Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (48 page)

“I’ve been around humans long enough to know
there is something different going on, more than loss.” Agameg
observed him for a moment before saying; “I thought you should
know.”

“Thank you, Agameg,” Jake said. “We’ll hurry
back. We’ll sort this out.”

Whirling dust encouraged the last of the
people caught out in the open on the landing slips to get behind a
closed door or up on a high, flat space. Ayan and fifty eight
others watched from atop the Clever Dream as the Warlord hovered
carefully through the hangar doors. Hundreds more watched from the
tops of large cargo containers and emergency shelters.

It was as if the Samson’s pocked, rough
outer hull had been shed, revealing a sleek, dark hull beneath.
Sensor, emitter, and collector fins ran across the front like dark
teeth, and down sections of the length like razor fins. To Ayan,
the new shape made the ship look more like a predator crouched low,
ready to pounce and devour. The four engine pods stretched out
behind the ship on extendable reinforced arms that would stretch
out in four directions when they were in proper flight.
Old-fashioned hover engines built into extra armoured buffer zones
of the hull kept the ship aloft while it was flying too low to use
its main engines. Most of the new hardware on the vessel was used
or recovered from nearby wreck yards, but no one could tell from
the outside. Twenty-eight thick barrels lined the bottom of the
ship in two rows near the sides. Five turrets were built in, more
would be added, and there were other weapons hidden or incomplete
beneath the emitter fins.

“Man, I wish I could be there when they park
next to the sun and flip the switch,” someone nearby said.

“Why?” asked Jenny Machad.

“You think that’s the way it’s supposed to
look? They’re going to let the ergranian steel hull absorb
radiation from the sun and, if everything goes right, a lot of
those parts will be flush. Those barrels will look like internal
mooring mounts. The fins will keep extending, of course, but all
the more delicate exposed stuff will get covered, like the mounting
points on the turrets.”

“Wow,” Jenny replied. She turned to the
technician and offered her hand. “I’m Jenny.”

“Sergeant Jenny, looking at your rank,” the
other replied. “I’m Tara. Just a machinist.”

Ayan took a moment to glance across their
large settlement. Hundreds of people in sealed vacsuits watched the
Samson from atop shipping containers and other vessels. Beyond
their own perimeter other people were taking notice as well. They
were far enough from the whirling dust to stand out in the open and
watch the grey-hulled ship slowly manoeuvre out of the hangar.

Most of the on-looking technicians had done
work on the Warlord but remained behind to start shifts on other
ships. “I can’t believe we finished it,” she overheard Tara say on
proximity radio.

“I know. I only worked on it for a month,
but it felt like three. Where are you working next?” asked one of
the nearby machinists. They were on her left, while Oz was on
Ayan’s right.

“The Skimmer.”

“Me too,” he replied. “They say it’ll take a
week to finish work on her. I bet we’ll be done in four days. I
wonder if they’ll retrofit her with a hull like that after.”

“Nope, that’s about as far as that ergranian
stuff will stretch beyond putting ingots in a nutrient bath. It’ll
take a while to purify another seed batch,” said a worker Ayan knew
as Galie Aulm, an issyrian who joined the Triton encampment a few
days after they arrived in Port Rush.

“There’s a lot of Laura in that ship,” Jason
said from behind. Victor moved so he’d have room to stand beside
her and he stepped into place. “There’s a lot of you both, between
her work on the emitter systems and you working on the hull.”

“There’s a lot of her everywhere,” Ayan
said. “She built the shield over our heads, made repairs on the
Clever Dream with me, it goes on and on.”

“That’ll recede,” Jason said. “We’ll move
on, parts will be swapped out as they age, I’ll lose her things
somewhere along the way.”

“We die twice,” Liam Grady said. “When our
bodies stop working, and then when we are forgotten. Laura was an
impressive woman. I’ve never heard anyone speak ill of her, and
people speak of her often. She’ll be alive for a very long
time.”

Ayan looked to Liam Grady and nearly kicked
the champagne bottle off the edge of the Clever Dream. Victor
caught it by the top and handed it to Ayan. “That would have been
bad,” he said.

