Queen of Heaven Read online

  Your concern is a human thing, Trisha, driven by cultural concerns as fickle and arbitrary as a mountain breeze.

  Do you truly believe that if this was a misstep, it would come to you with such surefootedness?

  “Not so much when ya put it that way,” she surrendered. “s’Kinda like I couldn’t not get hired.”

  Mmm.

  Noticed that, did you?

  EARTHFLEET HQ – EARTH ORBIT – FEB 23, 2371

  Proudly sporting two and a half stripes on each sleeve and carrying a set of gold oak leaves for his collar, Jerrett Nash boarded the command ship that evening and immediately realized the week-and-a-half trip to Alliance Central would be a joyride.

  Admiralty Command ships began as class-4 freighters that were repurposed into spacious and refined mobile headquarters for heavy hitters called into an operational theater. On the outside they were indistinct monohulls with outboard engine nacelles, but inside they were richly decorated in darkwoods and burgundy carpets befitting a flag officer.

  The first hour aboard was enough to familiarize himself with everything the ship had to offer, and he’d promised himself a daily workout in the zero-G gym, but once they were deep in slipstream his focus turned to mapping out his campaign and studying the diplomatic files. It would be unforgivable to rely on his own wherewithal and ignore the subterfuges Alliance officials were notorious for.

  In idle moments, he sat before the wide-open view of slipstream space and pondered his career. Making lieutenant commander at thirty-one put him on the early side. It was the payoff for his constant competence, and he had ambitions to match. Even if he survived this ordeal with his commission intact, there was no hope of his becoming an exec on a frigate. Not after spending the bulk of his lieutenancy at headquarters instead of on a ship. But he could certainly command a section on a cruiser, and that might someday lead to a captaincy of his own.

  Day upon day his reflections before the slipstream view deepened. At times he caught flashes of light unrelated to the hazy view outside; moments of clarity amidst the fog. With so much time at his disposal and no pressing demands to keep his attention from wandering, wander it did — high and low and everywhere in-between. Flashes came and went...hints of things catching his eye in vacant moments. Nothing solid. Just traces.

  Beginnings of the madness? he wondered. It’s been a long time since I’ve been out here. And never with this much time to kill.

  SYDNEY MEGAPLEX – EARTH – FEB 24, 2371

  Dressed in her cheery entertainment-staff outfit the next morning, Trish followed another green path through the Goddess complex to a large set of onyx-paneled doors. And waiting for her was a gal in the more subdued uniform of a crewmember. Her gaze followed Trish’s movements with interest.

  “Miss Thierry?” she greeted. “I’m Saia. Since I’m heading up t’the Asherah, they asked if I’d help you get situated.”

  Trish admired Saia’s Near Eastern features. Darker-than-average skin and almond eyes said interesting things about her ancestry.

  “They really think of everything, don’t they?” Trish smiled, glad to have a guide.

  “Ya ready?” Saia stepped toward the doors and they glided open to reveal a launchpad awash in the blinding Sydney morning. Trish visored her eyes and studied the sleek shuttle awaiting them.

  “Oooooh...” She licked her lips. “That’s some serious sexy.”

  Starships like this were ‘real’ space, not just orbital kid stuff. With its main bulk astern and a flat, tapering nose stretching way out front, it glinted in the sun like a golden dagger and positively screamed ‘Awesome’.

  “Staff yachts’re cool,” Saia seconded. “I rode one out t’my first assignment. They’ve even got sleeping pods an’ a medbay. I’ll show ya.”

  She took Trish’s arm and they strode up the stern ramp into the plush interior.

  4

  * * *

  SYDNEY MEGAPLEX – EARTH – FEB 24, 2371

  The staff shuttle was slender, but as nicely appointed as any noble’s yacht. The appreciable crush of thick royal blue carpeting beneath Trish’s heels spoke volumes about Goddess’s budget and attention to detail. And one tap was all it took to prove the teak-lined walls were real, not the flimsy veneer that paneled mass transit.

