War on a Thousand Fronts Read online

  Though I suppose it could just be that he looks really confused.

  His gaze swept across the room, then landed on Sera, his eyes widening. “Julianna?” he whispered. “How? What is going on?”

  “Uh…I’m not Julianna,” Sera replied, never having considered how much like her human mother she may appear. “It’s me, your daughter. Seraphina.”

  “Who?” Sera’s father asked, taking a tentative step out of the stasis pod. “Where…where am I?”

  “We call the system ‘Hidey Hole’.” Sera replied almost absently, staring into the eyes of the man before her, wondering how he could be here. Was he a clone? Another of Airtha’s pawns?

  “Really?” the other Sera snorted. “Try the ‘Nora System’.”

  “Nora…” Jeffrey Tomlinson whispered. “How did I end up here?” Suddenly his eyes narrowed as he looked at Sera, then at her doppelganger. “Wait…daughter? Are you twins?”

  “She’s a clone,” both Seras said at once, then glowered at one another.

  “That’s kinda creepy,” Valerie said in hushed tones.

  “I only have one daughter,” Jeffrey said after a moment. “Andrea…and neither of you look a thing like her.”

  “Father,” Sera asked, stepping toward the man she’d spent so much of her life either wishing desperately to please or reviling. “What year did you go into stasis?”

  Jeffrey glanced back at the stasis pod he’d just stepped out of. “Well…I don’t remember going into stasis, but my internal clock aligns with my last memories. It’s 7977.”

  “Shit,” Sera whispered. “You’ve been in there for over a thousand years.”

  “Well if he’s been in there, who was running the Transcend for the last thousand years?” Jason asked.

  Jeffrey had a stricken look on his face, and he staggered backward, placing a hand on the wall to steady himself. He swallowed and looked up at Sera, and then her evil twin.

  “Airtha,” he whispered.

  Jen announced.

  Sera nodded absently, her eyes still on her father…or, to his mind, the man who was genetically her father, but had never even known her.

  “We have to go,” Sera said. “Airtha’s forces are coming.”

  “She’s here?” Jeffrey asked, paling further. “She knows about our work in the LMC?”

  Sera took a step forward. “Father…she…she’s running half the Transcend now…with her.” She jerked a thumb at the other Sera.

  “And you?” Jeffrey asked, meeting her eyes and not glancing away for the first time since he’d called her ‘Julianna’.

  “I’m running the other half. Trying to get our civil war under control so we can confront Orion.”

  “We’re at war with Orion too?” he asked, pushing himself away from the wall. “What of the Inner Stars?”

  “Everyone’s at war with everyone, Father.”

  Sera couldn’t help but feel like she’d utterly failed this man she didn’t even know. When he had gone into stasis, the last FTL wars had finally ended, and the age of reconstruction was beginning.

  Now everything he had worked for was in shambles.

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” Jeffrey asked. “I didn’t raise you.”

  A lump formed in Sera’s throat, and she found herself unable to speak.

  “Shit…sorry,” Jeffrey said, as the High Guard ushered them out of the C&C and back into the corridors leading to the lifts. “I didn’t…”

  “You did raise me. Well, you and uncle Finaeus,” Sera said once she’d regained the powers of speech. “I guess…I guess it was just a different one of you.”

  “Finaeus?” Jeffrey asked. “You must take me to him, he’ll know what’s happened. He never trusted Julianna after she came back.”

  “Don’t worry.” She placed a hand on her father’s shoulder. “We’ll take you to him. He’s really going to be happy to see you.”

  Jason asked as he fell in on Sera’s other side.

  she admitted, unable to keep the waver out of her mental voice.

  Jason reminded her after a moment’s pause.

  Sera exclaimed, suddenly realizing they’d not checked Evil Sera over with the shadowtron.

  Fara answered before Sera could complete her question.

 

  Jason said as they turned down the corridor with the downward-looking windows on either side.

  Sera couldn’t help a laugh.

