The Path of Andromeda (RF IX), Chapter 8
Spoiler alert: This is the first draft of the ninth book in the Reckless Faith series, now with the working title of The Path of Andromeda. You can start with the prologue here: https://devonai.wordpress.com/2024/10/17/reckless-faith-ix-prologue/
Author note: The last part of Chapter 7 has been edited to include a tidbit of information from the customs officer regarding the Flying Serpent. The crew of the Reckless Faith is now aware of its existence.
In a dark room on the Kestrel, Helena waited.
Strouth’s quarters were right off the bridge, in a room that had originally been meant as a captain’s office. While he still used it for that purpose, it was large enough to add a bed, so he had made it into his quarters as well. Since the Kestrel never strayed too far from the Serpent, he rarely had to worry about a situation on the bridge keeping him awake. Helen had never thought much about that, until it offered her an opportunity.
It hadn’t been difficult to get Strouth to invite her into his bed again, and there hadn’t been much conversation about their prior relationship first. If the man had any reservations about whether or not it was a good idea, he certainly hadn’t expressed them. For Helena, once the deed was done, all she had to do was wait.
After sleeping all day, there was no chance of her nodding off again. Fortunately for her, Strouth had passed out almost immediately. Still, she wanted to wait an hour or two to make sure she wouldn’t disturb him. The task reminded her of her rebellious teenage years on the Swan, when she would wait for her parents to go to bed before she sneaked out to meet friends. Then and now, seconds seemed like hours. As much as she tried to distract herself with inconsequential thoughts, the dangerousness of her mission weighed heavily on her mind.
After ninety minutes, Helena was as confident as she could be that Strouth was fast asleep. She got up, put on a t-shirt, grabbed her PDA, and crept to the exit. Luckily, the door was manually-operated, and she was able to pass through it without making a sound. She blinked at the bright light on the bridge, and immediately wished she had put on her boots, as the metal floor was freezing. The room was empty, as she was expecting at that time of night, and she made her way to the navigation console. There, she made a note of their coordinates, as well as the distance to Ibnal’saffar. Then, she crossed to the communications console.
She was not surprised to find it locked; however, the option to send a mayday was still available. Once on that screen, she had five options: all frequencies, SRC only, high-band only, low-band only, and cancel. She selected the last one and, to her delight, she had full access. She set her PDA on the console and prepared to send a text message to the frequency John had given her. When the program was ready, she composed her message.
Her heart leapt into her chest as Strouth emerged from his room, rubbing his eyes before noticing her.
“Helena? What are you doing out here?”
She threw him a quick smile, then hit the send button. “Am I bothering you? I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d find some entertainment on the ‘net for a while.”
“In your underwear? Aren’t you cold?”
She exited the comm program. “Nah, it’s fine in here. I’ve always had thicker blood than you anyway.”
“You’d be more comfortable in the lounge. Why don’t you go put your pants on and head down there?”
“I suppose you’re right. Care to join me for a cup of tea or something?”
“Sure. I’ll meet you back inside in a minute.”
Helena’s adrenaline began to flow. She returned to his quarters, picked her pants up off the floor, put them on, then donned her socks and boots. Though her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, she knew Strouth had a solid bronze statue of a kestrel on a shelf near the bathroom. She found her way there, and waited, her heart pounding. Strouth came back, and turned on the lights. He wore a dour expression.
“Back in my fleet days, treason was punishable by death.”
“I’ve taken no oaths to you, Jerrod.”
“I suppose not. Honestly, I’m more disappointed in you than I am angry. I thought I could trust you more than this.”
She sighed. “It seems it’s time I leveled with you. I’m determined to get to Ibnal’saffar by any means necessary. Since convincing you to bring me there has proved impossible, I decided to enlist some help. There’s a ship on the way to pick me up. If you ever had any real feelings for me, you’ll let me go.”
“Why? What do you expect to find down there?”
“It’s a long story; I won’t bore you with it.”