  A wide, carpeted staircase with carved wooden bannisters led up to the flightdeck, which was just as elegant and held seating for six behind the captain and copilot. Trish found herself studying the flight controls with interest. Holopanels spread out across the front of the cockpit like a glowing digital smorgasbord, with the viewport waiting just beyond. The best view in the world, if rumors were true. It had never occurred to her what a thing it would be to fly a spaceship.

  “We’ll hang out here for takeoff, but I can show ya the rest in flight,” Saia promised, taking the next seat. “All situated, Captain.”

  “Closing up shop.” The youngish woman at the helm worked her holopanel and the stern ramp hummed itself into the hull, making room for the rear hatchway to hiss into airlock. Trish could barely contain the butterflies in her stomach.

  This’z fricking real! she reminded herself. Her all-new life was underway, not just dangling in front of her like a carrot. It was too much.

  With the G-tech’s familiar second-long buzz, the view outside went dizzy as the ship buoyed itself into the air. It was no different from the liftoff for her flight to Sydney, but now she was going off-world. This time it was for real.

  She caught her mouth hanging open.

  Act like you’ve been there before, she reminded herself as they effortlessly speared the sky. The last wispy cirrus clouds blew by in moments.

  Neither she nor Saia knew of the advances that cancelled out sonic booms, making hypersonic flight a noiseless event. And while G-tech made escape velocity a relic of bygone ages, who wanted to linger in the atmosphere when space was waiting just beyond? Most trips to orbit only lasted about three minutes.

  “First time out?” Saia intruded on her gestalt.

  “Just trans-ats.” Trish nodded. “Ya know, when the universe wants your life ta change, it doesn’t mess around. I was completely stuck, and in less than twenty hours I’ve been in space twice on two different ships, and now I’m about ta meet my new home among the stars.”

  “You’re gonna be all kindsa spacegurl,” Saia promised. “By the time we get back, this’ll be your front porch.” She was glancing out at the dark low-orbit sky. “Lemme show ya what a company yacht’s all about...”

  The middle deck one flight down held most of the ship’s creature comforts: sleeping pods, a shower room, a modest medbay and recovery room, and a food generator done up as a galley. There was also a spiral staircase descending to the bottom deck where Trish discovered the coolest conference room ever. Four cozy reclinable chairs surrounded a circular table inside a contoured room that featured its own curved viewport looking out on space beneath the yacht’s belly.

  “I spent two days in one’a these when I shipped out to the Astarte,” Saia reminisced as they settled into the chairs. Earth spread out below them in the viewport as the shuttle plied the busiest layer of orbital space. Gleaming metallic objects skittered by, each one a satellite or freighter overtaken by the speeding yacht. Then, a much larger hulk loomed into view.

  “z’That it?” Trish hushed, all baited breath.

  Saia scoffed. “Nuh-uh, That’s just a system liner, not for deep space. You’ll know the Asherah when ya see ’er. She’s too big for mid-orbit, so we’ve got a ways before we get out that far.”

  “So, whaddo you do in Ops?” Trish asked.

  “Mosly internal stuff. Monitoring systems...keepin’ track of assets. I’m workin’ my way up ta Actual.”

  “Actual?”

  “Traffic control. They handle the in- and outbound shuttles ’n launches.”

  #Ladies,# the shuttle captain’s voice came over the comm, #the best view’s up here.#

  Trish and Saia reached the flightdeck and t
he copilot pointed to a distant speck of light way above the others.

  “Captain, any possibility of a fly-around?” Saia asked. “This’z my friend’s first time out.”

  A quick check from Actual brought a go-ahead, and Trish drank in the view from high Earth orbit while the distant star grew into Asherah’s vast bulk. Soon, it became a glittering diamond blazing light from a gazillion facets. It was too dazzling to make out the shape of the hull. Even the bright side of Earth paled in comparison.

  “Ohh...myyy...gaaaw–” Trish gaped.

  “See?” Saia was smirking, eyes alight with her own new post.

  The fly-around revealed an endlessly-stretching vessel defined by four ‘petals’ sprouting from a central hull. The oblong petals ran most of its fourteen-kilometer length like elongated spokes from a hub, all of them sheathed in barely-there envirodomes that reached more than a kilometer into space like artificial skies. Inside them were city districts bristling with majestic skylines.

