Rohan goggled at Terryfor a heartbeat. “You’d willingly follow me back into the jaws ofan angry tigress?”
“Kiara needsyou.” Terry was practicallyhopping. “Thefaster we get you home, the better it is for her.”
“You’re a good man,Terry,” Rohan said. He looked at him a moment longer, noddingslowly. “Yes, a very good man. Let’s go.”
He started shufflingacross the square with Terry, who kept looking back and forth betweenRohan and the other side of the square. “I could carry you on myback, sir?”
A chuckle. “Thankyou, but no.”
LearningCurve
Babilim Station
“Normal geometryrestored,” the helm officer announced. “Position matches trace.”
“Very well,” theofficer of the deck acknowledged. “Secure the path drive and bringthe pitch drives online.”
Gabriella steppedcloser to the outer view-port. She wasn’t entirely sure what it wasthat she’d expected to see but it was probably more than she wasseeing.
A brilliant white orbwas there but how could she see it if it was encased by the station?Maybe that’s not the star…
“I see the star,”her mother said, “but what happened to the station?”
Luna pointed out thewindow. “You see how it looks like a gas cloud over there? Thatslightly lighter region of space?”
“Okay,” Adelinanodded.
“That’s thestation. Watch.”
I suppose if we’re in a station big enough tohouse a star, we shouldn’t be surprised if we’re too far away tosee it, Gabriella thought, evenfrom the inside.
The cloud beganresolving itself into a wall and the wall seemed to grow as they drewnearer. Details became evident – structures, gaps and a twinklingof what must have been lights.
Gabriella gasped,putting a hand over her throat and leaning forward. The lights thatshe’d taken to be windows were nothing of the sort. They werequickly expanding, revealing themselves to be city-sized groupings oflights.
No.
The cities oflights were separating again. They were continent-sized groups?“Those structures are larger than Earth,” she whispered in awe.And there’s no apparent curve. It’s so big you can’teven see enough of it to make out curvature. This place is aFlat-Earther’sdream.
“Several timeslarger, in some cases,” Luna said. “And it’s currently home toseveral thousand Humans.”
“And you really don’tknow who built it?” Adelina asked. “Wouldn’t they have leftbehind something? Literature, movies, civic records?”
“If the stationknows,” Luna said, “it ain’t telling us. We can communicatewith it, to a limited extent, but we’ve made no headway on itsorigins.”
“Wow!” Gabriellabreathed. “It’s like finding a temple in the jungle but times tenthousand! Can you imagine the civilization that could do somethinglike this?”
“I’m not sureI really can,” Luna admitted, sounding alittle smaller than usual. “Iwas never the creative one in our family and,frankly, picturing how something like this was built is juststaggering.
“I mean, therehave to be more than a few entire solar systems missing because ofthis. It’s hundreds ofkilometers thick. Thousandsof systems would have to be harvested to create this monster.”
“Sounds like yourimagination is doing just fine,” Adelina shivered. “I wonder ifany of those systems had life on them.”
“That’s a lotof ghosts,” Gabriella muttered. “Let’s assume they were allsterile systems, so we can sleep at night.” Shewatched for a while in silence, then another thought occurred to her.
“Even assumingyou have the tech to… just harvest an entire system, how do youtransport all of it here and convert it into this?” She shook herhead slowly. “This must be how the ancient nomads would have feltwhen they saw the GreatWallfor the first time.
“That’s us. A bunchof nomads, sitting on their horses staring at the biggest thing we’veever seen and trying to comprehend how it came to be.”
“How is thisnot the jewel in the emperor’s crown?” Adelina asked. “Whyaren’t there imperial ships swarming all over the place?”
“This place isterrifying,” Gleb said. He stepped closer to the group by thewindow. “Especially to a Quailu because it’s so humbling.” Hewaved at the approaching inner surfaces. “This is a reminder of howinsignificant they are in comparison.
“The palace atThrone World, the hab-ring of Kurnugia… Mega-projectsbuilt by the empire are insignificant next to this. Whoeverbuilt this thing could have snuffed out the entire empire withoutbreaking a sweat.”
“If they evenhappened to consider the empire worth noticing,” Luna added. “Doesan elephant give a shit about a mosquito?”
“The empireknows about this place,” Gleb said. “The infolurks in their databases like a primal fear in theirsubconscious mind. They’d rather ignore it, pretend it doesn’teven exist.
“And now,” hecontinued mildly, “their dirty secret, their shamefully betrayedsubjects, one of the deadliest species in the galaxy... live here.”
Gleb cleared histhroat, seeming a little embarrassed by his impromptu speech. Heoffered up a grin. “Who’s up for a tour?”
Carrier Operations
Ragnarok Orbit
“It looks good,Chief,”Captain Hennessy said. “How fast do the re-arming lines work?”
Turnaround time isabout five minutes,” the chief-mate of the Kuphar said, “butNoa’s working on a modular unit for missiles that should cut thatby three minutes.”
“Good!” Hennessynodded. “Every second counts in a fight and three minutes couldcount for a hell of a lot.”
“Is it true, sir?”The chief looked at Bill. “You and the Lady Luna flew combatmissions burning flammable liquids for thrust?”
Hennessychuckled, still looking at his new carrier’s hangar. “That’sright, Chief.”
“And you had to keepyour... buoyancy in mind the whole time?”
“Well, we had to notfly straight into the ground, if that’s what you mean.”
The chief shook hishead in wonder. “In the empire, it’s every captain’s worstnightmare, having to fight with his back against a gravity well. Youguys do that at the bottom of a gravity well, riding anexploding trail of… mithmelantineII…” Heused the imperial word for kerosene. “And how long does that fuellast?”
“Combat radiuswas about five hundred miles…” Hegrinned at the chief. “Assuming you plan to land afterward.”
To the chief, whooriginally came from the empire, battles ranged over hundreds ofthousands of miles in the black of space. Five hundred miles went byin the blink of an eye in a corvette.
“No wonder you guyswanted smaller ships you could control without having to give ordersto crew-members. I bet you use the controls more by instinct thananything.”
“If you aren’tquick as thought,” Hennessy told him, “you’ll be a greasyspot.”
“No doubt, sir,”the chief said. “No doubt.”
They stood there insilence for a while, watching the crews prep for the firstmass-launch test. Half of the ship’s fighter pilots were youngerlooking