  “I can’t believe it’s been a thousand years…” Jeffrey said to no one in particular, shaking his head as they walked toward the lifts. He glanced at Sera. “Are you really my daughter? And her? Clones you said?”

  “I’m the original,” Sera said, then jerked her thumb at her doppelganger. “Airtha made her after I wouldn’t play ball.”

  Evil Sera only snorted and shook her head in silence.

  “Airtha tried to trick me into killing you,” Sera said to her father. “Well, the other you. In the end, an Orion agent did it, but then Finaeus arrived, and Airtha tipped her hand by trying to kill him. It was then that we realized she’d been playing all of us, manipulating things to take control of the Transcend and spark up a war with Orion.”

  “All of that is true, except for the part where Airtha is the one in the wrong,” Evil Sera said, as they reached the lifts to find Pearson already sending one of his fireteams up. “The Caners made this other Sera to try and take over the Transcend.”

  “Oh, c’mon!” Sera turned and took a step toward her clone. “When did they do that? When did the people of New Canaan have access to you to make a copy? They were cooped up in their system the whole time.”

  “They did it when I was on the Intrepid,” the other Sera shot back. “Before I flew back to Airtha from Ascella.”

  “Oh yeah?” Sera asked. “Then how do I remember everything about being the director of the Hand? How do I remember the night of June twenty-seventh, when Elena and I went swimming in Wishbone Lake, and she cut her foot on that sunken statue? That all happened after Ascella.”

  The other Sera paled, and Sera knew she had her on the ropes.

  “See! We both remember those years. Which means you were made from me while we were on Airtha—under our mother’s tender care.”

  “I—” the Airthan Sera began, then stopped.

  “And what about Helen?” Sera asked. “What happened to Helen?”

  “She had to be removed,” the other Sera retorted. “It had been too long.”

  “Damn right it had been too long,” Sera muttered. “Face it, girl. You’re the copy. You may be me in every way, but you’re still the copy. Proof is in the skin.”

  “Your skin?” Jeffrey asked, a puzzled look on his face.

  Sera held up her hand, still unarmored, and changed it from red to a light tan, then transparent. “Airtha doesn’t have the tech to do that. Not with skin, not that smoothly. It’s why you’re so pedestrian,” she sneered at her clone.

  The other Sera pursed her lips, looking resolute, but then her face fell, and she turned away, her shoulders drooping She whispered, “Stars…I wish none of this had ever happened. I should have stayed aboard Sabrina.”

  Sera’s sense of victory became pyrrhic, as the realization hit her that—despite Airtha’s influence—this other woman wearing her face was her. She had the same hopes and dreams. The same memories, passions, the same vulnerabilities.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, imagining how terrible her counterpart must feel, knowing that everything she
believed was a lie. “Look, we’ll figure this all out.”

  She nodded to Pearson, and his Marines directed the despondent Sera into the lift on the left, while Sera and Jason took the other one up with Jeffrey and the High Guard.

  “This is going to take a bit for me to wrap my head around,” Jeffery said, after a minute on the lift had passed. “You’re going to have to walk me through this step by step. And…you’re really my daughter?”

  Sera shrugged. “I guess? Genetically speaking, at least. Airtha must have cloned you at some point—”

  “She didn’t,” Jeffrey said. “I did, as a fallback. She must have found him and…unless I’m him. I don’t know that I’d be able to tell.”

  “We’ll be able to tell,” Jason said.

  Jeffrey glanced at Jason. “I’m sorry, this has all been entirely crazy. You’re…?”

  “Jason Andrews.” He held out his hand. “One-time captain of the GSS Intrepid.”

  Jeffrey took Jason’s proffered hand and shook it once while whispering, “the Intrepid…”

  “Colony ship, left Sol in 4124,” Jason supplied.

  Jeffrey’s eyes went wide. “That Intrepid? No wonder the shit’s hit the fan.”

  “We’ve been a bit of a catalyst,” Jason said in agreement.