“I’m guessing that would have been unlucky,”
Ayan said, wrapping the bottle in her arms. She was blushing at the
near blunder, and happy she wasn’t the only one laughing, even if
it was nervous laughter.

“Not to mention expensive,” Jason said. “We
paid twelve hundred GC for that, it might be the last properly made
bottle on this moon.”

“I’m going to cover that,” Ayan said,
looking down at the foil-wrapped top of the bottle. “I have pay I’m
not spending.”

The ship slowed to hover in front of her. It
began to turn, slowly drifting closer and closer. Liam Grady moved
so he could squeeze between her and Jenny, who made room. “I’ll
hang on to you while you smash that. Have you thought of a
dedication?”

“I was going to use the Freeground March,”
Ayan replied. “It’s tradition.” She thought a moment and said,
“It’s their tradition.”

All at once, the image she was presenting
and the meaning the upcoming moment could take was apparent to her.
The visions given to her by Roman and the Victory Machine left her
with the impression that she played a major role in building the
society she saw her children in. She tried to picture that conjured
moment, when she faced both her children on the day of her
sixteen-year-old son’s departure.

She still couldn’t recall where Jacob Valent
was, but it didn’t matter. Ayan couldn’t get the face of her
yet-to-be son out of her mind. The memory of the dress she was
wearing, the families in the background saying farewell to their
young sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters was clearer to her
than it was at first, too. There was so much in that vision, so
many good things she wanted to cling to.

The Warlord would be the first ship launched
in whatever society would grow out of the moments she was living,
and she wouldn’t have it look like a funeral. She summoned the
vacsuit outfit menu and quickly selected the dress that looked like
the one in her vision of the future. It was white with hints of
yellow, cut to modestly suggest her best features, and fit for
comfort. Her black vacsuit shifted and changed colour until it
matched the dress on her display. The mid-shin length, loose skirt
was whipped up to her knees by the wind, but the vacsuit fabric
didn’t allow it to go up any further. The wind calmed and she saw
almost everyone who wasn’t on security duty hurriedly changing
their outfits to dresses, suits, and several switched to
loose-fitting clothing that looked like ancient pirate wear. It
became a theme, and by the time the Warlord was looming within
reach, Ayan was all smiles.

“Do you remember any poetry from when you
were younger?” Liam asked, remaining in his robes. He was the only
one that came dressed for the occasion already.

Ayan already had something in mind by the
time he finished speaking. She called it up on her comm unit and
projected it onto the hull of the Warlord. “Written by King Harold
the Fourth,” she read. Her reflection mixed with the poem projected
onto the hull. She looked serious, and much younger than she
expected. It was evident that she had been crying.

Ayan cleared her throat and read the poem, looking
from bright red letters to the reflections of everyone standing at
her sides on the Clever Dream.

“Go on, young soldier,

to battle, to war.

Stand fast, young sailor,

by the barrel, by rail.

Live long in honour,

we love you absently.

We build anew now,

for you in your peace.

Go on, young soldier,

until your fight is done.

Stand fast, young sailor,

until your sea is calm.”

“May this ship protect her crew. We ask that
the sailors of old watch over her and all aboard.” Ayan hefted the
bottle then brought it up above her head, grasping it by the neck.
Jenny and Liam gripped the back of her dress at the waist, beneath
the scooped back. “Oh please break on the first try,” she said
under her breath to the mirth of the people standing nearby. “I
christen thee: Warlord.”

With all her strength, she smashed the
bottle against the side of the ship, and it exploded in a hail of
champagne and glass. Her vacsuit instantaneously covered her the
front of her body, resuming its previous shape after all the debris
was deflected. Cheering and applause rippled across the settlement.
Everyone who was watching had a view, thanks to a few people who
were transmitting it all to the Stellarnet, something that didn’t
even cross her mind thanks to her preoccupation.

The Warlord started slowly drifting away and
Ayan stepped back, regaining sure footing. “Thank you,” she said to
Jenny, who was still holding the back of her dress.

