you? We need some assurances we’re not going to pop out the Fold over Earth 2.0.”
Dennis sniffed. “We’ve taken sensible precautions, nothing more. Gov has never and will never initiate a conflict with a colony world. You have my word.” He leaned forward. “Now, I would like your word that the cyber-attacks and surveillance of our in-convoy research projects and business assets will stop!”
“Yes, this is what time in the convoy is for,” Ashlan assured them both. “Additional inspections can be arranged,” she assured Carol, raising a hand to pre-emptively calm the Earth Ambassador, “and in exchange, an effort could be made to sway the rogue agents involved in politically motivated cyber intrustions.”
Carol stiffened. Ashlan touched her arm. “There’s room for movement on both sides, yes?”
Neither ambassador replied.
Ashlan extended her hands towards the empty chairs around the table. “There’s just us three, this time. We have twenty-six months together, Ambassadors. We owe it to the citizens of a hungry Earth, and to a colony being asked to do far more than anyone ever imagined, to make that time count.”
Coral’s lips pressed together as she pondered the mystery of those empty chairs.
Ashlan kept her confident smile going as she, too, stared at the empty places.
Four empty chairs. Four lost colonies.
Yanshou.
Prise du Pied.
Glory.
Drayton.
If Ostrov did not send a convoy soon, it would officially be five lost colonies.
While Reach, the last child of Earth, suffered to meet the needs of its mother, and its hungry billions.
“Earth really doesn’t know?” Coral asked, her eyes desperate for an answer from the admiral or Earth’s ambassador.
“No one knows why the convoys stopped coming,” Ashlan answered, and Dennis struggled for opacity. He knew no more than she, Ashlan was sure. Even Earth couldn’t keep a secret of this magnitude. Why would it? No, Dennis did not know… and that’s what made him so angry. To cover the fear.
Artfully hidden emergency lights flashed red.
Dennis stiffened. “Did we Fold?”
Red lights. Not yellow. Ashlan hid her own concern. “Let’s see.” Sliding her fingers across the table, she triggered a view of what lay outside.
Red and orange streaks of energy, swirling fast just beyond the outermost ships of the convoy. The Moon and Earth in the distance.
They had not Folded, Ashlan saw. What caused the alarm, then?
The doors hissed open. Another break in protocol, Ashlan thought, anxiety rising. Had there been another terrorist attack? Had violence broken out between Earther and Reacher factions, even here in the convoy?