  No one spoke as the lift continued its journey to the surface.

  In the passageway, Fara provided Jeffrey with an EV suit, while they had the other Sera strip out of her armor and don one as well.

  Five minutes later, they were outside the spire, and Valerie guided her charges toward one of the backup pinnaces that had set down in front of the facility, while Pearson led the other Sera to the second ship.

  They’d only taken a few steps when the atmosphere began to shimmer a few paces ahead, then a thunderclap tore through the air, knocking everyone sprawling.

  Sera clambered to her feet to see a silhouetted figure standing before them, tendrils of light spread around it.

  Valerie cried out, raising her rifle.

  “Valerie. Stop,” the figure’s voice boomed, and Sera’s mouth fell open.

  “Tanis?” she asked, broadcasting with her armor’s speakers.

  The tendrils of light drew back into the figure, and Sera saw that it was indeed Tanis. She was wearing light armor, but had no helmet—on a world without a breathable atmosphere. She was holding something in her hands like a shield, but cast it aside as she approached.

  “I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it?” Tanis asked, a smirk forming on her lips. “And it’s ‘Tangel’ now. Are you all safe?”

  Sera felt like the air had been sucked right out of her lungs as she gaped at Tanis—Tangel. “Yes…how…?”

  “Let’s get you into the pinnace,” Tangel said. “Me too; eventually I’ll need to breathe again. Plus, I want to talk to your father.”

  Sera managed to say after switching to the Link.

  Tangel glanced at Jeffrey Tomlinson, who was staring open-mouthed at her as he was led past her to the pinnace.

 

  A MIRACLE

  STELLAR DATE: 09.06.8949 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: ISF pinnace, Planet HH1

  REGION: Hidey Hole System, Large Magellanic Cloud

  The moment the airlock sealed, Tangel dismissed the field that had enveloped her head, the stale air she’d held in the bubble replaced by the pinnace’s fresh supply.

  As she gulped down long breaths, Sera stopped next to her, pulling her helmet off to reveal a wide-eyed stare. Jason followed suit, his expression not significantly different.

  “What…?” Sera asked. “OK, how did you do that?”

  “Arrive on the planet?” Tangel asked, leaning against the bulkhead, weathering a wave of dizziness.

  “No, Tani—gel…how did you…” Sera rolled her eyes. “Bah! I can’t come up with a sarcastic remark right now. Yeah, how did you get here?”

  “I used a jump gate,” Tangel replied with a wink.

  She could see a light go on in Sera’s eyes, and the woman snapped her fingers. “That was a gate mirror! The thing you tossed away when you arrived. But why didn’t you take a ship?”

  Tangel checked the status of the three pinnaces rising above the planet toward Sheeran’s ship, the Helios, ensuring that every member of the team was safely aboard.

  Above, Sheeran was battling the Airthan fleet, already having disabled four of the sixty enemy vessels, his rail-cruiser flinging near-relativistic pellets out at dozens of targets at a time.

  Good, Tangel thought. Glad to see that design works so well.

  While making those observations, she replied to Sera’s question.

  “I was in the Trensch System, aiding in the negotiations—which is to say I jumped in on a pinnace with Joe. The ship took some shots as we approached our target, and was disabled. I had to leap through space to get to the enemy cruiser where Corsia and Eve had been captured—”

  “Terrance?” Jason interrupted.

  Tangel nodded. “OK. Everyone is safe. Joe included. Turns out they had a bit of a ‘remnant’ problem in the Inner Praesepe Empire.”

  “A remnant?” a voice asked from behind Tangel, and she turned to see Jeffrey Tomlinson standing in the pinnace’s central passageway.

  “A little thing ascended AIs can leave behind in people,” Sera explained. “Fun for controlling them and making messes everywhere.”

  “Really? They can do that?” Jeffrey’s eyes were wide as saucers.

  “That’s a long story,” Tangel interjected. “Regarding my arrival, we had a bit of a dust-up with the IPE’s space force, but their Minister of the Interior was aboard the Andromeda, and we managed to get everything under control. Remnants and all.