“Even if I had agreed to take you there, I wouldn’t have just left you there. The planet’s a wasteland.”
“That’s my problem to deal with. Now, are you going to stand aside?”
Strouth growled, “Or what? You’ll brain me with that statue? You can…”
The color drained out of Strouth’s face, and his jaw dropped. Helena picked up the kestrel.
“Don’t try me, Jerrod, you know how strong I am.”
“You’re the saboteur,” he said calmly.
“So what if I am? Let my ship pick me up, and you can make up whatever story you think will best calm the population. Hell, tell them you blew my head off, I don’t care.”
“It may come to that. You know I can’t let you leave. If you refuse to surrender, we might as well settle this now.”
Helena considered the man. Though she was indeed stronger than him, not by virtue of exercise but by genetics, Strouth doubtlessly had a lot more combat training than she. She felt bad; she admired his commitment to his ideals, but could never understand why a place as boring as the Serpent appealed to him. Perhaps some trauma that he never told her about lurked in his past, keeping him from the more adventurous life a ship like the Kestrel could offer. Strouth rarely talked about his time in the fleet. It was a shame what had to be done.
“Fine!”
She lunged at him, brandishing the statue above her head. He easily side-stepped the blow, and threw a punch. She blocked it with the statue, causing him to roar in pain. He stepped back, cradling his hand.
“Why?”
“This is about a higher power, higher than you, higher than the Order of Andromeda, and higher than me. I wish you could understand… I have no choice.”
Strouth stumbled back until his heels met the edge of the bed, sprawling him backwards onto the mattress. Helena moved quickly until she was straddling him, again raising the bronze kestrel above her head.
__________
On the cold surface of Caracal, Ari, Eva, and Dana were moving quickly. They’d just exited the main building at the port, and were jogging along the access road for the landing pads. They found an opportunity to sprint across, dodging a truck and a couple of forklifts as they ran. Arriving at the Reckless Faith, the cargo ramp began to lower, and the trio paused to wait. Then, they made their way through the ship and up to the top deck. When they burst onto the bridge, Friday, sitting in the pilot chair, was waiting for them. She meowed at them loudly as they caught their breath.
“I’m so excited I can barely contain myself!” she began. “Just wait until you read this message!”
A text message appeared on the main screen. It began with an encryption confirmation, the sender’s frequency, then read in block letters, IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE REQUIRED. DO NOT COME IN HOT. JS. Then, there were a set of coordinates.
“JS,” said Dana. “John Scherer?”
Ari said, “That encryption key is one of ours. It corresponds to the one we reserved for emergency broadcasts or messages.”
Eva sat down at one of the consoles. “Those coordinates are one hundred and seventy light-years from here, about halfway to Tengshe.”
“We found them!” said Friday, elated.
“Maybe,” said Ari. “Friday, was that message sent in English or another language?”
“The text portion was sent in Cygnian. There’s also some metadata embedded in the transmission, including the name of the vessel that sent it. The ‘Kestrel.’ I don’t like it, kestrels are annoying.”
“Interesting. So either the person who sent it is Cygnian, or the ship itself uses that language for the GUI.”
“It could be either,” said Dana. “So we can’t be sure whether or not the message was sent directly from John himself.”
“John would have signed it ‘Temerity’.”
“Probably, yes.”
Friday jumped from the chair onto the front console. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
Eva said, “We need to be careful, Friday. It could be a trap. Which is why I don’t think we should try to hail the Kestrel. Let’s drop out of FTL a few thousand klicks away, and do some recon.”
“I agree,” said Ari.
Dana nodded. “Same. I’ll contact the Antares and the Fox and let them know where we’re going, but tell them to stay on course to Ibnal’saffar for now.”
“Fine. Unfortunately, if we realize we’re outmatched, we’re going to be stuck waiting twelve days for them to get here.”
“Ideally there won’t be a fight,” said Eva. “The universe owes us an easy one.”
Dana sat in the pilot chair. Ari sat at the console across from Eva. Friday headed for the door.