  A world traveler would instantly recognize the districts as Singapore, Mumbai, Istanbul and New Rio — the tourist hotspots with the most visual and cultural flair. Centuries earlier, Manhattan might have been part of the mix, but its submergence had reduced it to just the northeast port for the world’s breadbasket, as North America was known. The continent had long since lost its place as a bucket list item for most tourists.

  “Where’s home, Miss Thierry?” asked the copilot, himself a good-looking black guy who’d captured Saia’s open interest.

  Trish was stumped for a moment before realizing he meant where she was stationed aboard the glittering starliner. “Uh...Mumbai. Zodiac Lounge.”

  He looked it up on his panel and shot her some disbelief. “Zero-zero?”

  Trish could only shrug as Saia looked her over. “What?” was the best she could offer.

  “Zero-zero’s the center’a town,” Saia echoed the copilot’s thoughts. “It’s the starting point when they plan out the district.”

  “And where they put the hottest attractions,” the copilot acknowledged. “The prime-est real estate around.”

  “Got me...” Trish shrugged again.

  The captain maneuvered their shuttle into an inverted hover outside Mumbai’s envirodome, and far below them — or above, depending on one’s point of view — perched a transparent-roofed saucer atop an elegantly curved crystal spire.

  “There ’tiz,” she announced, magnifying the viewport so Trish could gaze up into her new office for the first time. From here, she could just make out a club arranged in concentric circles — a multi-tiered dance floor surrounding a central ring, with a G-tech stage for a certain lone performer.

  Goosebumps invaded Trish’s skin like a foreign army when she saw how exposed she’d be. All of space and a whole jury of neighboring towers would peer down at her from above, amping up her nude performances into a community-wide spectacle that would be just as visible to the surrounding skyline as to her own clubbers.

  Dear god.

  “You must put on quite the show,” Saia reckoned, raising an eyebrow.

  Sightseeing over with, the captain vectored their yacht toward a landing bay that only heightened Trish’s awe, for what seemed from a distance like a narrow gap running the length between two neighboring districts turned out to utterly dwarf the yacht. Roughly a hundred meters high, it admitted approaching ships into Asherah’s inner sanctum where a string of landing bays, each a quarter-kilometer wide and twelve stories high, ran the length of the inner hull.

  “Holy fuckeddy!” Trish gasped.

  Saia smirked. “Welcome to the economy of size.”

  “Did giants build this thing?” Trish gawked at the structure swallowing their yacht like it was a dust mote. “How can somethin’ like this be manufactured? I mean, by people? It’s like a landscape.”

  “It takes a lot ta move a hundred ’n fifty thousand people in ’n out over the course of an hour,” the copilot explained.

  The captain nodded. “Some hefty ships come through here.”

  Passing through the enviroshields, their yacht drifted past a melee of activity as maintenance crews managed this or that shuttle and tended to waiting tangles of machinery. Small worker ships darted through the airspace, dodging hoverjacks piled high with bits and pieces no one but an engineer would recognize. These and other things floated through the bay’s cavernous expanse to disappear one-by-one into Asherah’s deep core.

  She was so large that anyone would get the impression Asherah’s hull was hollow; nothing but a shell containing bays and hangars for passenger transportation. In actuality there were plenty of internal workings crammed with engineering and propulsion systems, all carefully hidden from passengers who didn’t care to peek behind the curtain.

  The shuttle settled onto a decorated portion of the bay where Goddess colors furnished a sense of welcome. Before following the royal blue carpet and paneled walls to the staff entry, Trish took the time to deliberately set foot on the Asherah for the first time. She wanted this to be a moment.

  “I’m really here!”

  “Mostly.” Saia urged her toward the entry, where they were both processed and listed into the ship’s roster by an automated system. Then it was into a mover and up to an all-new existence.

  5

  * * *

  COMMAND SHIP – ALLIANCE SPACE – MAR 5, 2371

  Constant slipstream made for a strange hermit-like existence, and Jerrett was ecstatic to finally reach Starbase 12. Like all starbases, it was modeled on the Fleet headquarters orbiting Earth, with a central vertical spoke sprouting smaller saucer-shaped sections, and one huge flattened wheel of a torus at the top containing all the station’s landing bays.