  “Then I got the message that you two had skipped on out here, and were in hot water as well.” Tangel paused to give both Sera and Jason meaningful looks. “Joe will confirm that I had some choice words for the pair of you.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Jason said, rolling his finger in a circle to indicate she carry on.

  “Fine, but you’re getting demerits for leaving the galaxy without permission. Anyway, so the Andromeda’s gates were still racked up in storage, and Sheeran’s distress call over the QuanComm made things here seem more than a little dire.

  “The Andromeda has a smaller gate for pinnaces that was fully assembled in one of the bays, but it didn’t have the power to jump a ship clear out here to the LMC—not without some jury rigging.”

  “So you just went on your own?” Jason’s tone made it sound like he thought she was crazy, or lying…or perhaps both.

  Tangel shrugged. “Well, I pulled the gate mirror off the front of our pinnace and had them activate the gate while it was still in the bay. Sephira oriented the Andromeda to align with the LMC, and I…jumped.”

  Sera shook her head, mouth hanging open, while Jason wore an expression that caused Tangel to wonder if he wanted to try a ship-less gate jump.

  “Just so you know,” Tangel continued, “once I did it, I realized how monumentally stupid it was. If I didn’t reach my target, I could have dumped out into space between the galaxies. That possibility made for the most frightening seventy seconds of my life.”

  Sera raised a finger and wagged it at her friend. “Keep that firmly in mind if you feel like coming down on us for going on this mission.” She held a stern expression on her face for a few seconds, then lunged forward and wrapped Tangel in a tight embrace.

  “OK, OK,” Tangel grunted. “Shit’s hitting the fan out there, we should get to the cockpit.”

  Jason pushed past Tangel and Sera, jogging down the passageway to where the Marine pilot was shifting vector to avoid a swarm of Airthan drones.

  Tangel pulled the pinnace’s feeds, watching as the enemy drones fired on the ship from every direction, wearing do
wn the ship’s standard shields.

  “No stasis on these pinnaces?” Tangel asked as she reached the cockpit to see Jason sliding into the copilot’s seat.

  “Too many capital ships need them,” Jason replied as he took control of the pinnace’s defense systems, firing chaff and electronic countermeasures in an attempt to fool the enemy drones. “We shorted the pinnaces out here in the LMC, because we were supposed to be alone.”

  Tangel only grunted in response, watching as Sheeran altered his vector to close with the approaching pinnaces, the Helios spewing its deadly hail like a cyclone of destruction.

  “We have an approach vector,” the pilot announced while weaving the pinnace through the incoming drone-fire. Tangel realized that the enemy craft were not taking kill shots on the pinnace—instead they seemed focused on overwhelming the craft’s shields.

  I wonder if I can locate their command frequency…

  Tangel tapped into the pinnace’s scan suite, and then hopped onto that of the other two pinnaces. She used the passive sensors on each ship to broaden her scope, creating a massive antenna, flying through space.

  Detecting anything through all the chaos around them seemed impossible, especially with the Airthan fleet firing at the Helios with everything they had.

  C’mon… Tangel thought as she picked out a low-frequency wave that varied in amplitude in a…predictable pattern! At only two-hundred megahertz, the carrier wave didn’t support a high-bandwidth datastream, but it would have the range to manage the drones from ships three light seconds away.

  This has to be it.

  Tangel tapped into the signal, finding the datastream and, picking through the information, looking for the auth mechanism so she could fake her own wave and confuse the drones that were slowly wearing down the pinnaces’ conventional shields.

  “Fuckin’ bots,” the Marine pilot muttered, as a dense wave of drones closed with their vessel. “Those things will do us in for sure….”

  “Think again,” Jason said through gritted teeth, and Tangel watched the third pinnace cease its evasive maneuvers and streak straight toward the wave of approaching enemy craft. It fired all of its beams and missiles, causing explosions to flare in the mass of drones.