“I’m going to go get Tycho,” she said.
“Fine, but you two behave yourselves.”
The door opened for the cat, and she exited to the corridor. Dana rolled her chair forward, and grasped the flight controls.
“All systems are in the green,” said Ari.
Dana brought the ship into the air, earning an angry admonition from ground control. It didn’t take long to break atmo, and she guided the ship away from the planet and the mess of ships and satellites that were in orbit. Friday returned with Tycho, and the two of them talked to each other excitedly until Eva told them to keep it down. When Dana was sure they were clear of other traffic, she active the FTL drive.
“All right,” said Dana, locking down the autopilot, “It’ll take us 59 minutes to get to those coordinates. We’ll plan on dropping out five klicks from the target.”
“Aw, man,” said Friday. “We have to wait an hour?”
“You know what our top speed is, Friday.”
“Yeah, but I hadn’t done the math yet. Oh, well. I guess another hour is okay.”
“In the meantime, Ari, if you can take over for me, I wouldn’t mind grabbing some lunch.”
“I want lunch,” said Tycho.
“I’m sure you do,” replied Eva. “C’mon, then.”
“I’ll stay here with Ari,” said Friday.
Eva, Dana, and Tycho exited to the hallway, then descended the stairs to the galley. They moved to the fridge and looked inside.
“Tycho, what do you want?” asked Eva.
“Ground beef!” came the reply.
Eva peered further into the fridge. “That’s it? Just a bowl of ground beef? I’m not sure we have that.”
“You can’t just give him whatever he wants,” said Dana. “Not unless you want to clean it up off the floor later. Tycho, you can have either kibble or boiled chicken.”
“Both!” he said.
She retrieved a container of chicken, then grabbed a bag of dry food from a nearby cabinet. Once she’d put it together and offered it to Tycho, she and Eva made their own selections. They sat down at the table in the center of the room.
“He always asks for different things, but then accepts one or both of what I gave him.”
Eva smiled. “It’s always been difficult trying to figure out what cats and dogs are actually thinking, even with the ability to talk to them. Friday and Esmee are exceptional, though, comparatively speaking.”
“Are they still doing research on dogs?”
“As far as I know. If we ever figure out how to get them to operate autonomously, then there are some obvious applications for thinking dogs in the field.”
Tycho devoured his food, then ran back upstairs. Dana and Eva smiled.
“As long as they can think about something other than food.”
Eva poked at her container of pasta marinara with her fork. “I hate to sound gloomy, but have you thought about how Friday and Tycho will deal with it if John or Ray has been killed?”
Dana shook her head. “I’d rather not think about that at all. But it is something to worry about. Tycho has expressed sadness over Christie being gone. Though he takes some solace in knowing she’s still alive, I didn’t try to explain the nuance of her current form. He doesn’t understand why she won’t rejoin the crew. It kinda breaks my heart.”
“I know. The other factor to consider is that we can bring back to life anyone who has had direct contact with an orb, minus any memories since that time. Do you know what instructions, if any, our friends have given us about that?”
Dana pushed her food aside. “Do you mean like a Last Will and Testament? Yes, everyone on the Reckless Faith has documented what we want to happen in the event of our deaths. Though I don’t know what anyone else has ultimately decided, it has been an occasional topic of conversation on board ever since we discovered the possibility of reincarnation via an android body. I can tell you for sure that Ari doesn’t regret it; as far as Faen and Fuyue, I haven’t talked to them about it. I’ve decided to go for it, but the possibility that my original soul will simply cease to exist is still terrifying.”
“I hear you on that. I’m in the same boat. That shit will keep you up at night if you don’t push it to the back of your mind.”
“Hopefully neither of us will have to worry about it for a few more decades. As for Friday, I don’t think it would be productive to talk to her about it until the time comes. God forbid.”
Eva mumbled around her food. “I wonder if she ever wishes she was back to being a normal cat.”
“That, you can ask her about. C’mon, let’s finish up and get back to the bridge.”