  Jerrett sat before the viewport, salivating over the welcome slice of home, and he finally came back to himself setting foot in one of S-12’s cavernous bays.

  The reassuring ambience of the fleet surrounded him and he drank in the busyness of the bay. The sounds of labor were everywhere, accompanied by scents of ozone, machinery and hydraulics. Uniforms and dungarees made their way in the flow of work, tending to their responsibilities and reminding him that he, too, had something to do.

  His first order of business was to meet with the base’s commodore and brigadier to glean whatever he could about the Alliance.

  “Greetings, Commander Nash.”

  He turned to face the unexpected blues and turquoises of a Norjii female.

  “Um...” All he could do was blink.

  “I’ve startled you.” She offered an apologetic nod. Norjiis were closely humanoid, albeit with slender, lissome figures and a tendency to glide when walking. They also had exotically refined faces that made for a certain appeal, if one was open-minded enough. A forest of soft, luxurious quills for the head of hair and lustrous aqua tones for skin added to the allure, but this one’s bright, colorful robes and veils were a bizarre departure from the ordinarily grave dignity with which Alliance members carried themselves. If they’d meant her as a distraction, they certainly hadn’t underestimated her effect.

  “I-I’m sorry, Ambassador.” He returned her nod. “I wasn’t informed that you’d already arrived.”

  “Please pardon the offense, Commander, but I’m merely a guide. Ambassador Ran awaits us at the Alliance.”

  Nash quieted his heartbeat in relief. “No offense at all. How should I address you?”

  “I am Tivya.” She pronounced her name with three distinct syllables.

  “Very pleased t’meet you, Tivya.” He caught sight of her shuttle in the distance. The Alliance prohibited Earth ships on their stations, obliging Nash to make the last leg of the journey on one of theirs. Unfortunately, its early arrival meant his plans for picking Commodore Ngo’s brain were dashed. He’d have to go this one alone.

  “Do you require assistance with your luggage, Commander?” Tivya asked.

  “Oh, nnnot at all.” He struggled to catch up with the situation. “I’ll grab my sea bag ’n be right with
you.” He excused himself and disappeared through the hatch. Moments later he was following the exotic creature across the bay, admiring both her graceful movements and the elegant lines of her ship.

  Like his own, Tivya’s shuttle was a fairly simple monohull with outboard nacelles. It was smaller, but still pleasantly roomy and comfortable. Alliance designers were fond of aesthetics and had indulged themselves here by carving the flint-shaped vertical prow into scalloping, then inlaying it with baroque oval viewports around the flightdeck. It gave the bow a sense of intricate faceting that contrasted smartly with the plain hull, which was covered in a gray-green bioskin both on the angular recesses of its belly and its smooth dorsal curve.

  “The trip to Alliance Central will take eleven hours,” Tivya informed him, gesturing for Nash to make himself comfortable. “I hope our efforts to meet your needs are adequate. There are private quarters for you to refresh yourself, and our food generators include a variety of Terran favorites. If there’s anything else you hope for, please feel free to ask me. I’m at your service whether for conversation, insight into what you can expect at Alliance Central, or simply to leave you in peace.”

  Nash was genuinely impressed. “This is all extremely thoughtful and most generous, Tivya. If you’ll permit me about a half hour in my quarters, I’d look forward to your insights afterwards.”

  “This way...” She nodded as always and led him aft.

  It was a sore disappointment to board yet another ship bare minutes after his endless slipstream out here. He was desperate to enjoy S-12’s vastness after the cloistered confines of the command ship, and the Alliance shuttle was even tighter, but he forced himself to focus on the mission that would get his career going again.

  One thing he found odd now that he could glance out the shuttle’s viewport was the lack of slipstream’s customary haziness. Here, the heavens were crystal clear and on full display. He wanted to ask his hostess whether they were using FTL or just traveling slo-space, but prudence demanded keeping any technological disparities to himself. Instead, he picked out a few stars and waited to see if he could detect motion.