She released her grip. “That was beautiful,”
she said.

“My Aunt taught me about the British’s last
days on Earth, when they were still at war. It’s from the last king
born there,” she replied. Liam Grady’s hand stopped clenching her
dress, but his open palm moved up her back, in a familiar,
comforting gesture. Ayan didn’t stop him. His hand was warm,
gentle, and welcome.

* * *

It took Jake a moment to tear his attention
away from the two dimensional image in front of his command seat.
Ayan was looking towards the sky, watching the Warlord depart. Liam
Grady was right beside her, his hand stroking her back. “I don’t
have time for this,” he said finally.

The bridge was fully manned, with Finn on
the engineering console and Ashley at the helm with her new
navigator, Clara Ramone. Kadri, formerly from the Palamo, manned
communications, Frost sat at the primary tactical station, and
several other crewmembers watched operations or temporary screens
that were set up to monitor extra systems. Stephanie sat at the
main operations console right beside Jake, a new seat that was the
same height as the captain’s chair.

“Okay, this is taking some getting used to,”
she whispered. “These old displays are easier on the eyes, though.”
The two dimensional screens were projections, like holograms, but
they could be set so only the intended user could see them.

“They came cheap,” Jake said.

“Aye, but they’re still in use on most
battleships where I come from,” Frost said. “Simpler tech, harder
to break, easy to fix.”

“I believe it.”

Jake looked to the main display projected
against the front of the new bridge and watched as the four main
engines spread out and moved forward, pointing in four directions
around the ship. They took over for the smaller support engines
along the bottom of the ship seamlessly as they made their way into
orbit. The blue sky turned black, and thousands of lights belonging
to just as many ships came into view. A notification came up on his
screen telling him that the Warlord had clearance to approach the
sun. “How are the controls, Ashley?”

“Smooth, responsive,” Ashley said. “The
mind-wire is nice too, no more pedals.”

“Good. Don’t ignore the foot controls,
though. Just because we were able to adapt the neural listening
control from an Uriel doesn’t mean it’s one hundred percent yet,”
Jake replied.

“Aye, Captain.”

“How do you feel about doing the solar
roll-over for real?” Jake asked.

“Can’t wait,” Ashley replied. “That was the
dullest simulation I’ve ever run, and I ran it five times.”

“You’ve obviously never tried the Onaku City
sim,” Finn replied. “I ended up waiting for an air train for twenty
minutes.”

“You played that alone?” Clara asked.
“That’s supposed to be a social simulator. Minimum two hundred
participants.”

“Oh,” Finn replied. “No wonder.”

“The better question is: why were you
playing a social sim when leisure sims are restricted?” Stephanie
asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Just exploring the program library,” Finn
muttered.

“All right,” Jake said. “We’ve got
clearance, let’s thicken the Warlord’s skin.” He watched as their
course changed so they would pass near the sun then turn away after
it was finished there.

“Let’s hope we don’t have any thin spots,”
Frost said under his breath.

“Frost,” Stephanie said, shooting him a
warning glance. “Everything we’re saying is going ship wide. Some
positivity, please.”

The Warlord gracefully followed its assigned
flight path out of orbit and away from Tamber. Jake could feel Finn
hurriedly checking systems behind him, and brought up the
engineering status screens himself. The readouts filled half the
area in front of him. “This crew deserves more credit than I can
give,” Jake said. All the essential systems were functioning
nominally, especially the thrusters, which were firing at less than
a quarter of a percent. “Make the inboard engines available,
please.”

“Okay, main thrusters five through eleven
opening,” Finn replied.

Jake watched as the hull plates concealing
the thrusters they installed across the rear of the ship between
the maxjack and the rear dorsal turrets raised and slipped to the
sides. They were an older style of engine, but they could take many
different types of volatile fuel and provide an increase in
acceleration that would be a surprise to anyone expecting the
Warlord to be a simple converted hauler.

The Warlord cleared port space and Jake
smiled. “Fire ‘em up.”